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A notorious landlord vanished off the streets of New York City in a sensational, caught-on-tape kidnapping in 2014 — and when his body turned up the next day in a dumpster, cops already had plenty of potential suspects on tap. Menachem “Max” Stark, a 39-year-old Hasidic father of seven from Brooklyn, had made a long list of …
A notorious landlord vanished off the streets of New York City in a sensational, caught-on-tape kidnapping in 2014 — and when his body turned up the next day in a dumpster, cops already had plenty of potential suspects on tap.
Menachem “Max” Stark, a 39-year-old Hasidic father of seven from Brooklyn, had made a long list of enemies as he racked up debt maneuvering through foreclosures and serving as landlord to run-down and drug-infested local properties, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Who might have wanted him dead — and eventually killed him — is part of the latest installment of TV’s “TORN FROM THE HEADLINES: NEW YORK POST REPORTS,’‘ which airs at 10 p.m. ET on Monday on the Investigation Discovery channel.
The bizarre case riveted the city — at first because of shocking surveillance video from the scene that showed Stark being grabbed by two large men as he left in his Williamsburg real-estate office around 11:45 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 2., and stuffed, struggling, into the back of a white Dodge Caravan.
The next day, around 7 a.m., a gas-station worker in Great Neck, LI, spotted a small plume of smoke coming from a nearby dumpster, the man told The Post at the time. Thinking it was a tossed cigarette, the worker threw some snow in the container — but eventually the stench of charred flesh began emanating from it, and he called the cops. The smell was from Stark’s burning body.
Fascination over the case soon turned to not only who killed him — but how many people, according to authorities, might have wanted him dead.
NYPD detectives, aided by the surveillance video, eventually arrested four men — two brothers and their cousins — in the case.
Erskin Felix was identified as the mastermind in the plot-gone-fatally-awry. He supposedly only wanted to scare Stark into handing over money he was owed, according to one account, or rob him, according to another. Felix would later claim that the victim, with his mouth duct-taped, had accidentally suffocated.
At trial, jurors were shown texts sent to Felix by an associate nicknamed “Glass” in the hours after the deadly debacle — including some saying, “Read New York Post” and “New York Post got vids too,” noting The Post’s exclusive coverage at the time.
Felix was sentenced to 24 years to life in prison this past June. His lawyer said at sentencing that he maintains his innocence.
