A suspect has been arrested and charged for sexually violating and then robbing a corpse on the subway earlier this month, the Daily News has learned.
After 37-year-old Jorge Gonzalez died April 9 on an R train, a man was seen on security camera footage raping and then robbing his corpse in an act of unspeakable depravity. To add insult to injury, a short time later the corpse was robbed a second time by a woman before an MTA worker discovered the body face-down inside a train car at the Whitehall St. subway station in lower Manhattan around 12:30 a.m.
Detectives arrested the man Sunday after his son told police he recognized his father on the security cam footage, but said he did not believe his father was guilty of necrophilia, a police source said.
Police said Gonzalez was orally and anally violated.
The male suspect was charged with attempted rape, a source told The News on Sunday night.
Although the initial autopsy was inconclusive as to the cause of death, Gonzalez’s estranged wife told The News that ultimately, she believes her husband’s death came because of cirrhosis of the liver after years of prolonged alcoholism.
Obtained by Daily News
Jorge Gonzalez is pictured on his wedding day when he was about 25 years old. Gonzalez succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver following a years long struggle with alcoholism, collapsing on a Manhattan subway train where a man sexually defiled his remains, and a second person later stole from him. (Obtained by Daily News)
“We were happy. Yes, we were. But the thing is all the pressures of life, new marriage, new child, I was working a lot, he was working a lot and slowly he just became an alcoholic,” said Gonzalez’s estranged wife Teresa, who has not seen her husband in five years. “He was putting the alcohol over everything else.”
“He just took off and just rode into the sunset,” she said of their split. “We were having issues. He just decided to leave the house and that was pretty much it. Once or twice he would call.”
Gonzalez did multiple stints in rehab, Teresa said, but wasn’t able to stay sober for long.
“That’s the biggest reason why he ended up in the situation where he was,” she said. “There was just no way for him to stop.”
“I didn’t even talk to him for five years, had no idea where he was,” she added. “He just disappeared.”
Before his descent into alcoholism, Gonzalez, who was born in Mexico, was a man with an adventurous spirit who was full of promise and worked hard to support his family, Teresa said. She and Gonzalez share a 13-year-old son who was horrified to learn about the circumstances of his father’s death, which he overheard when his mother was speaking to detectives on the phone.
The female suspect is still on the loose.
With Rocco Parascandola
Originally Published: April 27, 2025 at 10:38 PM EDT
