A young Long Island mom met a violent end at the hands of a rejected suitor who couldn’t stomach being spurned, authorities and friends of the victim said.
Dante Taylor, 19, was charged Saturday with second-degree murder in the grisly death of Sarah Goode, 21, the Medford woman whose half-naked body was found in the woods near her home by family members who were desperate to find her after she mysteriously vanished from a party.
Cell phone records, GPS, and a bloody palm print inside Goode’s car link Taylor, who spent about seven months in the Marines before he was discharged, to the crime, prosecutors said at his arraignment in Central Islip court.
The single mother of a 4-year-old girl was sexually assaulted, authorities said. There was a “significant amount of blood in her vehicle,” and “a large amount” of her hair hanging from the car window, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Janet Albertson added.
Goode was beaten so badly, an autopsy found a small piece of metal lodged in her skull, said authorities, who did not identify a murder weapon.
A friend who knew both Taylor and Goode said the “troubled” young man wanted to date Goode — but she wasn’t interested.
“He could not accept that,” said the pal, who asked not to be identified.
Police questioned Taylor for 10 hours about Goode’s June 7 disappearance, but released him last month.
He was busted in Vero Beach, Fla., as a fugitive in an unrelated case — though his attorney, Patrick O’Connell, insisted Taylor had simply relocated there with his family, and wasn’t trying to flee the cops.
Taylor was charged with attempted rape for a 2011 incident in which a woman claims he tried to sexually assault her at knifepoint in his bedroom. She escaped, said prosecutors who said they weren’t aware of the attempted rape until they began investigating Goode’s death.
Goode’s relatives and friends packed the court where Taylor was arraigned. Her mother and sisters openly wept as Albertson described the grisly crime scenes.
“I hope you burn in hell, you f- -k,” Goode’s brother-in-law, Nick Giannetto, screamed at Taylor, before he was escorted from the courtroom.
Goode’s sister, Elizabeth DeMuria, 36, said the family doesn’t know Taylor and doesn’t know how the two met.
“She was a good girl. Everybody loved her. She was the one who lit up the room when she came in. She can’t do that anymore,” DeMuria said through tears.
Taylor faces life in prison. He pleaded not guilty to the murder and attempted rape charges and was being held without bail. He is due back in court July 17 but could face an indictment before then.
“We believe we have a very strong case amassed against the defendant,” Albertson said.