The naked body of a New York female escort was found stuffed inside a 55-gallon barrel dumped on a New Jersey Street after it was dragged out of a luxurious Wall Street building, according to police. The victim was later identified as Nicole Flanagan, 42, after police ran her fingerprints through their system and linked her to a previous arrest related to prostitution, the New York Post reported.
The shocking discovery was made by the residents of Ridgefield Park on the morning of August 13 after they spotted a large plastic container in the street at Hobart Street and Teaneck Road and noticed a foul smell, according to New Jersey police and NYPD sources.
Chilling Murder
According to police, Flanagan's naked body was dumped in the barrel sometime in the middle of the night. However, she had died long before that. In fact, the entire event from the time Flanagan went inside the building to her being dumped was caught on surveillance camera.
Footage from surveillance camera from downtown Manhattan shows a person carting a plastic barrel from 95 Wall Street. He then loads it into a U-Haul van around 10:45 pm on August 12. Prior to that, the surveillance footage also captured Flanagan entering the luxury building the same night with a man. The man has since been identified as a member of the notorious Queen's Snow Gang, according to sources.
According to police, a security guard working at the 95 Wall Street building on Thursday night even questioned the man when he entered the building with the drum. The man said he was moving and later was seen rolling it out on a luggage rack.
Manhunt On
The 22-story Wall Street building is a high-end apartment building in the heart of the Financial District and has 507 units, with some rented out through Airbnb, according to online reviews. Although Flanagan's body was stinking when it was discovered, a Bergen County medical examiner found no signs of injury on the body. He has now ordered a toxicology report, according to sources.
Police is still clueless how and under what circumstances Flanagan died. Officers have since been trying to find out from neighbors if they had seen or heard anything suspicious. A building resident said police knocked down his neighbors door at about 11 am, which he said has been occupied by two men in their mid-20s.
"The police are still up there and they're looking for the two guys," the resident, who wished to remain anonymous, told the NY Post from outside the building.
"I know them. I see them all the time," he said of the two men.
The neighbor said he heard the duo inside their apartment at about 11 pm on Wednesday but by the time police arrived Thursday morning they had fled. "The police asked me if I smelled anything funny," the man said.
A mother of three, Flanagan had lived in Greenwich, CT and in the Fordham section of the Bronx, a family member of the victim told Daily Voice.
Bergen County Prosecutor's Chief of Detectives Jason Love said Thursday that his detectives are "actively investigating and do not have anything further to release at this time."
