2 arrested in connection with Haredi landlord’s 2014 murder in Brooklyn

Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — Two men, brothers Erskin and Kendall Felix, were arrested in connection with the 2014 kidnapping and murder of a Jewish Brooklyn landlord.

The brothers, aged 38 and 28 respectively, were taken into custody in connection with the killing nearly three years ago of Menachem Stark, the New York Daily News reported Friday based on information obtained from police sources. The report did not say how the suspects reacted to the allegations made against them.

Stark, the married father of seven, was kidnapped outside his Williamsburg office during a botched robbery in the middle of a snowstorm on Jan. 2, 2014. His burned body was later discovered in a dumpster beside a gas station in Great Neck, L.I.

Erskin Felix faces murder and kidnapping charges, while his sibling was charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence, according to the report. Both were being held at the NYPD’s 90th Precinct stationhouse early Friday.

The arrests come roughly three weeks after the siblings’ cousin, Kendel Felix, 29, was convicted of killing the 39-year-old Stark.  Kendel Felix was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering the Hasidic real estate developer.

In a videotaped confession, Kendel Felix, a carpenter who once worked for Stark, said Erskin Felix was the mastermind of the scheme, the daily reported.

“I’m scared s—less because this wasn’t supposed to happen,” Felix told Kenneth Taub, chief of the Brooklyn district attorney’s homicide bureau.

According to prosecutors, the three men, Kendel, Kendall and Erskin Felix, dragged Stark into a minivan following an intense tussle on the street. Stark died of asphyxiation after one of the co-conspirators sat on his chest in the back seat of the van, prosecutors said.

Kendel Felix is slated to be sentenced on Nov. 2 in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

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