A quiet, upscale neighborhood in Queens was horrified Saturday morning when the body of a 51-year-old mother was found in a duffle bag with a blood trail leading back to her home.
Orsolya Gaal, 51, was found inside the duffle bag a little after 8 a.m. near a Forest Hills walking path Saturday morning, and police said a trail of blood led back to her home on Juno Street. Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that an autopsy of Gaal’s body revealed she was stabbed nearly 60 times in her torso, left arm, and neck, which punctured her carotid artery and trachea. The sources also told the outlet that Gaal had knife wounds on the palms of her hands and on the insides of her fingers.
Police are trying to recreate Gaal’s final hours. PIX11 reported that Gaal apparently told her 13-year-old son that she was going out to see a show but ended up meeting up with a man, whom police sources say killed her in the basement of her own home and put her in the duffle bag before moving her body down the street. Surveillance footage appears to show a person dragging a large dark duffle bag hours before Gaal’s body was discovered.
“It’s a mystery,” a New York Police Department official told the Post. “Now it’s a question of piecing together everything she did that night.”
That same source told the outlet that Gaal started her night out with friends and that police were “pulling video and receipts from those places.”
“She knew the people she was out with,’’ the source said. “We’re talking to them. We also have to figure out, did she meet some mysterious stranger along the way?”
She reportedly came home just before midnight – and then the man who killed her arrived. Detectives told the outlet they have found no signs of a break-in, believing at this time that Gaal knew her attacker.
Gaal’s husband, Howard Klein, and their 17-year-old son were reportedly in Portland, Oregon, touring colleges at the time she was murdered. A source told PIX11 that Klein allegedly received a threatening text message after his wife was murdered that said, “Your whole family is next.”
Klein told the Post on Saturday that he and his son were on their way home from touring colleges and repeatedly told the outlet their lives “are at stake.”
“There are concerns about our safety,” he told the outlet. “Our lives are at risk.”
Neighbors told the Post they saw the couple’s younger son, who is only 13, getting taken away in handcuffs by police on Saturday. Police sources told the Post that the teen was questioned at the local precinct and returned home. Authorities did not say who took custody of the teenager.
“Something is not adding up. But there are cameras along the way,” a police source told the outlet. “They’ll tell if it’s an adult or a child.”