NEW YORK – A 39-year-old man with a history of mental problems was arrested yesterday in the vicious slaying of a psychologist attacked in her office with a meat cleaver, police said.
David Tarloff of Queens was taken into custody in the morning after investigators matched him with three palm prints found at the bloody crime scene, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Tarloff made statements incriminating himself during a 25-minute interrogation, Kelly said. The questioning stopped when he asked for a lawyer, and it wasn't clear whether he had an attorney. Murder and attempted-murder charges are pending, Kelly said.
Therapist Kathryn Faughey was slashed 15 times with the cleaver and a 9-inch knife in her Manhattan office Tuesday evening. A psychiatrist who worked in the building, Dr. Kent Shinbach, went to Faughey's aid, was badly wounded and robbed of $90. Blood was splattered on the walls and pooled on the floor of Faughey's office, police said.
Shinbach was taken to a hospital with slash wounds on his head, face and hands. The hospital wouldn't comment on his condition yesterday.
During questioning, Tarloff said he went to the office because Shinbach had him institutionalized in 1991. He said he planned to rob the psychiatrist and leave the country with his mother, who lives in a nursing home but until recently shared his Queens apartment.
Kelly couldn't confirm whether Tarloff was ever Shinbach's patient or whether he had met Faughey. It was unclear why Tarloff would have attacked Faughey, police said.
The breakthrough in the case came as friends, relatives and former patients attended a funeral for the slain therapist in Manhattan.
Neighbors described Tarloff as a troubled man with an erratic and sometimes combative personality who would occasionally wander the halls half-clothed. He had been arrested two weeks ago for assaulting a guard at a hospital, according to court records. Kelly said police matched prints from that arrest with a palm print found on a suitcase left at the crime scene.
Detectives discovered Tarloff at his apartment, and he went voluntarily to the 19th Precinct, near where the attack occurred, said Kelly, who described Tarloff's demeanor as “calm.” He said Tarloff had cuts on his right hand.
A neighbor of Tarloff's who has known the family for decades, Phyllis Zicherman, said the man had seemed down lately. She was stunned to hear he was a suspect. “He had problems, but he was never violent,” she said.
Sisters Betty and Margaret Feeney, who live below Tarloff, said they have known him his whole life. They described him as unstable but were shocked that he may have been involved.
“I know he's crazy and everything,” said Betty Feeney, 72. “I don't think he's capable . . . of killing somebody. I really don't.”
