Relatives of kidnapped Brooklyn landlord Menachem Stark, whose scorched corpse was found in a dumpster over the weekend, defended him as a pillar of the community Sunday and were unable to explain his grisly death at the hands of a “devil.”
“We’re still in shock. Nobody can come to terms with it,” a brother, Yaakov Stark, told the Daily News on Sunday. “I spoke to my brother the day he disappeared. . . . He looked good. He looked OK.”
Politicians joined family members in slamming negative rumors about Stark that have proliferated in the wake of his death.
They condemned the front page of a down-market New York tabloid newspaper Sunday, which carried the headline, “Who Didn’t Want Him Dead?”
Some city officials demanded a public apology for the paper’s insensitive coverage.
“His children did not want him dead,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said at a news conference. “Residents of this city did not want him dead. We are clear that is wrong.”
Relatives attributed the comments to an envious few, insisting that Stark, an ultra-Orthodox Jew of the Satmar sect, was beloved in his tight-knit Williamsburg community.
“He was a good man, and he helped everyone,” said the slain man’s brother. “You know how people are. They’re looking for gossip. . . . People are jealous because he was successful.”
It remains a mystery why Stark was kidnapped off a snowy Brooklyn street Thursday, suffocated or choked to death and burned.
“Our investigation is so broad right now. We haven’t narrowed it down to any one thing,” a police official said Sunday.
But Stark’s chilling end has fueled all manner of speculation.
Discovered outside a Long Island gas station Saturday, Stark, 39, was scorched on both hands and his torso and suffered hemorrhaging to his head and neck, a police source told The News.
Security video from a store near Stark’s office shows his abductors parked at the spot outside his Rutledge St. office for 20 minutes before the kidnapping, the manager of the store said.
Stark was inches from his car when the attack came and fought his assailants for four minutes.
“It looked like someone (shot him with a Taser) because he suddenly buckled down,” the manager said, adding that police viewed the video Thursday and then returned Sunday to take it away.
Detectives are looking into the possibility that the married father of eight was having an affair, a separate source who spoke with investigators told The News.
But some relatives believe Stark was the victim of a mob hit, or even a hate crime by outsiders.
“The attacker is not from the Jewish community,” Moses Strulowitz, 31, a brother-in-law, asserted. “We don’t hurt each other. . . . It was a hit job. It looked like a Mafia job or either anti-Semitic.”
Zalman Kaufman, another brother-in-law, is convinced the slaying was a stickup gone wrong, he told The News.
“This was not professional,” said Kaufman, 30. “A professional guy doesn’t throw him into a public dumpster.”
People have told police Stark lent money at high interest rates, a cop source said.
Public records show Stark and a business partner were sued for defaulting on tens of millions of dollars in loans, and cops are probing their deals in case the deed was debt-related.
Their real estate company filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
But a second source questioned that line of thought.
“If they wanted the money, you would think they would go all out to get it, not kill him right away.”
The slain man’s friends and relatives attributed his debts to the 2008 economic collapse.
Some tenants have called Stark a slumlord. He owed tens of thousands of dollars in penalties for violations at his buildings when he died and even had a property vacated by the city in 2009.
Anna Franklin, 31, a former tenant at 315 Seigel St., said Stark was “shady” and wouldn’t talk to her because she is a woman.
“He would just hang up and wouldn’t take the call. We had a ceiling leak. He wouldn’t fix it.”
But Andres Escalante, 27, a 41 Kosciuszko St. tenant, disagreed.
“I’ve been in this apartment for five months and I’ve never had a problem,” he said. “Whatever I needed to get done, he got done.”
Stark was charged with forcible touching in 2011 when undercover cops arrested him on the subway in Midtown, accusing him of rubbing against a woman.
But the alleged victim said Stark was innocent and refused to sign a supporting affidavit, his lawyers told The News. Manhattan prosecutors later dropped the charge, and Stark filed to sue the city, lawyers George and Michael Farkas said. He settled the case for a payout in 2012, they added.
Stark may have known he was in danger, a family friend said.
“He told his wife he felt someone was watching him. It made him nervous,” the pal said. “He had partnerships with so many different people, not all the buildings belonged to him.”
Strulowitz said the family is confident the murderers will pay.
“This is the devil’s work,” he said. “If you were chosen for this despicable act, God will punish you sooner or later.”
With Chelsia Rose Marcius, Tina Moore, Rocco Parascandola and Oren Yaniv
