NEW YORK – Repeat offender and Brooklyn robbery sentence pending Lashawn Mackey, 47, entered the apartment of 74-year-old Dominican María Hernández, tied her up, strangled her, and covered her corpse with used clothing.
Mackey, a Brooklyn resident, was arrested on Sunday and denied to reporters that he was the perpetrator of the robbery and murder, asking investigators to confront his DNA.
He had served 20 years in prison for gutting a man in another heinous murder.
The heinous crime occurred on Wednesday, January 18, 2023, when the victim’s daughter, Carmen Taveras, called the police because she could not locate her mother. When the officers arrived at the scene they found the body of the Dominican who lived in the “San Timoteo” apartment complex in building 126 on West 83rd Street in Manhattan.
A statement from the Police Department (NYPD) explains that the corpse was tied up under a pile of clothes.
The daughter asked an aunt, María Terrero, who lives in the same building, to check her mother’s apartment to make sure she was okay.
The robber was the building superintendent and served 20 years in prison for gutting a man, prosecutors said in court.
He was arrested without bail on Sunday night on charges of murder, attempted murder, and robbery.
“This is a particularly brutal murder,” said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Maxine Rosenthal at Mackey’s appearance.
“She had extensive injuries, including bruises and abrasions on her face, arms, back, and lacerations in the vaginal and rectal areas,” Rosenthal said. “This was clearly a premeditated crime in which the defendant went to the basement before the assault to break into the super’s office and dismantle the security surveillance systems located there,” the prosecutor added to Judge Felicia Menin.
Mackey is a career criminal who was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2000 for a conviction for first-degree assault and served almost 20 years before his release in 2019.
The prosecutor said in court on Sunday that the victim was stabbed 15 times and left lying in the middle of a Brooklyn street with her intestines hanging out of her body.
State correction records show that Mackey was incarcerated again in October 2021 and released a month later.
He was arrested again on August 16 and charged with grand theft, robbery, and petty larceny in Brooklyn, according to his judicial record.
He pleaded guilty on December 21 and was due back in court the next month for sentencing.
Terrero told detectives that she discovered her sister’s abused corpse when she went to see her around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, police said.
The apartment had been ransacked, and an autopsy by the medical examiner’s office determined that the cause of death was strangulation.
