A man was arrested and charged with allegedly hiding a skeletal body in his apartment under piled-up junk on a Brooklyn couch last week, cops and prosecutors said.
Jose Rivera, 53, was busted Friday and charged with concealment of a human corpse in connection to the disturbing Thursday morning discovery inside the building on Union Street near Utica Avenue in Crown Heights, police said.
The man’s body had withered away to only bones by the time a cleaning crew found it by chance buried under clothes and other debris, including picture frames, according to prosecutors and law enforcement sources. He reported the sickening find to the police.
Rivera initially did not want to let the cleaning crew inside, despite neighbors’ complaints of a foul odor, according to the sources and a criminal complaint.
The man’s identity remained unknown Wednesday, and his body is so decomposed that the city medical examiner’s office has not yet been able to determine how he died, the complaint said.
The building where the corpse was found houses mentally ill and disabled residents, according to sources.
Rivera pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance during his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court Sunday, records show.
He has four previous arrests, the most recent in 2018 for criminal possession of a weapon – a knife – in Manhattan, cops said.
