DEAD ON ROOF

Missing 88-yr.-old found across from her home

THE SEARCH for a missing Brooklyn grandmother came to a heartbreaking end Tuesday after her body was found across the street from her home.

Mary Joyce-Bonsignore, 88, was discovered about 11:45 a.m. on the roof of a building on Cropsey Ave. near Bay 19th St. in Bath Beach.

She disappeared July 17, sparking a wave of concern through her close-knit church parish and a series of volunteer searches.

“I’m a little numb right now,” her daughter Maire Mason, said after hearing the grim update.

Joyce-Bonsignore’s friends and neighbors were at a loss trying to figure out what led to her death.

“She accidentally went up the steps, thinking that this was her building,” said Samantha Fasanello, 24. “Once she got up there she was trapped up there. The door locked.”

Fasanello said Joyce-Bonsignore was stricken with dementia and wandered off frequently.

“We caught her so many times,” Fasanello, a neighbor, said. “It’s just scary, you know? How could no one see something like that?”

Israel Martinez, 70, the man who found Joyce-Bonsignore’s body, said he was searching for the source of maggots in his second-floor apartment.

“I opened (the door to the roof) and when I pushed it I see a person laid down on the roof,” he said.

Joyce-Bonsignore’s body bore no sign of injuries or assault, police said. Cops do not view her death as suspicious. The city medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

Scores of St. Finbar Catholic Church parishioners fanned out in groups of 10 across Bath Beach, Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights over the weekend to look for Joyce-Bonsignore.

“They were all looking right here,” said Samantha Fasanello’s father Anthony, 58, a retired tow truck driver. “Even God couldn’t help them.”

Fasanello recalled the woman he knew for at least 30 years with great fondness.

“She loved to be outside every day,” he said. “They loved to go to the library. They walked to the parks and Bobby (her husband) was always with her."

The couple was a fixture in the neighborhood.

“She was the joy of his life,” said friend Tim Haggerty. “He trusts in God that she’s already in heaven.”