The hulking Bronx brute accused of torturing and murdering his 21-year-old girlfriend — leaving her lifeless body in a stairwell — was pictured for the first time as cops continue to hunt for him more than a week later.
Video released by the NYPD Thursday night shows the bearded Robert Strother, 27 – who is wanted in connection to the July 22 murder of Princesa Encarnacion-Soto – pounding the pavement with his hand tucked into the pocket of his red sweatpants, wearing a red baseball cap turned sideways.
Strother, described as standing about 6-foot-2 and weighing 245 pounds, was also last seen wearing a black and red sweater, and white and gray sneakers.
Police could not confirm where or when the video was taken.
Encarnacion-Soto was found unconscious and unresponsive just before 3 p.m. in the third-floor stairwell of the Fordham Heights building on Grand Concourse near East 183rd Street, where she had been staying with Strother and his mom, 54-year-old Naida Jorge, cops said at the time.
The severely battered and barely breathing 21-year-old was rushed to BronxCare Health System, where she was pronounced dead.
Cops followed a trail of blood that led into the Grand Concourse apartment where Strother is alleged to have tormented the young woman.
Encarnacion-Soto was tied up, stabbed from head to toe, and possibly beaten with a hammer before she was dumped in the stairwell, police and law enforcement sources said.
“We believe that she was tied down to the bed based on the blood that was on the bed,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said of the heinous abuse. “The wounds themselves were inflicted for pain, not to kill. There are slice marks on her thighs, slice marks on her upper arms and shoulders.”
“The ones on her legs were fresh,” the chief added. “The ones on her upper torso seemed like they were in the process of healing.”
Investigators also determined that Strother’s mother, Jorge, scrubbed the crime scene after the murder – and she was arrested on charges of murder, manslaughter, hindering prosecution, concealment of a human corpse, police said.
“She did attempt to clean up the crime scene,” Kenny said. “There was no blood on [the victim] while she laid on the staircase, and she was in fresh clothing that had no blood on her.”
Judge Harold Bahr ordered Jorge held without bail during her arraignment last Friday in Bronx Criminal Court.
“She’s alleged to have assisted her son in trying to cover up a murder scene,” indicating an attempt to avoid prosecution, Bahr noted.
Her lawyer, Jason Gazewood, argued Jorge “has been a law-abiding citizen for the entirety of her life” as he sought for her to be released on supervision with electronic monitoring.
Gazewood also argued that court filings don’t provide many details about Jorge’s alleged actions in the case, and do not connect her to the brutal injuries inflicted on the victim.
“It looks like this is a case where this is not someone who is culpable for a murder charge,” he said. “It looks more like activities post to whatever happened to this person.”
She will next appear in court on August 18.
