In a city with no shortage of grisly, tragic or depraved crimes, 2024 stood out as a particularly violent year in New York history. Several disturbing murders shocked even the most jaded New Yorkers for their sheer savagery and brutality, whether it was the assassination of a health care CEO on a Midtown street, the heart-wrenching starvation death of a 4-year-old Harlem boy allegedly at the hands of his own parents, or the gruesome death of a homeless woman set on fire on a Brooklyn subway train as the accused killer calmly watched her burn to death from a platform bench.
The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
In a killing that grabbed worldwide attention, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, on a Midtown sidewalk on Dec. 4. After a five-day interstate manhunt, Mangione was found in an Altoona, Pa., McDonald’s with a 3D printed ghost gun, the fake ID he used to check into a Manhattan hostel and a handwritten manifesto that read, in part, “Frankly, these parasites had it coming.”
Mangione, valedictorian of his Baltimore private high school and an Ivy league computer science major, was extradited to New York City on Dec. 19. Initially charged with first-degree murder and terrorism charges by New York State, Mangione was instead arraigned in Federal Court on charges of murder, stalking and firearm offenses. The federal charges could result in the death penalty.
Despite being accused of the cold-blooded murder of a father of two, Mangione’s apparent anger toward the health insurance industry prompted an outpouring of support and sympathy for him. He is due back in court in Manhattan in January.
Brian Thompson (left) and evidence markers pictured at the scene of the shooting. (AP)
Woman found stuffed in a duffel bag in Manhattan closet, squatter couple charged
Nadia Vitels, a 52-year-old woman found dead inside a duffel bag in the closet of a Kips Bay apartment on March 14 by her son was later discovered to have been attacked and killed by a pair of squatters four days earlier, who then stole her credit card and car and went on the run, according to prosecutors. Nadia Vitels was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, said the city’s Medical Examiner.
The duo — Halley Tejada, 19, of Manhattan, and Kensly Alston, 18, of the Bronx — were grabbed by U.S. Marshals in York, Pa., after cops said they had crashed Vitels’ car and gotten engaged on the road with a ring they bought with Vitels’ card, cops said. They were hit with multiple charges, including murder, concealment of a human corpse and grand larceny.
Wheelchair-bound ex-con charged with killing roommate, dumping body in the trash
Family, friends and neighbors were devastated to find out that the body found wrapped in a sleeping bag, placed on a dolly and left by the trash on E. 27th St. near Third Ave. on July 5 was 31-year-old Buffalo State College grad Yazmeen Williams, who had lived for a time in the nearby Straus Houses.
Residents of the Straus Houses began to immediately suspect 55-year-old Chad Irish, who lived two blocks away — especially after video of a man in a wheelchair dumping Williams’ body was widely seen on social media. Williams had also been his roommate.
After being confronted by several neighbors and pulling a gun in response, Irish was swarmed by an angry crowd just as police came to arrest him on July 8. Cops and medics had to fight their way through the irate mob while carrying Irish on a gurney.
Irish was charged with murder, concealment of a human corpse, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon.
Sister of Bollywood star accused of killing two in Queens arson
On Nov. 26 Aliya Fakhri, the sister of Bollywood movie star Nargis Fakhri, was arrested for murder and arson, accused of setting the fire that killed her ex Edward Jacobs, 35, and his new pal Anastasia “Star” Ettienne, 33.
The blaze was set in a cluttered two-story garage Jacobs was squatting in behind a private home in Jamaica,Queens on Nov. 2. Jacobs was asleep when Fakhri allegedly came in screaming “You’re going to die today!” before starting the fire, according to a witness.
Ettienne died while trying to wake Jacobs to get him out of the burning garage.
“It was an abusive relationship,” a man who escaped said of the relationship between Jacobs and the accused arsonist. “She told everybody [in the past] she was going to burn his house down, that she was going to kill him. We just laughed at her.”
Anastasia “Star” Ettienne and Edward Jacobs were killed in a Queens arson fire on November 2. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News; Obtained by Daily News)
Murder of Bronx woman, allegedly by ex-celebrity photographer, sends victim’s boyfriend spiraling to his own death
The murder of Jacklyn Timinski— struck in the head with a kettlebell by former celebrity photographer Benjamin Lozovsky, according to cops— sent her boyfriend Juan Boria on a downward spiral of grief that included a string of arrests, desperate attempts to get him help and finally ending with him being fatally stabbed weeks later in a tussle with a homeless man over a box to sleep in.
Lozovsky, 41, was found naked and bloody on Timinski’s Bronx lawn Sept. 8, after police say he smashed her head in with a kettlebell. According to law enforcement sources, the pair had gone to the victim’s home to do drugs.
Boria, 51, continued living among blood spatter in the Throggs Neck house where Timinski was attacked and was not taking medication for his bipolar disorder, according to his heartbroken son, Joshua Boria. After an encounter with Robert Brent, a 52-year-old homeless man who was mourning his own loss, Boria was fatally stabbed in the abdomen in the bustling commercial area of the Bronx called the Hub on Oct. 26.
Lozovsky is due back in court Jan. 15.
Parents accused of starving 4-year-old boy to death in Harlem home
It was horrific enough that the boy was being starved to death by his own parents. But what took 4-year-old Jahmeik Modlin’s death over the top was that he died in a Harlem apartment that was reportedly stocked with food.
Prosecutors said the home where the malnourished boy lived his last days was a feces-covered hellhole where the cupboards were locked with zip ties and the refrigerator was turned to the wall so Jahmeik and his sisters couldn’t open it.
His sisters, ages 5, 6 and 7, managed to survive under the same conditions, although none of them were able to ingest solid food when they were rescued in October.
The boy’s mom, Nytavia Ragsdale, 26, was jailed and charged with criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of a child after Jahmeik was found unconscious, malnourished and suffering from hypothermia outside their apartment on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. near W. 145th St.
Days later, the boy’s father, Laron Modlin, 25, was arrested on similar charges. Relatives said the family had been on the radar of the city’s child welfare agency, whose handling of the case is being reviewed by the city’s Department of Investigation.
Front page of the New York Daily News for Oct. 15, 2024 focused on the death of 4-year-old Jahmeik Modlin, who died after being found unconscious in their Harlem home Sunday.
Body dismembered in Bronx, then torched on Yonkers street
Grisly doesn’t begin to describe this head-scratching caper, which somehow managed to link Yonkers and the South Bronx to a pair of severed hands found in a bleach-filled crockpot.
It started with burning body parts dumped under a Yonkers bridge in August that cops traced back to a Bronx apartment. There, investigators found a black bag in a freezer that contained a human leg in an apartment in a building on Rogers Place near Dawson St.
Caught on camera were a man and a woman who rented a room in the apartment.
Burning body parts found dumped under a Yonkers bridge were traced back to a Bronx apartment where more human remains were discovered. Aug. 6, 2024. (Emma Seiwell / New York Daily News)
Muhammad Aadil, 40, and Ronei Harris, 18, were indicted for murder and related charges in the death of 46-year-old Lutalo Henderson, the Bronx DA said.
Aadil and Harris allegedly killed Henderson after a dispute in the home that Aadil shared with Henderson, the Bronx DA said. The two then wrapped the torso in trash bags and took it in a shopping cart to Yonkers on the Metro North Train.
They set the shopping cart on fire under the Oak Street Bridge, the DA said.
Police, using surveillance videos, traced the murder back to the Bronx.
“This was brutal disregard for a human being.” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said when she announced the indictments.
Custody battle ends in murder-suicide down the street from Gracie Mansion
New York City was rocked by a murder-suicide in July that unfolded on an Upper East Side street just a block away from the mayor’s heavily-guarded residence.
Police said single mom, Marisa Galloway, 45, was shot to death by her former mother-in-law in a bitter custody battle that reached its deadly climax just a half-block away from Gracie Mansion.
Officers on the scene on E. 88th street on Friday, July 26, 2024 in Manhattan. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News)
Shooting suspect and grandmother Kathleen Leigh’s son is the father of Galloway’s 4-year-old daughter. Authorities said Leigh, 65, escalated the contentious custody fight by shooting Galloway outside a white Honda Civic on E. 88th Street around 9 a.m. on July 26 before shooting herself.
Galloway’s other daughter, a 1-year-old girl, was in the car. She was unhurt.
In a suicide note, Leigh described herself as a terminally-ill cancer patient and accused Galloway of child abuse, an accusation debunked by city child’s services investigators.
Galloway was a special education teacher, described by neighbors and friends as a loving, doting mother.
Artist murdered by boyfriend benefactor in upscale Hamptons spa
A Brooklyn artist was murdered in October at an upscale Hamptons wellness spa by an ex-boyfriend who later killed himself in a shocking murder-suicide filled with emotion and intrigue.
Sabina Rojas, 33, was part of the 2021 Technology Immersion Program at Harvestworks, a New York-based nonprofit that helps artists creating work with technology. She received a scholarship from the organization that spring.
More recently, Rosas had won her first residency, which was due to begin in Portugal in November. She launched a GoFundMe over the summer asking for contributions as a birthday gift.
Her boyfriend Thomas Gannon, who went on to kill her, contributed $1,000, making him the top donor.
“You have an amazing gift and soon all the world will see,” he posted on the fundraising page.
“I love you.”
Rosas, 33, was staying at the posh Shou Sugi Ban House in Water Mill with Gannon, 56, who was later seen leaving the spa alone, according to cops. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his home in Honesdale, Pa., according to Suffolk County police.
Rosas was married, but was estranged from her husband, authorities said.
Homeless woman set on fire on Brooklyn train
He set her on fire, then he watched her burn.
That’s what cop said a Guatemalan immigrant did to a homeless woman on a Brooklyn subway train last Sunday, just days before Christmas.
Cops said Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, approached the sleeping woman without saying a word and set fire to her clothes, engulfing her in flames “in a matter of seconds.”
Surveillance video appears to show him sitting on a bench watching the woman burn as police officers quickly responded around 7:30 a.m. on an F train pulling into the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn.
Zapeta-Calil has been charged with first- and second-degree murder and first-degree arson, according to police.
“The depravity of this horrific crime is beyond comprehension, and my office is committed to bringing the perpetrator to justice. This gruesome and senseless act of violence against a vulnerable woman will be met with the most serious consequences,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
Police released body camera images of the suspect to the public, and three high school-age New Yorkers recognized him and called the police, officials said.