Cops on Thursday were awaiting search warrants that would give them access to a Queens apartment where a building superintendent who had gone to collect overdue rent was found dead stuffed in garbage bags under a bed.
Police want to scour for evidence inside the apartment on 70th Ave. near 137th St. in Kew Gardens Hills where Jose “Rene” Portillo’s body was found by cops about 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Police and building residents said he went to the apartment earlier that morning to collect overdue rent from a problem tenant. Surveillance footage from the building shows the super entering the apartment but never exiting, police source said.
On Tuesday afternoon, after getting a concerned phone call from the victim’s brother, cops visited the address and found Portillo’s remains.
When cops arrived, a woman answered the apartment door. A few moments later a man, believed to be the tenant of record, returned home and pointed them to the bedroom. Both remain in police custody and were being questioned on Thursday.
The building super wasn’t dismembered but found in two garbage bags, one covering his top half, the other covering his bottom half, cops said.
The city’s Medical Examiner was performing an autopsy to determine how Portillo died.
Attempts to reach the building management company, Jewel Associates L.L.C, were not immediately successful Thursday.
Neighbors called the residents of the apartment problem tenants who were known to drink excessively and act rowdy.
“The (tenant) was drinking a lot but she seemed nice,” one 30-year-old neighbor who wished not to be named told the Daily News. “They were always fighting. He was always drunk. You could smell the alcohol on him.”
Portillo had helped the tenants get the apartment, the neighbor said.
“I’m in shock,” the tenant said. “I thought they were friends.”
Overdue rent notices would pile up at the apartment door, a former upstairs neighbor, who identified himself as Elliot, said.
“He was a douchebag,” Elliot said about his downstairs neighbor. “I used to live in the second floor and I got babies. He used to bang my wall like crazy.”