The boyfriend who is accused of torturing his girlfriend and his mother in a terrible Bronx murder case before running from the law for a week made his court debut.
Following his arraignment in Bronx criminal court on Sunday, 26-year-old Robert Strother was detained without bail and is scheduled to return to court on Wednesday. Strother is accused of tampering with physical evidence, concealing a human corpse, murder, manslaughter, and obstructing prosecution.
Strother is charged with torturing Princesa Encarnacion-Soto, 21, his live-in girlfriend, in the Grand Concourse apartment in Fordham that he shared with his mother for over a week before to her death on July 22. Shortly after the incident, Strother’s mother, Naida Jorge, 54, was taken into custody and charged with murder and providing criminal assistance. She is also charged with tidying up the scene of the crime.
On July 25, when a judge ordered Jorge to be kept without bail, prosecutors said Encarnacion-Soto’s body was covered in severe cuts and knife wounds, bruises from hammer strikes, and even the bottoms of her feet were cut open.
When the city’s Medical Examiner conducted an autopsy, police claimed it took at least two days to thoroughly catalog every injury since Soto had been so severely abused that a bit of a knuckle on her finger was missing, according to court documents.
After a week-long manhunt, Strother was taken into custody, according to police. When he boldly tried to return to the flat where the incident took place, neighbors tracked him down and dialed 911, which led to his arrest on Friday at around 1 p.m.
He’s attempting to flee! Put him in handcuffs! In one video of the arrest of the massive Strother, a man with a thick black beard, dressed in a white T-shirt, black sweatpants, and white sneakers, exhorts a man.
