Grim detail in slaying tied to freed sex fiend

A 69-year-old Staten Island woman cops suspect was killed by a sex offender on the loose because of an NYPD clerical error was strangled, authorities said Thursday.

Johynita Jordan, last seen alive Jan. 18, was found dead nine days later in a vacant home on Van Duzer St. in Stapleton.

Cops were immediately suspicious of Linden Beaton, who was caught on surveillance video fighting with her blocks away, then entering the abandoned building with her but leaving alone on the day she disappeared.

But it was unclear how Jordan died until the city medical examiner announced Thursday after an autopsy and testing that she was strangled and the victim of a homicide. NYPD officials said Thursday they now expect the Staten Island district attorney to charge Beaton in Jordan’s death.

Three weeks before Jordan was discovered dead, Beaton, 32, allegedly beat a 57-year-old woman so badly she suffered bleeding on the brain.

Home health aide Beatrice Kaliku was walking to an overnight prayer meeting when she encountered Beaton about 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 5 on Bowen St. near Sobel Court Park in Clifton.

He said hello as he walked by her, then allegedly turned around and jumped her, putting her in a chokehold and repeatedly striking her in the face and dragging her toward a park, where he threw her against an iron gate before running off.

Beaton initially faced no risk of arrest — because an NYPD civilian employee mistakenly marked the assault case closed, even before the victim Kaliku could be interviewed. That employee and a police supervisor were disciplined for the error.

After reopening the case, cops ultimately arrested Beaton for the attack against Kaliku on Jan. 25, charging him with assault. As of Thursday, he remained on Rikers Island, unable to pay his $500,000 bail.

Two days after his arrest, cops found the body of Jordan in a vacant house about half a mile from where Kaliku was attacked. The two victims lived about a block from each other but never met.

The same day they discovered her body, cops recovered surveillance video showing a man believed to be Beaton and Jordan walking into the vacant house and Beaton walking out alone.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said Thursday there was a “sex angle” to both cases.

In a jailhouse interview last month with the Daily News, Beaton claimed he never met Jordan and worried the police were going to pin her death on him.

“S--t yeah, I’m worried,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be worried if the cops think you killed someone?”

Beaton is a registered sex offender. In 2010, he was convicted of attempted rape and sentenced to seven years in prison. He raped two women, ages 19 and 27, within half an hour of each other, police said.

“They f---ed up,” Beaton said of the NYPD’s mistake during his jailhouse talk with The News.