The suspected madman behind a deadly stabbing spree in Manhattan Monday has a long criminal history — and had just walked free from Rikers Island a month before the terrifying attacks, The Post has learned.
Ramon Rivera, 51, identified by sources as the person of interest in the bloodbath, was released from jail Oct. 17 on a time-served sentence for a spate of recent burglary and assault convictions after spending most of this year behind bars, sources said.
The release perplexed Mayor Eric Adams, who said NYPD investigators were looking into how a career criminal with a history of mental illness could walk free, despite his recent convictions.
“We are still looking over his record, but there’s a real question on why he was on the street,” he said.
Court records show Rivera was arrested again the day of his release on a grand larceny charge after prosecutors said he stole a nearly $1,500 acrylic bowl from the luxurious Jonathan Adler shop in Tribeca in December 2023.
Manhattan prosecutors pushed for bail, and a judge ordered him released on non-monetary conditions ahead of a Dec. 4 court date, records show.
Sources revealed Rivera has at least eight past arrests in New York City, a history of mental health issues and years of police run-ins crisscrossing several states.
Many details about Rivera’s record remained unclear as of Monday evening, but the broad strokes paint a portrait of a troubled, at-times violent man living outside the law for decades.
Rivera’s latest stint behind bars began Feb. 19, when NYPD officers arrested him in connection to a pattern of burglaries in Manhattan, sources said.
The burglaries went back to December 2023, when a thief smashed glass doors and windows of bodegas and smoke shops to steal thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes, vapes and lighters, according to sources.
Rivera stayed in custody in Rikers Island for months as prosecutors combined the burglary counts into a single indictment, sources said.
In May, Rivera spent several days in Bellevue Hospital’s psych ward, where authorities said he assaulted a corrections officer, the sources said.
By August, he copped a guilty plea to burglary and received a 364-day sentence, sources said. The next month, he pleaded guilty to assaulting the corrections officer, earning a 90-day term to be served concurrently with his burglary sentence, according to sources.
Rivera was ultimately released after having served three-quarters, or nine months, of his main sentence, sources said.
Rivera’s run-ins with NYPD cops also included two mental health incidents in November and December 2023, sources said.
As the NYPD eyed Rivera as a suspect in burglaries, cops in Union City, New Jersey, arrested him in January as a fugitive from justice, as well as a suspect in a theft, sources said.
Hoboken police arrested him around that time on two counts of criminal mischief, according to the sources.
Rivera also has a criminal record in several other states.
He also was arrested during 2017 in a Cleveland, Ohio, assault case, sources said. Florida authorities had arrested him several times going back to 2003 on charges ranging from domestic violence battery to procuring prostitutes to drunken driving, according to sources.
