A New York mother was murdered in her own home, dragged half a mile inside a duffel bag and dumped on a sidewalk — before the killer texted her husband a chilling warning from her phone, according to police.
The body of 51-year-old mom-of-two Orsolya Gaal was discovered inside the blood-soaked hockey bag by a man walking his dogs in Queens around 8 AM Saturday morning.
Following the trail of blood led police to her $2million home in upscale Forrest Hills, where they believe she was murdered in the basement.
Surveillance footage shows the suspect dragging the bag out of the house, before it was eventually dumped on a grass verge near the intersection of Metropolitan Avenue and Jackie Robinson Parkway.
Investigators told PIX11 that the suspect used the victim’s phone to text her husband: “Your wife sent me to jail some years ago…I’m back. Don’t call the police or I will kill your family.”
Her husband Howard Klein was in Oregon with their older son, 17, visiting colleges at the time of the attack, according to a since-deleted tweet he posted, per the New York Post.
The couple’s youngest son, aged 13, was at home when a team of 30 police officers descended on it Saturday morning; he was taken away in handcuffs and questioned, but later released without charge.
Police sources told PIX11 that Gaal had told the boy she was going to a show on Friday night, but met up with a man she knew instead; investigators believe this man is the culprit.
After learning what happened, Klein immediately made arrangements to fly back; contacted by the New York Post, he said he was “in the middle of a terrible experience.”
“[My son] Leo is safe. Thank God [my son] is safe,” he told the outlet.
“There are concerns about our safety,” Klein — a founding partner at technology metals investment advisors RK Equity — added. “Our lives are at risk.”
Investigators say Gaal was murdered some time between 11 PM Friday night, when she returned to the house, and 4:30 AM, when the suspect was seen dragging the bag down the street.
Police sources told NBC News she was stabbed 58 times.
The man who made the gristly discovery, 51-year-old Glenn Van Nostrand, told the Post he thought the wheeled Bauer hockey duffel bag had simply been discarded — until his two Rhodesian ridgebacks became agitated.
“They are scent hounds,” he said. “They see the world through their noses.”
He decided to look inside and saw a foot, then a hip, but still did not realize what he had found.
“But to me it looked a mannequin,” he said. “It didn’t look very fleshy. It was more like a crash test dummy. I thought it was maybe some equipment being used for something. I didn’t think anything of it.”
Looking closer, he saw black, ankle-length jeans, a belt and a woman’s waist… and then the blood. He realized it was a woman’s body, curled up in a fetal position.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ and called police at 8:05 a.m. and said there’s a body in this bag,” he said.
After police arrived and he gave his report, Van Nostrand said he tried to take his dogs home, but they kept pulling him to a spot 100 yards from where the bag was found — where a patch of fresh blood was then discovered.
“They kept pulling me,” he said. “Some of the cops followed me and the dogs to it.”
The trail of blood would eventually lead police all the way back to the scene of the murder.
“It’s shocking,” Van Nostrand said. “My personal feeling is a broken heart for whoever this is. My heart was in my throat the entire time.”
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