A convicted killer was pulled from an upstate prison Thursday and charged with the cold case strangulation of a woman in a Queens hotel nearly 30 years ago, prosecutors said.
Jose Velasquez, 59, was hauled into Queens Criminal Supreme Court to face new murder charges for allegedly strangling a woman at the Turf Club Motor Inn, a now-shuttered notorious hot sheets hotel in Astoria. A new round of DNA testing led to the conviction, prosecutors say.
“For almost three decades, this female victim remained unidentified and without justice, but she was never forgotten,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “The Cold Case Unit I created when I first took office exists for this very reason: to ensure that justice is not denied by time or anonymity … Every victim matters, and we are committed to holding offenders accountable, no matter how long it takes.”
The decomposing body of the victim, believed to be a prostitute, was found under a mattress and inside the bed frame in one the motel’s 27 rooms on Jan. 12, 1998. She had a scarf tied tightly around her neck.
A judge a month later ordered the hotel on Broadway and 14th St. shut down. The motel is now a Super 8.
Velasquez, according to sources and records, has been serving a 25-year-to-life sentence in prison since 2020 for a murder that happened just 14 months after the Turf Club Motor Inn slaying.
The 1999 victim was found in a tub at the Lincoln Place Hotel on Lincoln Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, sources said. That hotel is another now-shuttered prostitution hot spot.
In the Queens case, investigators stored evidence including the victim’s underwear and scrapings and clippings of her fingernails.
The DNA was retested in May 2023 the city Medical Examiner linked the DNA under the victim’s fingernails and on her underwear to Velasquez, authorities say.
Velasquez, who used to live in Astoria, was interviewed by cops in January 2025 but denied ever having been to the Turf Club Motor Inn. He was indicted by a grand jury on Tuesday.
Velasquez was sent back to prison Thursday after his arraignment on the new charges. He is due back in court in the new case on March 6.
