New York City Homicide: Half-Naked Body Of Bronx Woman Found In Trash Bin

The half-naked body of a woman in Bronx, New York, was found dumped in a garbage can Monday (April 20), with police saying she died of strangulation.

The woman was identified as Becky Crown, 38, a resident of Rustin House, a transitional housing building for the homeless in Upper West Side. Police, who were initially grappling to identify who she was, were investigating the case as a homicide, New York Daily News reported.

Police said she suffered compression in her neck and chest, resulting in her death. No arrests were made so far.

Crown’s body was discovered by a building supervisor on Park Avenue in Belmont, across from the Metro-North train tracks, at around 8:30 a.m. (EST) on Monday. The woman had a top on but there were no pants or undergarments.

“I was doing the recycling. When I lifted up the lid, that’s when I saw her body," the supervisor, Nelson Castillo said, adding that it was a terrifying sight for him. “I called the police,” he said.

Investigators examined a surveillance video in which they spotted a man passing through an open gate and making it to the building’s basement through an alleyway. The man then climbed down a few stairs and shoved Crown’s body into one of the three bins lined up in the alley. Police have also found another video showing a man with Crown.

A neighbor, Rodney Wade, 53, said Crown moved to Rustin House, run by Lantern Community Services, four years ago. Wade said they didn’t see more of Crown recently, in part because her boyfriend was banned from the building for violating its rules to leave by midnight.

“He loved the hell out of her,” Wade said. “He kept showing up, trying to get her back.”

He went on to describe Crown as a “good person to know,” adding that she was “friendly to everybody.” “It’s scary,” he said about her death.

Crown’s death unnerved the residents in Rustin House. “A lot of people come here to get away from that kind of violence, and to hear it happen to someone in the building, that’s really frightening,” a resident said on condition of anonymity.