Homeless Couple Says Suspected Serial Killer Befriended Them, Dug Graves Possibly For Them
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DAVIE (CBSMiami) – Paul Junor, known as "Cowboy," is homeless and lives a quiet life with his wife in some secluded woods in Plantation. He remembers the day a few months ago when Nathaniel Petgrave showed up.
"He was clean cut, soft-spoken, seemed well-educated," Junor said.
They drank beers, talked about philosophy and Petgrave set up a camp a short distance away with Cowboy's help. Cowboy said he never felt threatened by Petgrave.
"Never seemed violent?" a reporter asked Junor.
"Never. Never," he replied.
"Did he ever threaten you?" the reporter continued.
"Oh, hell no," Junor said.
But Junor's wife, Theresa Dewald, said she got a bad vibe from Petgrave.
"I didn't like him. I got a bad feeling right off," Dewald said. "He was took slick, too sly."
Petgrave told the couple he worked as an armed security guard and he seemed to spend a lot of time at a nearby library. Then one day late last month, Petgrave got arrested for stealing a car and police rifled through his camp.
"He was playing it off like nothing was happening. He's like, 'Oh, they think I'm a drug dealer or something,'" Junor said.
In fact, the police suspected Petgrave of murder. They suspect he killed a man named Larry Scott and shot another man at a Lauderhill gas station, and murdered John Jackson outside a Fort Lauderdale market. After Petgrave was arrested for murdering Derick Tucker at a Fort Lauderdale storage a few days later, Cowboy says he discovered two freshly dug deep graves near Petgrave's camp. He believes the graves were for him and his wife.
"He thinks we ratted him out so he went back there and dug two graves," Junor said. "I think it was him fixing to do me and her."
Cowboy says the news left him and his wife rattled by their encounter with a suspected killer preying on people just like them.
"From what the police had told us, he wanted to kill people and he figured that the best people to kill was homeless people because nobody would miss them," Junor said.
At a news conference earlier this week, Fort Lauderdale Police said Petgrave confessed to the murders. He is in jail without bond.
At the crime scene at the storage facility, detectives found some writing in blood — the words "4 Stop Wait Time." Investigators say Petgrave told them the number "4" was a reference to who he believed was his fourth victim.
He is accused of murdering three homeless men, shooting another and firing a shot that missed a fifth person.
