Man found dead with ‘I touch little girls’ written on chest in New York

A man has been found dead with the disturbing message “I touch little girls” written on his chest in New York City.

A man has been found dead with the disturbing message “I touch little girls” written on his chest in New York City....

An 80-year-old man was found dead in a New York City apartment building with the words “I touch little girls” scrawled across his body, police and a neighbour said on Tuesday.

The body of Robert Raynor was found just after 9.30am on Monday inside the first-floor hallway of 256 Corson Avenue in the Staten Island neighbourhood of Tompkinsville, according to police.

Mr Raynor’s upstairs neighbour told the New York Post that he was jolted awake in the wee hours of Monday by a ruckus in the building.

“It was so loud, I could hear it over the air conditioner,” Isaac Williams, 40, said.

“I said, ‘What the hell are they doing down there?’ It was loud banging, like ‘boom, boom, boom.’ Like people were wrestling or someone was throwing somebody around.”

Mr Williams eventually dozed off despite the noise – but when he went downstairs in the morning, he spotted his neighbour’s lifeless body splayed out in the building’s hallway.

“The next morning I was coming down to get some cigarettes, and I just happened to look back in the hallway and I saw him laying there,” he said. “My first instinct was he was drunk and he’d just fallen – even though I’d never seen him drunk.

“But then I just looked. I didn’t get too close and I was looking at his stomach and chest to see if they were moving.”

Mr Raynor was wearing nothing but pants, which were down well below his waist, while his arms were above his head, as though he’d been dragged, Mr Williams said.

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.

Williams confirmed the unnerving messages, noting that they appeared to be written in “black magic marker”.

Police said that the deceased had cuts on his forehead and two black eyes, while Mr Williams described apparent injuries to his nose.

Williams characterised the octogenarian as frail, and said he had never had reason to suspect him of inappropriate behaviour.

“The man hardly ever came outside,” Mr Williams said. “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.”

Mr Raynor had 24 arrests to his name, but his record did not suggest a history of paedophilia, sources said.

His name does not appear in the state’s online registry of known sex offenders.

Of the two dozen busts, just four were unsealed: Two assaults against a girlfriend in 1987, a third assault in 1992 and drug possession rap in 1996, sources said.

Mr Raynor’s estranged son told the Post by phone that he was troubled by his father’s death, despite their 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,” said Thayer Raynor, 53, noting that his father was a cancer survivor. “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.”

Both Mr 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 New York Police Department’s homicide unit is investigating and the medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission