NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The handyman accused of killing Queens mom Orsolya Gaal during a fight over their years-long “intimate affair” was arraigned on murder and other charges late Thursday amid a report that a handwritten note on Gaal’s refrigerator may have helped lead investigators to her alleged killer.
David Bonola, 44, was arraigned on charges of murder, criminal tampering and criminal possession of a weapon late Thursday. He was then remanded without bail to the Department of Correction and reportedly put on suicide watch.
In ordering him held, the judge cited Bonola’s “destruction of evidence” and alleged confession.
“The accused lays out in detail what happened, how it happened and what he did following the events given rise to this case,” Judge Anthony Battisiti said in court, according to the New York Post.
Bonola, of South Richmond Hill, was arrested early Thursday in the death of Gaal, 51, who police said was stabbed nearly 60 times in the basement of her home in Forest Hills by Bonola as the two fought over an on-and-off affair they’d been having for two years, when he was a handyman for the family.
“A violent struggle ensues, resulting in our victim being stabbed ruthlessly and brutally in excess of 55 times, causing her demise,” NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said at a news conference Thursday.
Bonola stuffed Gaal’s body in her son’s hockey duffel bag and wheeled the bag to a location near Forest Park, where he dumped it, according to police. The bag was found by a dog walker hours later.
Gaal willingly let Bonola into her home early Saturday morning, prosecutors revealed at his arraignment.
“The defendant and victim were known to each other. The defendant went to the victim’s residence between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. … to engage her in a verbal dispute,” Assistant District Attorney Josh Garland reportedly told the court. “Because she knew him, she let him into the house. He then engaged her in a verbal dispute and unfortunately she had to ask him to leave multiple times.”
The argument escalated when Bonola “refused to leave” and ended with the “unfortunate stabbing of the victim over 50 times,” Garland said.
Bonola’s arraignment came amid a new report that a note Gaal posted on her refrigerator may have tipped off investigators to Bonola.
“GET A NEW HANDYMAN,” the handwritten note read, a senior NYPD official told the Daily Beast.
The note was found by detectives looking over the home. Bonola became a focus of the investigation early on and his home was put under surveillance, according to the report.
When investigators stopped a sanitation truck that had picked up his trash on Wednesday, they allegedly found a bloody pair of work boots and other blood-stained items. That’s in addition to bloody rags and a bloody jacket police said were found in the area of Forest Park.
The NYPD official told the Daily Beast that surveillance of Bonola’s home continued and that at one point he “engaged the detectives in conversation, saying he had been seeing them around, and asking if they were looking for him.”
The detectives said they were indeed looking to talk with him, and when he said he’d been busy with work, the detective reportedly asked, “How about now?”
Bonola voluntarily went to the 112th precinct stationhouse and eventually made a full statement about his relationship with Gaal, according to the report. He said he confronted her early Saturday about text messages she allegedly exchanged with another man, leading to the argument.
Police believe Gaal may have led Bonola to the basement of her home so they wouldn’t wake her 13-year-old son, who was upstairs. Her husband and 17-year-old son were on the West Coast looking at colleges at the time.
Bonola allegedly confessed that he grabbed a knife from the house and stabbed her, wheeling her body from the house in a duffel bag so her family wouldn’t discover it.
Detectives came across the note on the fridge as they were investigating at the home.
Despite previous reports, there's no indication that Bonola—who came to the U.S. 21 years ago from Mexico and has no known prior arrests—ever lived at the home during the time he was a handyman there, police said Thursday.
Police confirmed earlier reports that a threatening message was sent from Gaal’s cellphone to her husband saying a “person from a crime in the past was back again” and that the family was in danger.
Police believe Bonola sent the threatening message and that there was no crime in the past connected to the killing of Gaal. They don’t believe the rest of the family was ever in any danger.
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