Jury convicts man of murdering woman found stuffed in Florida Keys resort closet

A jury convicted a Key Largo kayak guide of second-degree murder and kidnapping on Friday in the April 2025 killing of a woman whose body, prosecutors say, he stuffed inside a Florida Keys motel-room closet.

Read more Ex-UM urologist denies allegations that he sexually assaulted his students

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives arrested Dylan Cody Lamb on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, the day after the body of 43-year-old Nadyne Marie Tillman was found wedged underneath an air-conditioner handler in a closet of a room at the Amoray Dive Resort in Key Largo.

Deputies had been looking for Tillman after her family reported her missing two days before Lamb’s arrest. When detectives found her body, she had signs of blunt-force trauma, indicating she had been beaten to death, according to Lamb’s arrest report. The Monroe County Medical Examiner determined the cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head and neck. She had fractures to her cervical vertebrae.

The jury convicted Lamb, 35, of second-degree murder, kidnapping and destroying evidence after less than two hours of deliberation, according to the Monroe County State Attorney’s Office. He faces life in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 9.

“This was a tragic and senseless loss of life, and our responsibility was to present the evidence and give the jury the complete picture of what happened,” Major Crimes prosecutor Colleen Dunne said in a statement. “We are grateful to the investigators and everyone who worked with us to seek justice for the victim and her family.”

‘He freaked out’

Lamb told detectives after his arrest that he first contacted Tillman through a website advertising escort services, and the two met at the resort on Saturday, April 5, 2025, and he paid her $200 “in exchange for sexual services,” his arrest report states.

But, after the money exchange, Tillman tried to leave without having sex with Lamb, he told detectives. He blocked the door. Lamb told cops Tillman began hitting him, and he responded by striking her once in the face.

“He claimed she fell to the floor, struck her head, and became unconscious,” Detective J. Hernandez wrote in his report.

Lamb claimed he went to the bathroom to collect himself, and when he returned to where Tillman was lying on the floor, she wasn’t breathing, according to the report.

“He admitted that he panicked, cleaned the scene using towels and linens from the room, and concealed the victim’s body inside the closet,” Hernandez wrote.

He told detectives he didn’t call 911 because he “freaked out.” Hernandez wrote that it appeared Tillman was hit multiple times. She had “two black eyes, swollen and lacerated lips, and other facial trauma consistent with blunt force impact,” Hernandez stated.

Lamb checked out of the room the next day, and a housekeeper found three large trash bags filled with bloody towels and linens that were also soiled with human waste, according to the report.

But, detectives were never able to examine the bags. The housekeeper never notified management about them before tossing them in the resort’s dumpster. By the time detectives began their investigation, the contents of the dumpster had been hauled off by a garbage truck, Hernandez wrote in his report.

Concerned family and friends

Tillman and her family also lived in the Keys.

The day before Tillman’s body was found, her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend told the sheriff’s office that her Chevy SUV had been parked at the bayside resort at mile marker 104 of the Overseas Highway for two or three days, but they were unable to reach her, detectives said.

Deputies went to the resort and found the vehicle backed into a space near Unit 2A with a windshield sunshade in place, the driver’s side window partially down and a duffle bag visible in the back, Hernandez wrote in his report.

Read more ‘He had friends everywhere’: Roger Duarte, Miami’s ‘Stone Crab King,’ dies at 42

The daughter told detectives that she last spoke with her mother four days earlier when Tillman asked her daughter if she was available to meet her at the resort. The daughter said she couldn’t because she had to work.

Tillman’s other daughter told detectives that she received a Facebook message from one of her mother’s friends who said he had not heard from her since Saturday, and he was concerned. The friend told the daughter that Tillman’s last communication with him was her saying she was meeting a date at the resort, Hernandez wrote.

Detectives spoke with that man, who told them Tillman arranged to meet a man for a date at the resort on Saturday morning, April 5, 2025. The last time they spoke, Tillman texted him and said she was at the door to the room where she was supposed to meet her date, but no one was answering, the friend told detectives.

But, shortly before 9 a.m., she texted him again, writing, “I’m in.” That was the last contact she had with her friend, he told detectives.

Resort staff suspicious

When detectives were at the resort on Monday, April 7, investigating Tillman’s disappearance, the general manager approached them and reported “suspicious behavior” of a former guest, Lamb, according to Hernandez’s report.

The manager told detectives that she knocked on his door, room W1A, on Saturday, but he refused to open it. She wanted to move him to another room, and he spoke to her through the closed door. She finally told him that he could stay there one more night. The next day, he was moved to Room 2A, near where detectives found Tillman’s parked Chevy SUV, according to the report.

Detectives find the body

When detectives searched the first room that he had been staying in — W1A — they found Tillman’s body in a closet lying “in a fetal position,” Hernandez wrote.

“The female was partially clothed, wearing only a red shirt that covered her from the chest to her midsection. She was nude from the waist down. A tattoo was visible on her lower back. The Medical Examiner responded to the scene. I assisted in moving the body and observed tattoos on the victim’s neck that matched those visible in Nadyne Tillman’s Facebook profile picture,” the detective stated.

During the morning when detectives arrested Lamb, they first contacted his probation officer, who told them he met with Lamb the day before. At the time, Lamb was serving two years probation for a 2024 grand theft auto charge, which he pleaded no contest to, according to court records.

Detectives then went to where Lamb worked, Florida Bay Outfitters, less than a mile from the resort, and arrested him.

Lamb was represented by an attorney for the Monroe County Public Defender’s Office, which does not comment on cases to the press.

Chief Assistant Monroe County State Attorney Joseph Mansfield thanked the jurors in a statement, saying they had to sit through unsettling testimony and see disturbing photographs that “no one would ever want to experience.”

“They carried that responsibility through a gruesome and heartbreaking case, carefully considered the evidence and reached their verdict,” Mansfield said of the jurors who served in the five-day trial. “Jury service is one of the quiet, but essential, ways ordinary citizens serve their community, and we are deeply grateful to them for doing that difficult job.”

Read more Miami marina redevelopment will remain on ballot, but legal battle isn’t over