Police have arrested a Queens man in connection to the body of a woman found in an oil barrel in New Jersey earlier in August, police said, after she was last seen entering a high-end apartment building in Lower Manhattan.
The Bergen County Prosecutor's office said on Tuesday that Aquello Parker, of Springfield Gardens, was arrested on multiple charges related to disturbing, moving and/or concealing human remains, as well as desecrating, damaging and/or destroying remains.
Surveillance video showed the woman, later identified as 44-year-old Nicole Flanagan, entering a posh building at 95 Wall Street in the Financial District the night before her body was found on Aug. 13, a police source told NBC New York. Security footage also shows a man rolling a drum out of the same building and loading it into a U-Haul, the police source said.
Flanagan's body was discovered in Ridgefield Park after residents spotted the container near the corner of Hobart Street and Teaneck Road and noticed an odor. Flanagan was found naked inside the oil drum, with no obvious signs of trauma, a law enforcement source told NBC New York.
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An investigation revealed that Parker assisted in moving the body from New York to New Jersey, according to the Bergen County prosecutor's office. Parker turned himself in to the NYPD on Aug. 22, where he is being held before he will be extradited to New Jersey.
Police in New Jersey tracked Flanagan's location back to Wall Street by examining her cellphone record. The man who was seen rolling the drum from the building in Manhattan is said to be a member of the Snow gang, and is under suspicion in Flanagan's death, the police source said.
The medical examiner will determine a cause of death.
