SICK TWIST IN KILLING
Cops hunt man seen wearing leggings of vic found in hotel
The man police believe strangled and then caved in a 38-year-old Queens mother’s head with an iron during a vicious killing inside a SoHo hotel walked out of the room wearing his victim’s leggings, police said Friday.
Cops have surveillance footage of the man in a black hooded sweatshirt and a tan jacket wearing the light-colored leggings out of the SoHo 54 hotel on Watts St. near Sixth Ave. at around the time police believe the fatal clash occurred.
Denisse Oleas-Arancibia, who was found lifeless in the 11th-floor hotel room at about 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 8, was seen walking into the hotel wearing the leggings the day before, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
“We have video of the woman arriving at the location wearing a distinct pair of leggings and later on we have a male leaving the hotel wearing the same leggings,” Kenny said, adding that a pair of man’s blood-stained pants were found in the hotel room.
“There was blood all over the pants,” Kenny said. There were also “bits of plastic embedded in her head” from the iron, he added.
Detectives are currently tracking the person of interest through the man’s credit card purchases, Kenny said. At around the time of the killing, the man had used the card to buy a MetroCard and food.
Oleas-Arancibia was found dead in the hotel room after concerned friends and relatives made repeated requests that hotel staff check on her.
“There were several wellness check requests to the front desk during the evening [before she was found],” Kenny said. “At one point a hotel employee did go up [and] knock on the door.”
The door had a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging from the knob, but the hotel staffer stepped inside anyway, Kenny said.
“He saw the victim laying on the floor [covered by] a blanket,” the city’s head detective said. “[He] didn’t think anything of it and and went back downstairs thinking the woman was laying asleep on the floor.”
Staffers went back into the room the next morning after her son made a missing person’s report in Queens and found her dead, Kenny said.
An autopsy later revealed that Oleas-Arancibia died of strangulation and blunt force trauma. A bloody hotel room iron was found near her body.
Her death has been ruled a homicide. No arrests have been made and a motive for the killing was still unclear, police said.
Detectives suspect Oleas-Arancibia is a sex worker, although Kenny said her name has never come up in any NYPD vice investigations regarding sex workers or sex trafficking.
The mom had repeatedly visited the hotel SoHo 54 Hotel, Kenny said.
Oleas-Arancibia’s 18-year-old son, Edwin Cevallos, told the Daily News his mother was nervous and worried in the week leading up to her death.
She moved to the U.S. from Ecuador and lived with Cevallos and her young nephew in Jackson Heights. Her younger son, 13, and her parents still live in Ecuador.
“She wanted a better life because in Ecuador is a lot of bad people. It was so dangerous,” Cevallos said through tears. “She gave us the life that we always wanted.”
Cevallos said his mother went to work in Manhattan every afternoon, but admitted he didn’t know what she did for a living or what brought her to the hotel.
“She was always working for us to give us the best life in this country,” he said. “She always had money to cover anything in the house. She didn’t owe no money to anybody.”