DeLAND, Fla. – It was Sept. 23 that the body of 30-year-old Laura Lynn Nagengast was found dumped in a ditch along a stretch of Central Parkway near DeLand.
Volusia County sheriff's investigators say she was a homeless at the time she was killed, and somehow their search for a killer led them to 54-year-old John Lytus.
"John was very sweet and very nice," said his neighbor Brittney Boyd.
It seems many women shared her view of Lytus.
Daytona Beach police say just last week, Lytus picked up one woman at a 7-Eleven on Ridgewood Avenue and brought her back to some apartments he was fixing up on Baldwin Lane.
Inside an RV he had parked along the side of the building, she said he tied her up, tortured her and raped her.
He was arrested Friday and charged with sexual battery.
Soon afterward, another woman came forward, claiming he did the same thing to her.
Lytus -- a Nicarguan national -- is a known sex offender.
News 6 found out he was convicted of rape in 1986 in New York, he was arrested for stalking in Orange County in 2009, and arrested for this sex battery case last week.
News 6 also found out in between all of those arrests, he was hiding from law enforcement -- arrested several more times for not registering as a sex offender in the new cities he moved to.
Could these crimes be connected to similar unsolved murders that happened in Daytona Beach 10 years ago?
Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood told our partners at the News Journal there's some big differences in those cases, but they're looking at every possibility.
