By KERRY BURKE, ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, THOMAS TRACY and JOHN ANNESE
July 20, 2021
-NY Daily News
An elderly Staten Island man was found dead inside his home with the words “I touch little girls” scrawled across his chest, police said Tuesday.
Robert Raynor, believed to be 80, was found in the first floor hallway of a Corson Ave. home in Tompkinsville at 9:30 a.m. Monday, police sources said.
He was shirtless, laying face-up, with his hands stretched over his head, and also had the message, “I take dolls in my room for girls age 1-5,” scrawled on his stomach, a witness confirmed Tuesday.
“I saw him lying there. I didn’t get too close. The man was just dead,” said Isaac Williams, 40, who lives in an apartment upstairs, and found the body. “What was written on his chest was just disrespectful.”
Investigators believe Raynor’s body was dragged from his rear, first-floor apartment, sources said.
Raynor also had the words “I touch” written on one foot, sources with knowledge of the investigation said.
He does not appear on the state’s sex offender registry.
The senior citizen suffered a broken nose, injuries to both arms and swelling to his eyes and cheeks as if he had been beaten, sources said.
“There was a banging around the night before, like someone throwing someone around,” Williams said, adding he didn’t think much of it at the time.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t get my head right,” he said. “I don’t believe it. He was an old man. He couldn’t even get around.”
The victim kept to himself, and needed a walker to get around. He’d make trips to a nearby corner store to buy beer, a store worker said.
“He didn’t bother nobody. He was very much disabled. He had to walk with a walker. We’d see him crawling up the stairs,” said Monique Simon, 46, his next-door neighbor.
She didn’t believe the accusations scrawled on his chest. “He didn’t seem capable. Maybe someone did this to throw the case off,” she said.
Raynor lived alone in the Staten Island apartment for at least seven years, and didn’t work, she said. He had an array of health problems, and always complained about his arthritis.
“Friday, he said to me, ‘The Lord is not ready for me yet,’” she said. “Those were his very words. I guess now it’s between him and God.”
An autopsy has been set to determine the cause of death.
