He scared family for years, should’ve been locked up years ago, says sister

The man accused of strangling and beating a woman to death in a SoHo hotel is a recidivist who believed he could speak to God and should have been locked up years ago, his half-sister told the Daily News on Tuesday.

“It sounds mean, but I hope he gets what essentially he deserves,” said the 30-year-old sibling of murder suspect Raad Almansoori. “If they let him free again, who knows what else could happen.”

Almansoori was arrested in Arizona on Sunday for stabbing two women over the weekend and is suspected in the murder of Denisse Oleas-Arancibia, whose body was found strangled and bludgeoned at the SoHo 54 hotel on Watts St. near Sixth Ave on Feb. 8, cops said.

Almansoori called his half-sister two days after the grim discovery to tell her that he had flown from New York and was in Arizona for the first time in years. The call filled her with foreboding, she said.

“I’m scared. I was scared last week when he told me he was back in Phoenix,” said the woman, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her children’s identities. “The fact that he left New York so quickly made me think he did something out there, too.”

Diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia at a young age, Almansoori’s antisocial tendencies left him estranged from his family and in constant conflict with the law, according to his sister, who said she’s the only member of her family who still talks to him.

“He doesn’t reach out to any of them because he knows they won’t reach back out to him,” she said.

Growing up with his mother, two sisters and two brothers in Texas, the sibling described Almansoori as a child misogynist who expected to be pampered by the women of the family and lashed out when he didn’t get his way. “It was his way or no way at all. He had a very macho way of thinking. In the household when we were younger, we had to serve him because he was the man of the house.”

He exhibited delusions throughout childhood, including hearing voices that compelled him to kill his pet snakes, according to his sister.

“When he didn’t like them, he put them in the middle of the street because God told him to kill them,” she said of the pets. “For a long time, he would be out in the backyard speaking to God.”

And paranoia over phantom eavesdroppers once compelled him to spend a dinner with family communicating only by text, Almansoori’s sister said.

“I went to dinner one time, and he would text me instead of saying things out loud because he was afraid someone was following him or overhearing his opinions and he didn’t want anyone to know what he was thinking,” she recounted. “The whole dinner was just us texting back and forth.”

Almansoori showed some promise in mathematics as a student but never succeeded academically and was sent to reform school in his late teens after threatening his mother, said his sister.

“He’s always had a hard time. He was in, like, a juvenile school, one of those reform schools to help troubled teens,” she recounted. “My mom just couldn’t help him anymore. She tried to help him, and they just took him out of their custody. He had threatened my mom, and she couldn’t live with him.”

The sister managed to persuade the reform school to release Almansoori into her care in 2016, but he only spent a few months with her at her home in Arizona and split once he turned 18, she said.

He spent the next few years drifting from group home to group home, before eventually moving in with his mother at a house she rented from his sister’s ex-husband in Phoenix around 2017.

But his violent outbursts persisted, and Almansoori ended up causing so much damage to the property that his sister’s ex kicked them out before pressing charges against his one-time brother-in-law, according to the sibling. “They got kicked out because he essentially destroyed the place,” she said. “He just broke windows whenever he would get upset with my mom. He wouldn’t physically hurt her, he would just destroy the place she was living at.”

Almansoori was arrested at least three times throughout 2017 and 2018 for offenses including marijuana possession, aggravated assault and resisting arrest, according to public records.

After each arrest, his sister knew to expect a call from her brother’s lawyer seeking money for bail and attorney fees. Hoping to spare his future victims, she always refused.

“I never do it,” the sister said. “I know how he is. I’m not going to put other people in danger. That’s crazy.”

Almansoori’s sister said her brother had a knack for using his mental illness diagnosis to game the system and would play sane while incarcerated at mental health facilities in order to secure his release.

“I feel like he knows when to manipulate the system,” she said. “He goes into these mental health facilities when he commits crimes, and he behaves himself and when he improves, they release him.”

Once on the street, Almansoori avoided further treatment and refused to take his medication, according to the sister.

“He never took his meds,” she said. “He didn’t believe in medication.”

Almansoori’s unstable lifestyle made it hard for her to track his movements, and the pair lost touch after she loaned him some money in 2021. They spoke only once the following two years when their mother died after undergoing heart surgery in 2022.

His sister learned that he had moved to Florida after Almansoori called her out of the blue in May 2023 following his arrest for allegedly kidnapping and sexually assaulting a sex worker in Orange County, Fla. The two had been drinking and when the woman tried to leave, he refused to let her go and attacked her, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a Tuesday news conference.

In September, he paid his own bail to get out of jail and stayed in Florida for several months before flying to New York on Jan. 26.

Almansoori renewed his relationship with his sister following his move to the Big Apple, where he seemed intent on turning over a new leaf and frequently FaceTimed her while out sightseeing, she said.

“He said he was going to have a fresh start in New York. He just said he wanted something different. When I spoke to him, he said he was doing all the tourist stuff. He would FaceTime me to show me where he was at. When I asked him where he was staying, what’s going on, he wouldn’t give me details about that. I figured he was at a homeless shelter or on the streets.”

Before authorities discovered the body of Oleas-Arancibia, a suspected sex worker, Almansoori was in the city for three weeks at most, his sister said.

Maricopa County police cuffed him, on Sunday in Scottsdale, where his sister and her ex-husband lived about an hour’s drive from where the stabbings occurred.

She suspects the arrest may have saved another life.

“I thought he was going after my ex,” said the sister. “I don’t know if he had some vendetta against him. He did essentially kick [Almansoori] out of his property, and he pressed charges.”