A person is in custody following a dayslong manhunt after a Bronx brute allegedly tortured and murdered his 21-year-old girlfriend and dumped her body in a stairwell.
Princesa Encarnacion-Soto was stabbed from head to toe, possibly beaten with a hammer and left to die on a staircase on July 22 at the Fordham Heights building on Grand Concourse near East 183rd Street, cops said.
The NYPD on Thursday released a photo of Robert Strother, Encarnacion-Soto’s 27-year-old boyfriend and the suspect in the slaying, after searching for him for more than a week.
Encarnacion-Soto was staying in the building with Strother and his mother, 54-year-old Naida Jorge, who was also charged in the case, cops said.
Police did not identify the person in custody but said they were preparing charges.
They took the suspect into custody on Friday but he was hospitalized, a police source said. The reason for the hospitalization was not clear.
Video released by the NYPD showed the bearded Strother pounding the pavement with his hand tucked into the pocket of his red sweatpants, wearing a red baseball cap turned sideways.
Investigators believe Encarnacion-Soto was first tied up in bed and tortured, an NYPD official said.
“We believe that she was tied down to the bed based on the blood that was on the bed,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said last month. “The wounds themselves were inflicted for pain, not to kill. There are slice marks on her thighs, slice marks on her upper arms and shoulders.”
“The ones on her legs were fresh,” the chief added. “The ones on her upper torso seemed like they were in the process of healing.”
Strother’s mother, Jorge, allegedly washed the crime scene after the murder – and was arrested on charges of murder, manslaughter, hindering prosecution and concealment of a human corpse, police said.
“She did attempt to clean up the crime scene,” Kenny said. “There was no blood on [the victim] while she laid on the staircase, and she was in fresh clothing that had no blood on her.”
Jorge was held without bail during her arraignment last Friday in Bronx Criminal Court.
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