NYPD arrests tenant in Queens building where super was found dead stuffed in garbage bags

Cops on Thursday arrested a tenant in the Queens building where the superintendent who had gone to collect overdue rent was found dead stuffed in garbage bags under a bed.

Sandra Coto Navarro, 48, was charged with murdering Jose Rene Portillo, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon. She said nothing as she was led from the 107th Precinct by cops Thursday, but smirked when the Portillo’s wife called her a “bad bitch” in Spanish.

“You killed my husband!” the heartbroken wife screamed in Spanish. “Go to hell!”

As of Thursday afternoon, police were awaiting search warrants that would give them access to Navarro’s apartment on 70th Ave. near 137th St. in Kew Gardens Hills where Portillo’s body was found by cops about 5 p.m. Tuesday.

According to the Medical Examiner, Portillo’s death was a homicide, the result of blunt trauma to the head. Police sources said Navarro, who is emotionally disturbed, had stabbed the victim in the neck and left leg with an object that hasn’t been recovered yet. Cops hope a search of the apartment will turn up weapons used in the murder.

“Right now … we’re all in shock,” the super’s daughter told the Daily News. “It’s a lot of information for us to take in. And our minds are in different areas right now.”

Police and building residents said Portillo went to the apartment earlier that morning to collect overdue rent from the problem tenants that morning.

A police source said Navarro and the man she lived with owed about $26,000 in back rent.

After not hearing from Portillo for several hours, his brother went to the management company, a police source said. He and a worker from the management company reviewed surveillance footage from outside the building which shows Portillo entering the building about 8:45 a.m. but never leaving.

When cops arrived, Navarro answered the apartment door. A few moments later a man, believed to be the tenant of record, returned home and pointed them to the bedroom.

The building super wasn’t dismembered but found in two garbage bags, one covering his top half, the other covering his bottom half, cops said.

Attempts to reach the building management company were not immediately successful Thursday.

Neighbors in the complex said Portillo had worked there for almost a decade.

“If I had a problem he would come over,” said Rosemarie Sanks, 81, who has lived in the complex for 53 years. “He was a nice man. He wasn’t aggressive at all … It’s a horrible thing.”

Neighbors said Navarro and the male resident of the apartment where Portillo was found were disruptive and known to drink excessively and act rowdy.

“[Navarro] was drinking a lot but she seemed nice,” one 30-year-old neighbor who wished not to be named told The News. “They were always fighting. He was always drunk. You could smell the alcohol on him.”

Portillo had helped the tenants get the apartment, the neighbor said.

“I’m in shock,” the tenant said. “I thought they were friends.”

Overdue rent notices would pile up at the apartment door, said a former upstairs neighbor who identified himself as Elliot.

“He was a douchebag,” Elliot said about his downstairs neighbor. “I used to live in the second floor and I got babies. He used to bang my wall like crazy.”

No charges have been filed against the male tenant. According to police sources, he was at work until about 15 minutes before the police arrived at the apartment Tuesday.

A neighbor at a Far Rockaway building where Navarro used to live was stunned to hear that the pleasant, friendly woman she used to live near had been arrested for murder.

“Every day she would work hours and hours during the day and maybe we would see her at night time,” said the woman, who did not give her name.

“She was a very hardworking woman, very decent … very humble. Everybody that known her here, we all loved her. We all had respect for her cause she was a very nice lady. She would talk to everybody, she would be kind to everybody.”

“For her to do something like that, I can’t believe it,” said the woman.