A man was found dead with pedophilia allegations scrawled across his body at an apartment building in Staten Island on Monday, according to the New York Police Department.
A neighbour discovered the body of Robert Raynor, 80, in the hallway outside his first-floor apartment on Monday morning, according to reports.
The man appeared to have been beaten around the head and his arms were extended as though he’d been dragged, a neighbour told the New York Post. The victim was nearly naked except for a pair of pants that were down below his waist, and someone had written several messages on his body, according to the neighbour and police.
“I touch little girls” was written across his chest in black ink, the NYPD said. “I take dolls in my room for girls age 1-5” was written on his stomach and “I touch” was written on his foot.
Police sources, the man’s neighbour, and his family have all confirmed his identity to the Post and NBC New York.
A medical examiner deemed the case to be a homicide on Wednesday, with the cause of death listed as blunt-force trauma to the head and torso.
Raynor’s upstairs neighbour, Isaac Williams, told the Post that he heard a ruckus coming from the victim’s apartment in the early hours of Monday morning.
“It was loud banging, like ‘boom, boom, boom.’ Like people were wrestling or someone was throwing somebody around,” Williams told the paper.
Williams says he discovered the body in the hallway later that morning while heading out to buy cigarettes.
He added that Raynor seemed extremely frail and rarely ventured out.
“He could barely walk. He could barely lift his arms up,” Williams said. “When he’d go to the store to buy beer, he had to put a backpack on for two little cans because he couldn’t carry them. That’s how pitiful his state was. The man looked like he was 110.”
Raynor reportedly lived with his nurse, 28-year-old Renee Ayarde, and her two young daughters.
Ayarde was arrested Wednesday for allegedly assaulting her three-year-old daughter, according to court records obtained by the New York Daily News. A passerby called 911 to report that she allegedly dragged the girl down the street and threw water in her face on Monday afternoon, hours after Raynor was found dead.
Authorities have not identified her as a suspect in Raynor’s death, nor have they ruled her out.
Raynor reportedly had 24 arrests on his criminal record, including three assault cases and a drug possession charge from the late 1980s and 1990s. The remaining charges were minor and the details are sealed, local station MEAWW reports.
His name does not appear in the U.S. national sex offender registry or in New York’s state registry.
Ayarde was previously arrested in March after police stopped her in a car with the wrong licence plate and a missing window, MEAWW reports. She was ultimately charged with gun possession, driving without a licence and resisting arrest.
Raynor’s daughter, Carolyn Whetstone, told the Daily News that she was shocked and outraged by the message written on her father’s body.
“He would not touch a child. He would not violate anyone,” Whetstone told the paper. She added that he was a cancer survivor with arthritic knees, “so he didn’t have the physical ability to do that.”
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