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PREVIOUS UPDATE: An escort from Connecticut whose body was found stuffed into a barrel on a quiet Bergen County street reportedly died in a luxury Manhattan high-rise, then was rolled out the door on a luggage rack and driven off in a rental van.
The victim, whose naked body was found in a 55-gallon drum just off Teaneck Road in Ridgefield Park last Friday morning, was identified as Nicole Flanagan, 42, by a family member who spoke to Daily Voice on condition of anonymity.
A mother of three, Flanagan had lived in Greenwich, CT and in the Fordham section of the Bronx, the family member said. She most recently lived in Corona, Queens, authorities said.
"The medical examiner's office has not yet determined a cause of death," Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said early Friday evening while confirming Flanagan's identity. "This remains an active investigation."
The prosecutor didn't say whether or not detectives had any suspects.
The results from drug tracing will be critical in determining whether authorities have murder, manslaughter or a lesser offense possibly involving the disposal of human remains on their hands.
Security cameras captured images of Flanagan entering an apartment building in Manhattan’s Financial District with a man the night before her body was found, The New York Post reported Thursday.
The surveillance video also shows the same man later rolling the barrel with Flanagan’s body in it out of the Wall Street building on a luggage rack before it was loaded into a U-Haul van, according to the report.
Police sources identified the man in the videos 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....
The New York Post, quoting law enforcement sources, reported Thursday that Flanagan worked as an escort and was identified through fingerprints. She'd been arrested on prostitution and drug charges, among other offenses, dating back to the late 2000s, records show.
She apparently listed the 22nd-floor apartment on Wall Street as a residence, prompting detectives to obtain a search warrant for what neighbors said was a raid of the unit on Thursday.
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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