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'Foul odor,' roaches seep from NYC apartment 5 months after woman and nephew die inside
By
Liam Quigley
Published Dec 5, 2024
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Liam Quigley/Manhattan Supreme Court
By
Liam Quigley
Published Dec 5, 2024
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Residents at a tony Upper West Side building have sued the city to gain access to an apartment that’s grown putrid since an elderly woman and her nephew were found dead inside five months ago.
The bodies of Alice Osman, 92, and her nephew Steven Osman, 64, were found in the first-floor unit they shared at 370 Riverside Drive in late June, according to the NYPD. Exactly how or when they died remains unclear, but the city medical examiner’s office said both died of natural causes.
The medical examiner removed the bodies on June 28. Police sealed the apartment shut, and banned anyone from entering — even to clean — until its rightful owner was found. More than five months later, that search has gone nowhere. The mess highlights a painfully slow aspect of the city’s court system that can leave apartments in stasis after people die without any known next of kin.
The building’s tenant board wrote in a lawsuit filed against the NYPD on Nov. 22 that “there are currently terrible, foul odors coming from the apartment, and possible vermin and roaches in or around the premises.”
The lawsuit asks a judge to order the police department to temporarily remove the seal on the apartment “in order to clean, remove garbage, potentially fumigate and exterminate, clean up the possible fluids from the body, and to remove any spoiled food and perishable items.”
“We have roaches in our apartment because of that,” said Allison Kapusta, who lives in the building, where apartments are listed for more than $2 million. “They should let them get in there and clean it up. I don't know what the state of it is, but it's probably not good.”
The saga is the product of a Kafkaesque procedure that’s dragged on since the NYPD first sealed the apartment and posted a notice stating that anyone who entered would be arrested.
The building’s tenants say in the lawsuit they’ve requested that the police department allow them to enter the apartment and clean it. But an NYPD spokesperson said the department can’t let anyone inside until they get approval from the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court, which is supposed to identify the apartment’s rightful heir. Surrogate’s Court records don’t show any proceedings for either of the deceased. The attorney representing the tenant corporation did not know who is supposed to inherit the apartment.
Doug Baruchin, who owns Long Island Trauma Services, a company that cleans up crime scenes, said it’s not uncommon for apartments to end up like the one on Riverside Drive.
“We've encountered this numerous times where we show up … We don't want to break the seal,” he said. ““[The landlord] can get arrested and so could we.”
Baruchin said apartments where people are found dead can quickly turn disgusting — especially when the scenes are discovered during the summer, like the one on the Upper West Side.
“Ambient temperatures have a lot to do with decomposition,” he said. “We've actually had jobs where people in the apartment below, [fluids] started to actually come down and drip down, which is just an absolute nightmare.”
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new york city
manhattan
sanitation
Liam Quigley
Liam Quigley is a reporter covering parks & sanitation for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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