Woman found dead in Jeep full of noxious chemicals on Manhattan’s Sutton Place in bizarre suspected suicide
Police shut down Manhattan’s tony Sutton Place neighborhood on Sunday after a dead woman was found in a Jeep full of toxic chemicals in what authorities believe was a bizarre suicide.
The 35-year-old victim was discovered dead in the backseat of a black Jeep parked at E. 56th St. and Sutton Ave. at 11:23 a.m., cops said.
City medical examiner workers removed the body from the vehicle and will determine the cause and manner of death. Her name was not immediately released.
“An assortment of chemicals” was found in the Jeep, according to a police source. It wasn’t immediately clear what kind of chemicals they were.
“It will likely be suicide with these chemicals as the cause,” a police source said.
Surveillance video from a neighboring building showed the car pull into the dead-end street off Sutton Place, according to a local doorman, who asked not to be identified.
After about 40 minutes, the driver re-parked the car on the opposite side of the street. Moments later, she got out of the vehicle and appeared to be brushing dust out of it. She got back in and the internal light flickered on and off. That was the last movement seen until the dead woman was discovered around midday.
The grim death is rare on Sutton Place, a quiet upscale neighborhood on the East River. Some of New York’s richest and most famous residents, like Bobby Short, the Vanderbilt family, Aristotle Onassis and Marilyn Monroe have lived there.
Charles Karmid, a neighbor, said that he was shocked to see investigators on the block.
“Sutton Place has started acting like the rest of New York,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened here. This is Sutton Place. It’s a quiet neighborhood. I would never expect to see Hazmat here.”
