An arrest has been made in connection to the discovery last week of human remains inside Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens — after it was determined the body parts belonged to the same woman whose dismembered corpse was found near JFK Airport months earlier, police sources said.
The suspect’s name and charges were not immediately released.
Cops found the human remains in the refuge not far off Cross Bay Boulevard in Broad Channel, the only occupied island in Jamaica Bay, about 10:30 p.m. March 5.
FILE – The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens. (Frank Koester for New York Daily News)
Detectives quickly connected the discovery to pieces of a decomposing torso found in a garbage bag by sanitation workers picking up trash at a Queens park near JFK Airport back on Sept. 22.
Department of Sanitation workers doing roadside cleanup called police after finding the garbage bag containing a woman’s remains near 149th Ave. and Brookville Blvd. on the edge of Idlewild Park in Rosedale just before 8 a.m.
Inside the bag was a woman’s partially skeletonized decomposing torso, with the head, arms and legs missing. Police used drones to canvas the area but no other body parts were immediately found.
The garbage bag containing the body was found in some brush “about 100 feet south of the street,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters following the discovery. Sanitation workers had just thrown it into the truck’s hopper when they smelled a foul odor and alerted the police, he said.
The corpse’s head and limbs had been methodically sliced off.
After her death, “a knife was used to cut through the soft tissue, and a saw was used to cut through the bone,” Kenny said.
The victim also “had several unique and identifying tattoos,” that could provide clues to her identity, Kenny added.
Cops spent months scouring open missing persons cases for potential leads.
The tattoos included “three names and a flower,” Kennt said.
The torso, Kenny said “didn’t have any wounds or injuries,” making determining a cause of death difficult.