Two fugitive squatters were arrested Friday morning in Pennsylvania in connection with the murder of a woman whose body was found stuffed in a duffel bag in her Manhattan apartment, law enforcement officials told the Post. . It comes as gruesome new photos have emerged of the bloody closet where the victim was kept. It was hidden.
Halley Tejada, 19, and Kensley Alston, 18, were tracked down by U.S. marshals and taken into custody just before 11 a.m. in York, west of Philadelphia, officials said.
It’s been more than a week since the body of 52-year-old Nadia Vitel was found hidden in her late mother’s 19th-floor apartment on East 31st Street last week.
Investigators believe the suspects squatted in a luxury apartment, where they confronted Vitel and beat him to death, the New York Police Department said Thursday.
The mother suffered blunt force trauma to the head, multiple facial fractures, a brain bleed, and two broken ribs, and her body was thrown into a duffel bag and stuffed into a closet.
On Thursday, gruesome photos of the crime scene showed bloodstains on the floor of the closet where her body was found and a large crack in one of the walls of the apartment.
Police said that after the murder, the suspects were seen on surveillance footage fleeing the apartment and fleeing in the Lexus SUV the woman was driving.
Police said they fled through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, where they collided with an SUV in Lower Paxton Township.
Police officials say the two were using the victim’s credit card in the Keystone State.
