Slay plan got snowed under
Cops eye kidnap gang’s detour
THE KILLERS OF a Brooklyn man whose charred corpse was found in a Long Island trash bin likely intended to dump the body farther from the city but got spooked by a brewing snowstorm, police sources said Wednesday.
Detectives looking for a break in last week’s chilling murder of Menachem Stark, 39, focused on the white van used in his Jan. 2 kidnapping outside his Brooklyn office. New surveillance video shows the van circling the Great Neck area where Stark’s body was found Friday, cop sources said.
“They were zigzagging. You can see them going back and forth in the same area . . . The belief is they wanted to drive way out onto (Long) Island to get rid of the body. Instead, because of the snow, they wound up in Great Neck,” said a police source.
Cops also released video of a hooded figure leaving and returning to the van on the day Stark was abducted.
Satmar community leader Isaac Abraham said Stark’s family told him the van had been on the street for two or three weeks. “Nobody paid attention, Abraham said. “It’s a pretty safe neighborhood.”
On Wednesday, Stark’s family doubled the $25,000 reward for information in the case. The NYPD also kicked in $22,000 .
Police are still combing through Stark’s business dealings and talking to his real estate partner, Israel Perlmutter.
The men are named in a federal lawsuit the FDIC filed in Illinois against Broadway Bank, alleging it loaned the men $7.7 million despite their dodgy credit. In another financial matter, a bank Wednesday asked a judge to force Stark’s attorney to turn over an accounting of about $2 million tied to a loft building in foreclosure.