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Twenty-seven years after an early-morning crash that killed two Florida teenagers on Christmas Day, a longtime fugitive in Toronto has signalled he will not fight extradition to face manslaughter charges.
Patrick Lutts Jr. appeared in a downtown Toronto court by video link from a local jail on Wednesday. His lawyer Michelle Psutka told the court her client would be waiving his right to a formal extradition hearing previously scheduled for January.
A CBC News investigation earlier this year revealed that Lutts, 52, lived openly in the city after skipping a plea hearing in an Orlando court in 2003. With a warrant out for his arrest, Lutts hosted monthly trivia nights at a Toronto bar and — under the alias Pat Lighthelp — provided relationship advice to clients as a self-styled psychic.
His arrest in February by Toronto police’s fugitive squad came after a Crime Stoppers-type service in Florida received an anonymous tip about his whereabouts in November 2023. The tip appears to have come from a U.S.-based internet sleuth who claims to have used facial recognition technology and social media clues to track Lutts to Toronto.
Lutts was charged with two counts of DUI manslaughter after his truck smashed into a vehicle carrying 19-year-old Nancy Lopez and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Darvin Javier DeJesus-Taboada, on Christmas morning in Orlando in 1998. The couple was killed on impact.
“You just left,” Lopez’s cousin Jorge Leon said of Lutts’s years on the run. “You were a coward.”
Investigators said the Texas-born Lutts had spent Christmas Eve drinking and had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit and a “strong odour of alcohol coming from his breath.”
Lopez’s stepbrother Ralph Anthony Cordero told CBC earlier this year that her family never lost hope that Lutts would be found, even after more than two decades on the lam.
“It was very pleasing to see that he’s no longer running free,” Cordero said. “The motivator” for Lopez’s loved ones, Cordero said, “was to ensure that this guy does not die before we get our hands on him.”
Decades after skipping a Florida court hearing on manslaughter charges, U.S. fugitive Patrick Lutts Jr. faced the family of one of his alleged victims in a Toronto court. Lutts Jr. is accused of killing two teenagers while driving drunk in 1998.
Lutts faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
He acknowledged in a sworn affidavit “leaving for Canada and not facing the Florida charge was a mistake.”
“I thought that authorities would be able to find me as I stayed in the same place in Toronto for over 20 years,” Lutts wrote. “That day just never came until now, but I am tired of running.”
Until his arrest, Lutts offered psychic clients relationship advice and life coaching under the alias Pat Lighthelp.
His profile disappeared from the New Zealand-based “psychic reading” platform LifeReader in May after CBC asked the company about its knowledge of Lutts’s past.
LifeReader did not respond to requests for comment.
Online posts show Lutts also hosted a monthly horror-themed trivia night at a Toronto bar.
“Congratulations to the winners and we look forward to seeing all of you [in] 2025!” Lutts said in an online post last December.
He’s scheduled to return to the Ontario Superior Court on Jan. 15.
If Lutts is extradited in the new year, his Miami-based lawyer has indicated he will dispute the Florida court’s jurisdiction in the case.
“Through this Notice, Mr. Lutts does not attorn to this Court’s jurisdiction,” attorney Stephen Binhak wrote in a recent court filing obtained by CBC News.
Binhak declined to comment.
