The man suspected of beating and strangling a Queens mom inside a Soho hotel was caught in surveillance footage fleeing the gory scene in the woman’s “distinctive” leggings, according to police.
A pair of blood-splattered men’s pants were found alongside Denisse Oleas-Arancibia’s body, which was discovered by a maid on the floor of a room at SoHo 54 Hotel in Lower Manhattan at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 8.
Oleas-Arancibia was lying beneath a blanket and next to a broken iron.
The 38-year-old mother of two had checked into the hotel at 2:14 p.m. the day before, police said.
“We have video of the woman arriving at the location, wearing a distinct pair of leggings and later on we have a male leaving the hotel wearing the same leggings and we also have a pair of male pants in the hotel room. There was blood all over the pants,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Thursday.
When asked by The Post what made the leggings so distinctive, Kenny simply said: “It’s a guy wearing women’s leggings.”
Several wellness calls were made to the front desk throughout the evening for Oleas-Arancibia, who law enforcement sources previously told The Post may have been at the hotel working as a prostitute.
One employee did walk into the room, despite a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle, and but quickly left after seeing Oleas-Arancibia covered by a blanket on the floor.
“Didn’t think anything of it and went back downstairs thinking that the woman was lying asleep on the floor,” Kenny said.
Her body was only discovered the following morning after additional wellness calls were made and her 18-year-old son filed a missing person’s request in Jackson Heights.
A cause of death has not been determined, but, after finding bits of plastic embedded in Oleas-Arancibia’s head, investigators believe the bloody iron was “one of the methods that was used to kill her.”
The NYC medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, with her cause of death being compression of the neck and blunt head trauma.
Although investigators have not identified the man in the leggings, they have used “extensive, extensive video” to track down a person of interest, who they are following through credit card transactions in the subway system.
The person of interest has been using his own credit cards to buy meals and MetroCards, not Oleas-Arancibia’s, according to Kenny.
Whether Oleas-Arancibia was a sex worker is also not clear — she hasn’t appeared in any NYPD vice-related investigations, but police are unsure what her profession may have been, according to Kenny.
Oleas-Arancibia — who has no arrest history — stayed for several nights each month at the SoHo 54 Hotel going back about a year, sources said.
She is also believed to have been working for a man in Manhattan who she communicated with on WhatsApp.
“She was always working for us to give us the best life in this country. She always had money to cover anything in the house,” her son, Edwin Cevallos, said last week. “She didn’t owe no money to anybody.”
According to the teen, Oleas-Arancibia appeared nervous in the days leading up to her death.
“In the week (before) she was like, sad,” Cevallos said. “She was so nervous and she was worried.”
Oleas-Arancibia had moved to New York from Ecuador, the outlet said. She’d been living with Cevallos and a nephew while her parents and a younger son stayed in South America.
