BROOKLYN, New York – Two brothers suspected in the abduction and murder of Brooklyn landlord Menachem Stark – a 2014 murder that prompted public speculation about his business dealings and debts – are in custody in an apparent bungled kidnap-for-ransom plot.
Kendall Felix, 28, was arrested in Lower Manhattan Thursday night. When his brother Erskin Felix, 38, went to the 90th Precinct in Brooklyn to look for him, he also was taken into custody.
Erskin Felix was charged with murder and kidnapping, while Kendall Felix was charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence.
The arrests came just weeks after their cousin, Kendel Felix, 29, became the first person convicted in the killing.
In a videotaped confession made following his April 2014 arrest, Kendel Felix, a carpenter who once worked for Stark, claimed Erskin Felix was actually the mastermind of the scheme.
The 39-year-old Stark was abducted outside his Williamsburg, Brooklyn, office during a botched robbery in the middle of a snowstorm on Jan. 2, 2014.
He was accosted on the street and dragged into a minivan during a struggle. Apparently planned as a kidnap for ransom, Stark died of asphyxiation when one of the kidnappers sat on his chest in the back seat of the van
His burned body was found in a dumpster beside a gas station in Great Neck on Long Island.
While numerous theories emerged in the months following the murder, most centered on money the Hasidic landlord owed and his trail of bankruptcies, detectives zeroed in on the carpenter who plotted with family members to abduct him for money.
Kendel Felix said in his confession that he was only the driver and involved in the kidnapping or disposal of the body. A detective who testified at his trial agreed that he was “definitely not the mastermind of this.”
In the confession, Kendel Felix also named a fourth man, who remains uncharged.
