DEATH CORNER
Qns. man nabbed in jealous butchery of wife
POLICE ARRESTED a man after he stabbed his 46-year-old wife to death — nearly decapitating her in front of witnesses on a Queens streetcorner early Monday, police said.
Prem Rampersaud, 50, surprised his wife, Rajwantie Baldeo, who had just left work, at the corner of 103rd Ave. and 124th St. in Richmond Hill about 12:15 a.m. — confronting her about a man she had met online, authorities said.
Rampersaud, of Jamaica, Queens, slapped Baldeo across the face and choked her, before pulling out a long kitchen knife and stabbing her in the chest, shoulder and both hands, police said.
He then began cutting at his wife’s neck, police sources said.
Two witnesses who were passing by told police they tried to stop Rampersaud, but that he didn’t even acknowledge them.
Rampersaud, kneeling on one knee, kept on sawing, sources said. The witnesses told cops they could hear the blade scraping bone.
Reached by phone, the victim’s daughter told the Daily News her father was a monster who often made ominous threats. “My dad was a very bad person. My mom didn’t deserve to die like that,” said Shalini Ronaldo Ramjiawan, 30. “He would say things. He always threatened he would kill mom.”
Shortly before police and paramedics arrived, Rampersaud dropped the knife and walked away. He was taken into custody by cops a few blocks away on Liberty Ave. His wife, whose name was not immediately released, was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, but could not be saved.
Rampersaud was arrested and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
He told cops he became enraged after his daughter showed him a Facebook photo of Baldeo with another man.
Despite being married for three decades, the couple had lived together only for a short while. Rampersaud had given his wife $9,000 to leave Guyana and move into his Jamaica home about a year ago, police said.
Baldeo apparently kept the marriage a secret among her peers.
Co-workers at the Oasis restaurant on Liberty Ave. near 123rd St., where the slain woman worked, said she tried to avoid Rampersaud at all costs and referred to him only as her ex-husband. “All I know is she said that if her ex-husband ever comes in looking for her, to not tell him she works here,” recalled waitress Nazia Rajpaul, 25.
Such a scenario became reality this past Friday afternoon, when a drunken Rampersaud showed up asking for her.
“He showed up mad drunk,” Rajpaul said. “I wasn’t afraid, but he kept asking over and over for her.” A SUSPECT IN the slaying of a 26-year-old Connecticut man at an East Side party was indicted Monday.
Lawrence Dilione (above), 28, is out on bail, but was briefly taken before a Manhattan Criminal Court judge as prosecutors filed a certificate of “affirmative grand jury action.”
The Daily News reported Friday that Dilione, James Rackover and a third suspect, identified by sources as Max Gemma, are currently charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence — not murder.
The victim, Joseph Comunale, was in the city partying and was at Rackover’s E. 59th St. apartment. He was stabbed 15 times in the chest in the early-morning hours of Nov. 13 and was found buried in a shallow grave in Oceanport, N.J.