Two squatters are being sought by New York City police in connection with the murder of a 52-year-old woman whose body was found stuffed in a duffel bag inside her new apartment last week, according to reports.
The New York City Police Department told FOX News Digital that on March 14, 2024, around 4:30 p.m., 52-year-old Nadia Vitel was found unconscious in an apartment on East 31st Street in Manhattan. He was found unresponsive inside. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
A New York medical examiner determined the Russian-born man’s cause of death was blunt force trauma, the New York Daily News reported. Her manner of death is being investigated as a homicide.
“Several squatters had taken over the apartment, and the woman came home and confronted the squatters who were there,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney said, as reported by the New York Post. We believe there was a break-in.”
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Nadia Vitel, 52, was found dead in a duffel bag last Thursday in her new apartment on East 31st Street near the intersection of Third Avenue. (Nadia Vitels on Facebook)
Police said the body was discovered after worried relatives called for a welfare check after not hearing from Vitel for 48 hours.
According to the New York Post, Vitel’s son, Michael Medvedev, discovered the duffel bag under a coat in the woman’s closet when he was asked to look around the building.
The newspaper reported that the woman’s son saw his legs sticking out of the bag as he took off his clothes.
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On Thursday, March 14, 2024, forensic investigators responded to an apartment at 206 East 31st Street in Manhattan, New York City, after the body of a woman was discovered there. (Gardiner Anderson, NY Daily News, via Getty Images)
Police have not released the suspects’ identities, but said surveillance cameras showed them fleeing the apartment and driving away in a Vitel Lexus SUV after the incident.
The newspaper also reported that the pair fled across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, then headed into Pennsylvania, where they collided with an SUV in Lower Paxton Township.
Even though the accident occurred in the same area, Mr. Kenney did not immediately cut the license plate of the vehicle until Pennsylvania State Police learned that the vehicle was wanted for murder, so the NYPD was not notified until the next day. I told them there wasn’t.
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A New York City Police Department (NYPD) car photographed on March 18, 2016. (Reuters/Brendan McDiarmid)
Police also said that after the accident, the two visited several local car dealerships and attempted to purchase a car for $1,000.
Police have not revealed the identities of the two suspects, but police officials previously said they were a man and a woman in their 20s.
“At this time, probable cause has been found. We have two subjects of interest and the Regional Fugitive Task Force is actively searching for them as we speak,” Kenney said. He noted that one of the squatters had been arrested previously.
Vitel grew up in Moscow and later moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, for college, his son said at Monday’s funeral, the Daily News reported.
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After attending graduate school in Miami, she took a job as a marketing executive for a nonprofit organization, then joined camera company Canon and mobile phone company Nokia. She loved tennis and she ran tennis star Maria Sharapova’s candy line, the Daily News reported.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter contributed to this report.
