NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Two suspects were arrested in Pennsylvania on Friday in connection with the brutal murder of a mother, who police believe was killed last week when she discovered the pair squatting at her late mother's apartment on Manhattan's East Side.
The U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested the pair—an 18-year-old woman from the Bronx and a 19-year-old man from Washington Heights—in York, Pennsylvania. Extradition and charges against them are pending.
Their arrest comes a day after NYPD officials said they believed two squatters had fled the city after killing Nadia Vitel, 52, last Thursday at an upscale apartment in Kips Bay.
The apartment on East 31st Street had belonged to Vitel's mother but had been vacant for three or four months following her death. Vitel returned to New York from Spain to get the apartment ready for friends who were moving in—but she found squatters had made themselves at home, police said.
"We believe that some squatters took the apartment over, and this woman came home to get this apartment set up and walked in on the squatters that were there," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters Thursday.
The two squatters beat Vitel to death, put her body in a duffel bag and stuck the bag in a front closet before they stole Vitel's Lexus and fled the city over the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, according to police.
The stolen Lexus was later involved in a crash near Lower Paxton Township, Pennsylvania, outside Harrisburg, but the suspects fled the scene.
They were ultimately arrested Friday in York, which is about 25 miles south of Harrisburg, police said.
Vitel was found dead after concerned family members contacted cops when they hadn't heard from her.
The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide by blunt force trauma to the head.
"Blunt force trauma to the head, multiple facial fractures, brain bleed, two broken ribs," Kenny said of her injuries.
A bill was filed just this week in Albany to toughen squatter laws in New York City, where squatters may receive tenancy rights after 30 days—requiring landlords to go through the courts to evict them, a process that can take years. By comparison, in the rest of New York state, squatters have to be in a home 10 years before they can claim a legal right to remain on the property.
State Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz, a Long Island Republican, recently filed a bill that would clarify the definition of "tenant" to exclude squatters. Instead squatters would be considered trespassers.
"This bill will make it so that you can call the police," Blumencranz told WCBS 880's Drive Time with Michael Wallace on Thursday. "If someone breaks into your home and stays there for 30 days, they are not afforded tenancy rights."