Corpse’s tattoo clue
Mystery of dismembered body in Red Hook Channel
Police hoping to identify the woman whose dismembered body was found floating in Red Hook Channel off Brooklyn on Tuesday have released a photo of a mysterious tattoo on the corpse.
The ink — a curly script surrounded by several stars — appears to be a name written in Sanskrit, according to several people who know the language.
From left to right, the characters correspond to the sounds “li” “li” “an” “na,” according to April Dechagas, a teacher at Jivamukti Yoga School who can read Sanskrit.
The tattoo (pictured) has led several Sanskrit readers to speculate it was a transliteration of the female name Liliana.
“This is definitely Sanskrit, although it is not grammatically correct at all. I think it is trying to say ‘Liliana,’ ” Dechagas said.
“This is not how it should be written at all, but from what I can make out, that is what it says,” she said.
G. Padmanabhan, spokesman for the New York Ganesh Temple in Queens, added, “It could also be a name, Lili — and ‘ana’ means brother in some contexts.”
Annapurna Potluri Schreiber, who works at Columbia University’s South Asia Institute, explained, “‘Ana’ means ‘older brother,’ but it’s also used for close friends.”
The experts agreed the tattoo has inconsistencies suggesting that neither the victim nor the artist actually understood Sanskrit.
Passers-by discovered the corpse — which police say was only a pelvis and thighs — Tuesday morning floating off of Pier 44 near Conover and Reed streets.
“The woman wasn’t just murdered — she was butchered,” speculated the man who made the gruesome discovery and asked that his identity be withheld.
The body is not badly decomposed, leading police to believe it was dismembered before being thrown into the water, rather than breaking apart as a result of decomposition, sources said.
NYPD divers spent Wednesday searching for clues off the pier, but were still coming up empty-handed by the afternoon.
It was not clear if the body was deposited in the water there or floated to that location from elsewhere, the divers said. Additional reporting by Tina Moore