Already on Florida’s Death Row, man pleads not guilty to 1998 Broward rape and murder
A Death Row inmate now accused of a decades-old rape and murder of a 41-year-old woman pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning.
Lucious Boyd, 64, Boyd was charged with first-degree murder and sexual battery after, deputies say, DNA evidence linked him to the 1998 murder of Eileen Truppner. He entered his plea in front of Broward Circuit Court Judge Peter Holden.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office says on evening hours of Dec. 18, 1998, Boyd — then 39 — dragged Truppner to an isolated area of U.S. 27, about a mile north of Interstate 75, where he raped and murdered her.
READ MORE: DNA links Death Row convict to 1998 rape and murder of Broward woman, BSO says
For years, Truppner was known as “Jane Doe,” with only the face of a police sketch. Detectives had no name, no suspect, no camera footage. The case turned cold.
With the help of the forensic genealogy unit of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, DNA led to the first breakthrough in the case in May 2023 — Truppner’s name. Later that year, DNA, according to BSO, connected Truppner’s killing to Boyd.
Boyd’s DNA had been collected as evidence in the murder of 21-year-old Dawnia Dacosta, who was killed about two weeks before Truppner. Dacosta was last seen on Interstate 95 in Broward on Dec. 5, 1998, when her car broke down. Her body was found on Dec. 7, 1998, in the Oakland Park area.
In 2002, Boyd was convicted of Dacosta’s murder — and sentenced to death. He’s on Death Row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford in northern Florida.
Boyd has been on police radar in several cases, including two that ended in not-guilty verdicts, according to the Miami Herald archives.
▪ In 1993, he was charged with stabbing his ex-girlfriend’s brother to death but was acquitted after claiming self-defense.
▪ In 1998, Boyd was charged with holding a knife to a prostitute’s throat and forcing her to perform a sex act in his truck. A Broward jury found him not guilty of sexual battery.
Boyd will appear in court for a hearing on April 11.
‘All the stars are lining up’
Amber Barry, whose sister Gina Moore was raped and killed in Palm Beach County in 1998, was present at Boyd’s court appearance Tuesday. She suspects that the Death Row inmate is responsible for her sister’s slaying.
For Barry, Boyd’s arrest may lead to “a break” in her sister’s killing — and those of several other women. At the time of her death, Moore was a sex worker and had struggled with addiction stemming from their mother abandoning them.
“I feel like this case is helping... other victims,” she said. “All the stars are lining up for a reason.”
Barry, who was 16 when her sister was killed, wore a shirt bearing Moore’s photo as well as her jean jacket and a locket with a photo of them inside. In tears, she said she felt that, for decades, she was no closer to having answers.
The issues that Moore dealt with in her life, Barry said, didn’t define her.
“She was my sister who I loved and admired.”
