What to Know
- A worker was about to drop off a load of trash when he saw some remains at a garbage transfer station in the Bronx last week, police said.
- Additional remains were found at a trash site in New Jersey
- Law enforcement sources have identified the victim as 32-year-old Leondra Foster; her cause of death has not yet been determined
The woman whose body parts were found strewn in trash bins in New York and New Jersey last week, her head and feet allegedly discovered in her boyfriend's freezer, has been identified as 32-year-old Leondra Foster, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation tell NBC 4 New York.
Foster's boyfriend, 40-year-old Somorie Moses, was arrested over the weekend on charges of human corpse concealment and evidence tampering, and sources tell NBC 4 New York the Bronx district attorney is expected to add homicide to the list of crimes.
Foster's anguished family members were still struggling to process her gruesome death.
"She always did for others before she did for herself," Foster's sister said in tears. "It's eating me up inside that he did this to her."
Foster's mother said, crying, "It's very difficult because my granddaughter looks just like her mother. And every time I look at her, I see my daughter."
Foster's torso and leg were initially discovered Jan. 17 at the Metropolitan Transfer Station in Hunts Point. Over the next 24 hours, investigators tracked the movement of trash containers and found her arms, which had no hands, at a trash station in Kearny, New Jersey.
Surveillance footage and cellphone records led investigators to Moses, who was arrested Sunday after Foster's head, hands and feet were allegedly found in his freezer during the execution of a search warrant.
A cause of death for Foster has not yet been determined, but the medical examiner has ruled the case a homicide. Information on an attorney for Moses wasn't immediately available.
Local
Veronica Carr, a neighbor of Moses, had said the man "stayed to himself, he was real quiet, but you know how you get a feeling about somebody. He didn't set off too good with me, so I stayed away."
Foster's sister says there were red flags about Moses, a registered sex offender with a history of arrests. She said he made death threats against Foster.
"When she got the threat that he said he would kill my niece, my sister, myself, my mom, my dad, I think he got more hard," she said.
The sister said in devastation, "No woman deserves this at all. If you're in a domestic situation, get out. This could be you, this could be anybody's mother. Anybody's sister, aunt. This could be anybody."
