Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Life in NYC

A second suspect — who is on lifetime parole for murder — has been arrested in connection to the chilling death of an elderly woman who was found bound and gagged in her Upper West Side apartment last week, cops said Wednesday. 

Terrence Moore, 53, was picked up Tuesday and charged with murder and burglary in connection to the slaying of Maria Hernandez, 74, inside her West 83rd Street home last week.

The bust came hours after cops released a surveillance image of the suspect.

Police said Tuesday that video footage reviewed by investigators — but not publicly released — shows Moore entering the 74-year-old victim’s West 83rd Street building with the previously arrested accused killer Lashawn Mackey.

Maria Hernandez's apartment building at 126 West 83rd Street.
Maria Hernandez, 74, was killed in her apartment at 126 W. 83rd St.
Desheania Andrews/NY Post

Separate footage shows him entering an apartment in Brooklyn where Mackey, 47, had been staying, cops said. 

State correction records show that Moore was held in state prison from 1990 to 2017 on second-degree murder, first-degree robbery, weapon possession and prison contraband charges. 

He was placed on lifetime parole, the records show. 

The address Moore provided to cops is a homeless shelter in Crown Heights, just blocks from Mackey’s address. 

Lashawn Mackey, 47, was the first suspect busted in connection to the slaying.
Lashawn Mackey, 47, was the first suspect busted in connection to the slaying.
Daniel William McKnight

Mackey too has a criminal past: Records show he was sentenced to up to 23 years in prison in 2000 on a first-degree assault conviction and served nearly 20 years before his release in 2019, records show. He has maintained his innocence.

The victim in that case was stabbed 15 times and left lying in the middle of a Brooklyn street with “his intestines hanging out of his body,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Maxine Rosenthal said at Mackey’s arraignment Sunday. 

Mackey, a former super of Hernandez’s building, was ordered held without bail in connection to her murder. 

A family photo of Maria Hernandez.
Hernandez died of asphyxia, according to the city medical examiner’s office. 
Family photo

Hernandez’s badly beaten and injured body was found by her sister, Maria Terrero, when she went to check on her around 9:30 p.m. Jan. 18, according to police.

Hernandez was left lying face-down on the bedroom floor of her ransacked home, cops and police sources said. She was gagged, with a sheet and clothes strewn over her body, and her hands and feet bound. 

Cops said the apartment had been ransacked, and an autopsy by the medical examiner later determined that Hernandez died of asphyxia.

“She had extensive injuries, including bruising and abrasions to her face, her arms, her back, and lacerations to both the vaginal and rectal areas,” Rosenthal said during Mackey’s arraignment. 

“This was clearly a premeditated crime where the defendant went to the basement prior to the assault to break into the super’s office and dismantle the security surveillance systems located therein,” the ADA added to Judge Felicia Mennin.


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