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PREVIOUS STORY: A medical examiner was awaiting the results of toxicology tests to determine how a woman from Connecticut whose naked body was found stuffed into a barrel on a quiet Bergen County street a week ago died.
Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella confirmed the victim on Friday as Nicole Flanagan, 42, who was identified earlier this week by a family member who spoke to Daily Voice on condition of anonymity.
"The medical examiner's office has not yet determined a cause of death," the prosecutor said early Friday evening. "This remains an active investigation."
He didn't say whether or not detectives had any suspects.
Either way, the results from substance tracing will be critical in determining whether murder, manslaughter or a lesser offense -- possibly involving the disposal of human remains or a drug-induced death -- will be charged.
Law enforcement sources said Flanagan died in a luxury Manhattan high-rise, then was rolled out the door in a 55-gallon barrel on a luggage rack and driven off in a rental van.
Her naked body was found in container just off Teaneck Road in Ridgefield Park last Friday morning.
There were no signs of physical trauma, sources with knowledge of the investigation said.
Flanagan, who had a minor criminal history, worked as an escort, the New York Post reported. She was identified through fingerprints, it said.
A mother of three, Flanagan had lived in Greenwich, CT and in the Fordham section of the Bronx, the family member told Daily Voice earlier this week. She most recently lived in the Corona section of Queens, authorities said.
Flanagan listed a 22nd-floor apartment at 95 Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District as a residence, prompting detectives to obtain a search warrant for what neighbors said was a raid of the unit on Thursday.
They also seized security footage that captured images of Flanagan entering the building with a man the night before her body was found, according to the Post.
The surveillance video reportedly shows the same man later rolling the barrel with Flanagan’s body in it out of the building on a luggage rack before it was loaded into a U-Haul van.
Police sources identified him as a member of a Queens-based gang known as SNOW ("Showin' N***as Our Worth").
The container eventually was left alongside trash barrels on Hobart Street near the corner of Teaneck Road in Ridgefield Park.
Trash haulers ignored the barrel the next morning because it wasn't standard and emptied the other containers, a law enforcement source told Daily Voice.
Temperatures were pushing toward triple digits when the stench eventually brought a police officer who opened the barrel, saw what was inside and closed it, the source said. The area was cordoned off and the barrel was brought to the Bergen County Medical Examiner’s Office, he said. READ MORE....
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A memorial gathering was scheduled from 4 to 8 p.m. next Thursday, Aug. 26, at Leo P. Gallagher & Son Funeral Home in Greenwich, CT.
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