NYPD detectives have identified a 25-year-old gang member as a person of interest in the death of the “high-end” hooker whose naked body was stuffed into a barrel and dumped in New Jersey, The Post has learned.
The development came as new details emerged about the doomed woman and when she vanished.
The person of interest in the case is an ex-con and member of the notorious SNOW street gang in Queens, who was seen on surveillance video meeting Nicole Flanagan, 42, after she got out of a livery car in Manhattan’s Financial District around 1:50 a.m. on Aug. 6, law-enforcement sources said Friday.
A friend of Flanagan’s told The Post that the victim was a mother of three, a “great person,” before drugs and alcohol took hold.
Moments after Flanagan and the gang member met on the street, they were captured on surveillance video riding an elevator to the 22nd floor of the apartment building at 95 Wall St., sources said — marking the last time that the woman was seen in public alive.
Later that morning, around 10:45 a.m., the man bought several scented candles at a Duane Reade store across the street, sources said.
Five days later, on Aug. 11, he arrived at the building in a livery car and walked in while carrying a large plastic barrel, sources said.
When a security guard questioned him, he said he was using the barrel to move out, sources said.
The next day, a U-Haul van with Arizona plates was recorded heading into Manhattan through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel at 9:15 p.m., driven by an unidentified man, sources said.
The van arrived at the rear service entrance to 95 Wall around 9:30 p.m., and the gang member was seen meeting the driver and grabbing a moving cart from the van, sources said.
Both men then went up to the 22nd floor and were seen using the cart to roll the barrel out the rear of the building around 10 p.m., sources said.
On Aug. 13, Flanagan’s decomposing body was found inside a 55-gallon plastic drum that was left in a residential neighborhood in Ridgefield Park, NJ, after residents called cops about the foul odor coming from it.
A Bergen County medical examiner found no signs of injury on her body and ordered a toxicology report, sources have said.
Other evidence tying Flanagan to the gang member was found on her cell phone, which showed his number was the last one she called shortly before the rendezvous, sources said.
The phone was found outside the Wall Street Grill restaurant, about three blocks away, by the eatery’s manager around 8:15 p.m. on Aug. 9, sources said.
Cops confirmed it was Flanagan’s phone by calling it using a number provided by her boyfriend, who described her as a “high-end prostitute,” sources said.
Additional reporting by Joshua Rhett Miller
