One week after a 52-year-old woman was found dead, her body stuffed in a duffel bag in a closet of an upscale Manhattan apartment, the NYPD is still trying to piece together the mystery.
Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny disclosed Thursday that the case has broadened to include events in Pennsylvania following a vehicular crash involving the two suspects seen leaving the 19th-floor apartment where Nadia Vitel's body was found.
Investigators made the grim discovery when they went to conduct a wellness check at the Kips Bay apartment. Vitel hadn't been seen since March 12, when she returned to New York to oversee her late mother's apartment. Detectives said she had just returned from traveling and went to the apartment believing it was vacant in order to get it ready for a friend to move in.
It had been vacant for several months, and it's believed she encountered squatters residing within the property when she returned, officials say.
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"The apartment itself had been vacant for three to four months prior. We believe that some squatters took the apartment over and this woman came home to get this apartment set up and walked in on the squatters that were there," Kenny provided, emphasizing the initial complexities of the case.
The luxury 19th-floor apartment, characterized by its direct elevator access into its vestibule, highlighted the privacy and exclusivity of the residence, juxtaposing the violation that occurred within its walls. The direct access to the apartment allowed the squatters to likely come and go as they pleased.
Vitel's body was found by her adult son. The apartment is now covered in black powder as crime scene investigators dust for fingerprints.
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The suspects stole Vitel's Lexus, which was spotted crossing the George Washington Bridge, according to officials. They crashed it in Lower Paxton Township, Pennsylvania.
Local police, upon responding to the incident, did not immediately connect the vehicle to the New York killing because they didn't run the plate, the NYPD says.
If they had, "they would have seen that we had a felony alarm on the car for being stolen and wanted in connection with a homicide," Kenny said.
The pair who crashed the stolen Lexus are believed to be a man and a woman in their 20s. It wasn't immediately clear when the crash happened. They were seen on camera leaving the East 31st Street apartment hours after Vitel was seen walking in.
An investigation of Vitel's apartment and the building she lived in turned up personal items in the building's garbage disposal area, officials have said.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
