A family’s six-month search for a missing Manhattan tattoo artist ended when cops found his decomposed body steps from where he was last seen, his devastated mother told the Daily News.
“How was he found right there? He was there the whole time,” Kellie Tolstoy told the Daily News on Saturday. “He’s been laying there for six months.”
Tolstoy said police told her Wednesday that her son, Drexyll Tolstoy, 26, was discovered in the rear of 39 W. 32nd St., a 17-story commercial building that houses the tattoo shop that employed him.
“It shouldn’t take six months to find someone hundreds of feet away from where they disappeared,” Kellie wrote in an update to the family’s GoFundMe page, which was aimed at covering the family’s cost of the search.
Tolstoy disappeared on Sept. 25, and police officially reported him missing the next day.
Police recently obtained surveillance footage from a nearby hotel that showed Tolstoy re-entering his workplace. That sent cops back to the address.
Shortly before noon Monday, police said, officers found a body in the rear of the building. Police would not confirm the corpse’s identity to the Daily News. But Kellie Tolstoy said an NYPD captain told her the body was her son.
The Medical Examiner has not determined the cause of death. The investigation is continuing, police said.
The discovery was first reported in the West Side Rag, an Upper West Side news site.
Kellie Tolstoy said on the GoFundMe page that when she inquired further about her son’s death, a police captain brushed her off, saying: “Why are you asking all these questions? You know it won’t bring your son back.” The captain also asked her not to call again, she said.
Police did not immediately respond to Tolstoy’s statement.
Early in March, Tolstoy said, there was suspicious activity on a mobile payment app belonging to her son. “We want to know — where is his phone? Where is his hoodie he was wearing?”
Security camera images showed Drexyll Tolstoy left work at about 6 p.m. on Sept. 25. His girlfriend of 10 years, Kristin Gonzalez, said she spoke to him around 9 p.m. and he was going to see the movie ‘Bullet Train.’ But cops said there was no showing of that movie at that time.
Police said Tolstoy was last seen at about 9:25 p.m. near W. 32nd St. and Sixth Ave.
At about 9:30 p.m., Kellie Tolstoy, who lives in Detroit, called her son to check how he was adjusting to new psychiatric medication. He had been under treatment for depression for about five years, she said.
Tolstoy told his mother he “couldn’t go back” to his apartment on the Upper West Side where he lived with Gonzalez.
When his girlfriend found out he didn’t show up for work the next day, she reported him missing.
Tolstoy’s building neighbor, Freddie Vega, recalled Saturday how his neighbors came together to distribute missing persons flyers last fall. “Young, handsome man. Productive. He used to go to work every day,” he said of Tolstoy.
“This whole thing has been a bad dream,” Kellie Tolstoy said. “In a way, in my heart, I know that he’s not suffering wherever he’s at. That has brought me a little bit of peace. … I’m glad I know that he’s not out there suffering right now.”
With Mark Stamey
