The Manhattan man whose dismembered torso was found stuffed in a suitcase bobbing around the East River was on the phone when his killer pounced — and the caller heard the fatal struggle, his nephew claimed.
Edwin Echevarria told neighbors his alleged live-in killer was his grandson — and claimed he took him in because he felt sorry for him, according to his nephew Eric Maldonado.
“He was talking to his friend on the phone and his friend heard the argument — [then] he heard some loud banging, then grunting and moaning,” Eric Maldonado said of the fight that allegedly ended with Christian Millet, 23, knocking 65-year-old Edwin Echevarria to the ground, stomping his head and stabbing him 14 times with a makeshift ice pick.
Edwin Echevarria’s friend called the cops, who did several welfare checks that day before finally getting inside the fifth-floor, Columbia Street apartment in which the pair lived, his nephew said.
“He was the son of my uncle’s on-again, off-again girlfriend,” Eric Maldonado, 46, told The Post. “My uncle felt sorry for him. He said he saw the kid grow up and that he had problems with his mother and she threw him out.”
That bond made the elder Echevarria’s death even harder to stomach.
“He was killed by someone he trusted,” Eric Maldonado said. “My brother kept telling him, get him out! Get him out! My brother tried to get him out. But my uncle said he felt bad for the kid and he kept defending him.”
Millet has been charged with second-degree murder for the killing, which law enforcement sources said he committed after he and his roomate argued over food in their shared residence at the NYCHA’s Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side.
After the savage attack, Millet allegedly dragged the corpse to the bathtub and chopped it up with a kitchen knife, sources said.
Authorities began investigating the case after a passing boat spotted a suitcase floating in the river at about 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 5.
Someone on the craft called the cops, and officers found a gruesome surprise when they peeked inside — Echevarria’s bloody torso, which had been drifting for who knows how long.
Cops got a search warrant for the apartment, then collared Millet — who sources say confessed at the NYPD’s Seventh Precinct.
A police source said Millet admitted throwing different body parts in the river at different times.
Before the murder, Echevarria had told friends and neighbors a litany of stories about how he knew Millet.
Sometimes he referred to Millet as his grandson and said he was living with him. Other times, he claimed Millet was only visiting — and he told at least one person that he was just renting a room .
“He was always smiling [and] he called the boy his grandson,” one fifth-floor neighbor said Thursday. “They had a good relationship.”
But another neighbor said she’d heard the two yelling at each other inside a local Key Food supermarket on Columbia Street a few weeks ago.
“They were in the far aisle — the aisle with the beer — and the older man was screaming, ‘No, enough enough! I want you out! I want you out!’” she said. “And the younger man said something as he pushed past.”
Store manager Sam Ali said he also heard Edwin Echevarria had told the young man to find a new place to live.
“The guy rented a room in the apartment … and he was there for a whole year,” Ali said. “They started arguing because Edwin wanted him out.”
Ali added that the elder Echevarria’s luck had gone south during the last few years. His wife left him and moved to the Bronx, and Echevarria turned to booze to drown his sorrows.
“I was shocked lately, when I saw him — the transformation!” Ali said. “You could see he was broken. A broken-up man. He stopped shaving and stopped bathing. You could tell no shower. You could smell him, like beer, from 5 feet.”
He also said Echevarria started collecting cans for the cash — but was always a nice guy, even during his life’s darkest hour.
“He was a quiet guy, a nice guy. Very peaceful,” Alie said. “He was a customer here for over 20 years. He was a good customer. It’s just terrible to watch him go down like that.”
“He was a good dude,” the victim’s lifelong friend and neighbor, Rodney Bryant, said of his old pal. “He was always a good dude — quiet, respectful.
“He worked for the post office. All he did was go to work and come home. He didn’t hang out, didn’t get into trouble. He didn’t really socialize with nobody. Go to work, come home, that’s it!”
But his sudden, brutal death has left his family grasping for answers, his nephew said.
“How are we supposed to have closure? How are we supposed to have a funeral?” Eric Maldonado said. “We don’t even have all of him. And we can’t even find out the truth.”
“The neighbors are telling us they found some body parts in the apartment. You know, did he throw some of the body parts in the water? We don’t know.”
