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Manhunt in St. Petersburg woman's bludgeoning death ends in Flagler County

 
Police search for clues outside the home at 3033 Melrose Ave. S in St. Petersburg, where Barbara Warren, 57, was found dead Tuesday morning. Police were searching for her husband Darryl Warren,  46, (inset) who was not at the scene when they arrived. [SCOTT KEELER   |   Times]
Police search for clues outside the home at 3033 Melrose Ave. S in St. Petersburg, where Barbara Warren, 57, was found dead Tuesday morning. Police were searching for her husband Darryl Warren, 46, (inset) who was not at the scene when they arrived. [SCOTT KEELER | Times]
Published Oct. 28, 2014

ST. PETERSBURG — Police searching for Darryl Warren, 46, on Tuesday morning said he was found in Flagler County just hours after he allegedly bludgeoned his wife to death.

Warren was wanted on a charge of first-degree murder after what police described as a domestic dispute ended with death of his wife, Barbara Warren, 57, in their home at 3033 Melrose Ave. S in St. Petersburg.

Flagler County Sheriff's deputies found Warren around 6 a.m. with a disabled vehicle pulled to the side of a road near Bunnell. He did not resist arrest, authorities said.

St. Petersburg police officers responded to the couple's home shortly before 2 a.m. Tuesday after one of Darryl Warren's relatives called a probation officer to report a murder. The relative said he had called and said he killed his wife, according to police.

Warren was released from prison in April and was still under the supervision of the Department of Corrections this week, authorities said. He had been serving a 25-year sentence for attempted murder and aggravated child abuse stemming from an incident in 1993.

When officers arrived on Melrose Avenue S on Tuesday, police said, Warren sped past them in a 2004 blue Chevrolet Cavalier. Inside the home, investigators found Barbara Warren's battered body on the ground.

She was pronounced dead at the scene, and authorities issued a statewide alert for Darryl Warren.

Meanwhile, teens walking past the Warrens' squat one-story house on their way to school saw police combing the area for clues. Police trained a floodlight on the back yard, and multiple cruisers were stationed in the street.

Lights in the windows of the Warrens' home were joined by others in nearby houses, and neighbors walked to the yellow tape.

"He seemed strange," Veronica Bellamy, 53, said of Darryl Warren.

"I told her, that guy, he didn't look right," said Jimmie Booz, 79.

JB Johnson, 32, said Barbara Warren worked as a nurse, and Darryl would help her gather her things from the car when she returned home in her scrubs at the end of the day.

"He was quiet, real quiet," Johnson said. "He'd just sit back and watch."

Barbara and Darryl married in August. Neighbors said he moved in just a few months ago and often sat in the back yard. He never said much.

Booz and Johnson said Barbara preached at local churches and did not drink or shout. No neighbors said they heard anything around the time she apparently died.

In 1993, Warren faced several charges in connection with a brutal assault on his former girlfriend in an apartment complex on 12th Street S.

The woman told him to move out and he attacked her with a knife, according to a Times story from 1993.

Police told the Times then that Warren stabbed the woman 14 times in the chest and back — and stabbed the woman's 10-year-old son once — then stole a car and fled the scene.

Johnson said he still remembers the 1993 stabbing, and the figure Warren had cut in the neighborhood.

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"He was a bona fide hustler," Johnson said.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Contact Zachary T. Sampson at zsampson@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8804. Follow @zacksampson on Twitter.