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any clues what happened?, I take it she was married to a Rodriguez? -
NEW YORK (July 11) - A female body was found stuffed inside an air-conditioning duct Saturday in a Manhattan skyscraper where a cleaning woman disappeared four days ago.
Police discovered the corpse, hidden in a utility room duct, just before 9 a.m. as they began searching the 26-story tower for 46-year-old Eridania Rodriguez.
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Eridania Rodriguez: The cleaning woman, 46, was last seen Tuesday night working in a skyscraper near the World Trade Center reconstruction site in New York. Authorities found a body stuffed in an air conditioning vent in the building Saturday morning.
The remains had not been officially identified as of late Saturday, but police spokesman Paul Browne said investigators presumed the body was that of Rodriguez, who had been missing since Tuesday night.
"I already knew she wasn't alive. I knew she wasn't coming back," her heartbroken brother Victor Martinez told the New York Post.
A medical examiner was on the scene trying to confirm the find and determine how the woman died. Authorities believe she was murdered but haven't identified a suspect. They have questioned some people who work in the building.
"We just want answers," Martinez, told WNYW-TV.
The body was recovered from the duct late Saturday.
For days, workers at 2 Rector Street wondered how a missing persons case like this was possible in their building.
Like most office towers in the financial district, this one, a few hundred feet from the World Trade Center reconstruction site, got enhanced security after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Cameras cover every exit. Guards staff the lobby 24 hours a day. Visitors are photographed before they are allowed in. The streets outside are patrolled by a high concentration of police officers. Nearly every block in lower Manhattan is covered by security video.
Those cameras recorded Rodriguez when she turned up for work at 5 p.m. Tuesday and again as she moved around the building, but they never showed her leave.
Her last appearance on tape was about 7 p.m. in an elevator lobby. Her cleaning cart was discovered abandoned on the eighth floor. Her street clothing was still in her locker. She missed a dinner date with co-workers at 9 p.m.
Police first swept through the building early Wednesday morning after Rodriguez' family raised the alarm, but investigators found nothing. They came back in the following days, sure that Rodriguez couldn't have walked out alive. A sour odor tipped off police to the location of the body.
Workers at the skyscraper were allowed to return to their offices days ago when the original searches were fruitless.
The building has more than 400,000 square feet of interior space and plenty of places to hide, including some floors that were empty, and a subbasement partially flooded with water.
Investigators traveled Friday to a landfill in Pennsylvania where the building's garbage is taken, on the chance that someone had taken Rodriguez' body out with the trash.
Rodriguez was born in the Dominican Republic but lived in Manhattan for decades. She was married with several children.
Tenants of the building include noted ground zero architect Daniel Libeskind, law firms and another architectural firm.Comment
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Cops found the decomposing body of a missing Manhattan cleaning woman Saturday - her head wrapped like a mummy in heavy-duty yellow and black construction tape, police sources said.
Eridania Rodriguez's hands and legs had also been bound with tape before she was shoved into an eye-level air-conditioning duct on the 12th floor of 2 Rector St., where she worked, sources said.
Cops made the gruesome find on the fourth day of their desperate search for the mother of three.
They had spent Friday searching for Rodriguez - who was last seen on Tuesday evening at the building - in a Pennsylvania landfill.
Yesterday, an officer on a floor undergoing renovations at the building detected a foul odor and saw missing ceiling tiles.
Dozens of officers and search dogs arrived early yesterday to comb the 26-story building in search of the 46-year-old.
After the grisly discovery, police went to Rodriguez's Inwood home to notify her family.
"I'm devastated," her daughter, Yaniris Figueroa, 17, told the Daily News. "I'm still in a state of shock. I really don't feel well. How could someone have done this to my mom?"
Her brother, Victor Martinez, 35, said this was supposed to have been his sister's last week on the job because she was scared to work in the building.
"She didn't want to work there anymore because of the unsafe working conditions," he said. "She just wanted to leave."
Martinez, a champion bodybuilder from the Dominican Republic, said an employee at the building recently exposed himself to his sister.
The perv was transferred, but she was still spooked.
"She said she was afraid of being there. She said she was afraid of being alone," he said.
Rodriguez was caught on surveillance video around 7 p.m. wearing her uniform blue jumpsuit and pushing a cleaning cart into an elevator inside the building, sources said.
She spoke with her daughter by telephone around the same time, but did not show up for dinner with co-workers at 9 p.m. and was never seen leaving the building.
The woman's clothes and purse were found in her locker and her cleaning cart was abandoned on the eighth floor, causing cops to fear the worst.
Police questioned a building elevator operator - Joseph Pabon - on Thursday, but he was released after he asked for a lawyer.
Pabon, 26, cried when detectives asked him questions about the missing woman, sources said. He had visible scratches on his hands and arms, and couldn't explain why he left the building early Tuesday night, sources said.
Cops were outside Pabon's Staten Island home yesterday and pursued him when he drove away.
Pabon has prior arrests, including an April collar for allegedly punching and choking his girlfriend and smashing her windshield with a bowling ball
Read more: Body of Eridania Rodriguez, missing cleaning woman, found bound in tape and stuffed in air ductComment
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Tests are expected back Tuesday to determine if a mother of three was sexually assaulted before she was murdered and her body shoved into a Manhattan office air shaft, police sources said.
The body of Eridania Rodriguez, 46, was discovered Saturday. She had been hogtied, her face wrapped in tape and shoved into an air conditioning duct at the Rector St. office building where she worked as a cleaner.
A gold crucifix had been stuck in the tape across her mouth, and she was asphyxiated.
"I just can't talk about this. It hurts too much," said Denise Figueroa, one of the victim's daughters.
As police reviewed forensic evidence, an attorney for Joseph Pabon, a suspect questioned extensively by cops and let go, said his client mourned for the victim.
"At this point, we would like to tell the family of the deceased that we are sorry for their loss. We completely deny all of these allegations," said attorney Mario Gallucci.
Read more: Murdered cleaning woman may have been sexually assaulted; tests results due TuesdayComment
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So it was probably some immigrant worker there then, RIP very sadComment
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Its definitely someone who knew her and was also angry with her. This doesn't sound like a rape gone bad, its sounds like he killed her out of anger.Comment
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This has been in the papers for a few days. The police have literally been following this guy around EVERYWHERE he goes, sometimes 5 police cars at a time. There is a picture in the NY Post today that shows the suspect and his girlfriend walking through a parking lot and a plain clothes cop walking about 20 feet behind them. Obviously the cops are not hiding that fact that they are following him and hoping he cracks under the pressure.
TALE OF THE THUG'S TAIL - New York PostComment
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"When the girlfriend went to Pabon's father for help to get his son back, he told her if she was sexually mature, it might help," nice familyComment
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