By The Diary
Aug 21, 2024, 01:47 AM EDT
Lutalo Henderson has been identified as the man who was killed in the Bronx, his body cut up and some of his remains transported on a Metro-North train to Yonkers, where they were burned in a shopping cart under a bridge.
New York police ended nearly two weeks of speculation Sunday when they confirmed the identity of the victim in the gruesome homicide. Henderson had been missing since the first gruesome discovery was made in Yonkers early on the morning of Aug. 5, the day after his 46th birthday, police said. Daily News. That corpse had no feet or hands.
Hours later, authorities found other remains in an apartment in the Bronx (NYC), including severed hands in a clay pot, and the police suspected that they were the same victim, something that took time to be confirmed by forensic tests.
No one has been arrested and the motive for the crime is unclear. Henderson posted on LinkedIn 11 months ago that he had started a new job as an audio-visual technician.
Surveillance video captured two men moving a shopping cart at an apartment building on Rogers Place in the Longwood section of the Bronx, the same site where the second human remains were found.
“Whoever did this wanted to do everything possible to ensure that the victim was never identified,” he told NBC News Retired NYPD Chief Terry Monahan said before it was known who the murdered person was. “The reason someone would remove a person’s teeth, hands and feet is to prevent identification. Once you remove the hands, you can’t run fingerprints. If you remove the teeth, you can’t run dental records to see who the individual is.”
“I’m not okay but I’m staying strong for my family,” Aziza Monique, a sister of Henderson, wrote on Facebook after authorities told her he was the victim. “A part of me feels lost and I’m angry. I pray that they find the person who did this to him. May God have mercy on their souls… This is a very disturbing situation. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
Investigators believe that between the night of Sunday, August 4, and very early Monday, August 5, two people loaded body parts into a shopping cart, loaded it onto a Metro-North train and then drove it to Sherwood Avenue and Bronx River Parkway in Yonkers, where they set it on fire.
Once the fire was extinguished under the bridge, firefighters and police found the body. An investigation determined that although the body was set on fire in Yonkers (Westchester County), it had been transported there, so the homicide investigation was handed over to the New York police and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office.
No arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified. Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) and for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). They can also be reached via crimestoppers.nypdonline.org or by texting 274637 (CRIMES) followed by TIP577. All communications are strictly confidential.
In a similar case, human bones were found under the famous Brooklyn Bridge in New York this week.