NEW YORK — Many New Yorkers would kill for the perfect apartment. And some, it appears, would cut off a tenant's hands, stash his head under the kitchen sink and stuff his torso in a dumpster.
In a case that has raised eyebrows even among jaded New Yorkers, police said Tuesday that two men murdered a Manhattan man over the weekend and dismembered his body to take over his housing project apartment. Earlier, police charge, one of the men murdered another tenant in the same Washington Heights building, hoping to move into her unit as well.
"You don't see this kind of thing too often," a New York police spokesperson said. Housing is tight in the city, the official added, "but this is kind of ridiculous."
When it comes to finding a home--and outsmarting other would-be tenants--Manhattan is rich in legend and lore: People have been known to offer bribes, produce inflated resumes and flash bogus bank accounts, anything to impress a landlord. Big Apple tenants cook up intricate schemes to hold onto cheap, rent-controlled apartments, and some actually scan newspaper obituaries to get a head's up on units that may become vacant. It's par for the course in a rental market with a 2.6% vacancy rate.
But the story of apartments 9-G and 7-G in the Dyckman housing project--a high-rise building at the northern tip of Manhattan--is something else. The annual rent in these city-run units is typically no more than 30% of a tenant's income, and there is a waiting list of 140,851 people, said Howard Marder, a spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority.
Acting on a tip, police said, they were alerted to a "murder in progress" in apartment 9-G of the housing complex at 4 a.m. Monday. As they arrived, two human hands wrapped in plastic bags landed on the lawn in front of them. When they entered Gerry Pollard's one-bedroom apartment, police said, Bernard Perez and Rahman Williams were hurriedly trying to hide some human remains. Williams was arrested trying to flee the scene, officers added.
Police spokesman Jerry Varson said detectives found a bathtub overflowing with bloody water, a plastic bag with a human head under the sink, and a hacksaw. They later discovered a human torso and legs hidden in a dumpster several blocks away. The remains were identified as Pollard's.
Perez and Williams allegedly assaulted the tenant in an elevator on Saturday night, forced him to let them into his apartment, then killed and dismembered him, police said. Pollard, a Navy veteran, had lived quietly in his one-bedroom apartment since 1990, according to neighbors.
