A 54-year-old woman accused of cleaning up the blood-splattered bedroom where her son allegedly tortured and killed his girlfriend was arraigned on murder charges Friday as more grisly details were released about the injuries the victim suffered, officials said.
Victim Princesa Encarnacion-Soto’s body was riddled with bruises from hammer strikes, deep cuts and stab wounds, and even had the bottoms of her feet cut open, prosecutors said Friday as they arraigned Naida Jorge, the mother of suspected murderer Robert Strother.
Soto was so badly brutalized that “a piece of a knuckle on her finger” was missing when the city’s Medical Examiner performed an autopsy, which detectives said took at least two days to complete as they painstakingly catalogued each injury, according to court papers.
Strother remained at large Friday, three days after Encarnacion-Soto, 21, was found dead in the stairwell of his apartment building on Grand Concourse in Fordham, officials said.
Jorge told police that she found the body on the stairs outside the apartment. She had a neighbor call police and claimed at first she didn’t know who Soto was.
But then she allowed cops to check her apartment, where they found a modern-day torture chamber that Jorge had unsuccessfully tried to clean up.
Cops found bloody clothes, sheets and bungee cords that NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said were used to tie Soto down as she was tortured.
“We believe that she was tied down to the bed, based on the blood that was on the bed,” Kenny said at a briefing at Police Headquarters Thursday. “The wounds themselves were inflicted for pain, not to kill.”
Jorge became combative and tried to get police to leave the apartment, but she was taken into custody.
“There was a smell of fresh bleach in the area. The apartment was not the tidiest, but in only certain spots was the bleach used to clean,” Kenny said.
Since her arrest Tuesday, she has either refused to talk or denied all the allegations, a police source with knowledge of the case said.
She’s charged with murder for “rendering criminal assistance” to her son, who is suspected of torturing Soto for over a week, then ultimately killing her.
The mom is also facing charges of manslaughter, hindering prosecution, tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse, officials said.
Police said Jorge was seen dropping off a black garbage bag near the building’s boiler room after the victim was discovered. Inside the bag were bloody clothes and cleaning supplies, a building worker who saw the contents told the Daily News.
“She did attempt to clean up the crime scene,” Kenny said of Jorge. “There was no blood on [the victim]. There was no blood on her as she lay on the staircase, and she was in fresh clothing that had no blood on it. So it’s a possibility that someone cleaned the body, put fresh clothes on her and threw her down a flight of stairs.”
During an arraignment proceeding in Bronx Criminal Court Friday, Judge Howard Bahr ordered Jorge held without bail, despite the protestations of her attorney, Jason Gazewood, who said that this is his client’s first arrest.
“She’s been a law-abiding citizen for the entirety of her life,” Gazewood said. “The charges themselves, the complaint does not indicate much in terms of activities on the part of Ms. Jorge.”
“There is absolutely nothing that connects Ms. Jorge to those injuries in the complaint,” he said. “[Chief Kenny] talked about the injuries the victim suffered. They seemed to be very severe and extensive. However, there is no indication [that] Ms. Jorge had anything to do with the event of actually causing harm to this person.”
If convicted, Jorge is facing 25 years to life in prison, officials said.
Incarnacion-Soto and Strother had been together for nearly three years. Then they broke up and she went to Rhode Island, where her parents live, before returning to the Bronx on July 11, and moving back in with the mother and son.
Police had said there was no reported history of domestic violence between the victim and her 26-year-old boyfriend, but officials said the bruises showed otherwise. Kenny also said the boyfriend had 22 domestic violence incidents reported against him, but none involving the victim.
“My daughter was beautiful. Beautiful,” the victim’s inconsolable mother, Jocibelle Soto, 39, told The News from her home in Rhode Island. “She was a good person, a good daughter, a good sister and a good friend.
“She was not supposed to die like that,“ she said through tears.
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