Robert Raynor Staten Island man, 80, found dead with the words, ‘I touch little girls,’ amongst other markings scrawled on his body. Was he murdered and by whom and why?
An 80-year-old man was found dead in a Staten Island apartment building with the words, ‘I touch little girls’ scrawled across his body according to reports.
The body of Robert Raynor was found just after 9:30 a.m. Monday inside the first-floor hallway of 256 Corson Ave. in Tompkinsville where he lived according to police.
Raynor was wearing nothing but pants, which were pulled below his waist, while his arms were above his head, as though he’d been dragged from his rear, first-floor apartment, police sources told silive.
Written on his bare chest were the words, ‘I touch little girls,’ according to police.
Sources added that ‘I take dolls in my room for girls age 1-5’ was written on his stomach, while ‘I touch’ was scrawled on his right foot.
Beaten to death?
It was not clear who wrote the message, why and if it was written before or after the 80 year old man dying.
According to upstairs neighbor, Isaac Williams, 40, the messages appeared to have been written in ‘black magic marker.’
‘I saw him lying there. I didn’t get too close. The man was just dead,’ Williams who found the body told the nydailynews. ‘What was written on his chest was just disrespectful.’
Sources said that the deceased man had cuts on his forehead, two black eyes, a broken nose, swollen cheeks, injuries to both arms, with the man’s injuries consistent to that of someone having been beaten.
‘He didn’t seem capable …’
Williams characterized the 80 year as frail, and said he had never had reason to suspect him of inappropriate behavior.
‘The man hardly ever came outside,’ said Williams. ‘He could barely walk. He could barely lift his arms up. When he’d go to the store to buy beer, he had to put a backpack on for two little cans because he couldn’t carry them. That’s how pitiful his state was. The man looked like he was 110.’
The victim kept to himself, and needed a walker to get around. He’d make trips to a nearby corner store to buy beer, a store worker said.
‘He didn’t bother nobody. He was very much disabled. He had to walk with a walker. We’d see him crawling up the stairs,’ said Monique Simon, 46, the victim’s next-door neighbor told the nydailynews.
Simon said she didn’t believe the accusations scrawled on Raynor’s chest. ‘He didn’t seem capable. Maybe someone did this to throw the case off,’ she said.
Of note, Raynor had 24 prior arrests, but his record did not suggest a history of pedophilia, sources said.
22 sealed prior arrests
His name does not appear in the state’s online registry of known sex offenders.
Of the two dozen arrests, just four were unsealed: Two assaults against a girlfriend in 1987, a third assault in 1992 and drug possession rap in 1996, sources said.
Raynor’s estranged son said he was troubled by his father’s death, despite the two men having spoken just a handful of times over the past few decades.
‘He had been flighty and not around in the early part of my life as well,’ Thayer Raynor, 53, told the nypost. ‘There’s no real relationship. I might have spoken to him twice in the last 35 years.’
‘It’s still shocking and upsetting to hear the circumstances by which he met his demise,’ the son said, while saying his father was a cancer survivor.
Both Williams and the younger Raynor said that the deceased lived with three female relatives — one approximately in her 30s and the others children — but the exact relationship was in dispute.
The NYPD’s homicide unit is investigating and the medical examiner will determine the cause of death. No suspect was announced in what some on social media described as a revenge murder.
