The personal assistant
charged with murdering his wealthy tech entrepreneur boss has pleaded not
guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.
Tyrese Haspil, 21, was arrested and charged with second
degree murder over the grisly death of Fahim Saleh, 33, in his Lower East Side
apartment last week.
Police say Saleh was killed inside the $2.2million residence
Monday afternoon, and was beheaded and dismembered the following day before his
remains were found by a family member.
The suspect appeared for his arraignment just after midnight
on Saturday, facing a charge of second-degree murder in his boss’ death.
A spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society told DailyMail that
Haspil entered a plea of not guilty.
His lawyers from the nonprofit organization, which is
representing the accused man, said they were ‘in the very earliest stages of
ferreting out the truth, ‘ in the case.
‘The life of this case promises to be long and complex,’ the
lawyers, Sam Roberts and Neville Mitchell said in a prepared statement.
As the attorneys for Mr.
Haspil, we urge the public to keep an open mind’.
The lawyers added that ‘there was ‘much more to this
narrative’, beyond what the murder suspect is accused of.
Haspil had a troubled
childhood but never showed a violent streak, one of his relatives has revealed.
His aunt, Marjorie Sine, expressed her shock over the
stunning allegations against her nephew in an interview with the New York Daily
News published Sunday.
Sine said that Haspil was
quiet and ‘at times annoying’ as a child, when he was bounced around between
relatives and foster homes.
‘I thought [police] made a mistake because he never showed
his emotions,’ Sine, 52, said of Haspil. ‘His behavior, the way he was, he
acted nonchalantly. He would do whatever he wanted.’
Haspil allegedly displayed that nonchalance in the days between
Saleh’s murder and the suspect’s arrest, as a series of surveillance videos
purportedly showed him strolling around Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood a mile
from the crime scene.
Law enforcement sources said
Haspil was even seen purchasing a bouquet of birthday balloons he bought with a
credit card he had allegedly stolen from Saleh.
‘This guy is the new American Psycho, only dumber,’ one
police source told the New York Post.
Haspil’s aunt described his unstable upbringing in her
interview with the Daily News, revealing that he was just a child when his
mother landed in a mental institution.
Sine, who lives in Valley Stream, said Haspil’s maternal
grandmother stepped in to raise him until she died when he was just 12 years
old.
Haspil then moved in with Sine for about five years, but she
turned him over to a foster care family when he was 17 after he became
increasingly disrespectful to his aunt.
‘He wasn’t listening to me so he left,’ Sine said. ‘That’s
what happened, we went to court. I couldn’t deal with it anymore.’
The last time Sine saw Haspil was during the court
proceedings before he went into foster care, she said, noting that his father
died a year later.
Roughly four years later, she learned on Friday that her
nephew had been accused of brutally executing his boss after allegedly stealing
$100,000 from the tech tycoon.
Sine said that while Haspil was a handful as a teen, he never
showed any signs of violence while living with her.
‘Not here, because I would not tolerate it,’ she said. ‘I was
thinking about it all last night and there wasn’t anything else I could say or
do.’
A much darker narrative about Haspil has emerged from
authorities who obtained video of him buying an electric saw and cleaning
supplies just hours before he allegedly murdered Saleh.
Prosecutors have not released the name of the store where
Haspil was recorded buying the supplies, which were later discovered inside
Saleh’s apartment.
The personal assistant normally resides near Prospect Park in
Brooklyn, and prosecutors said footage showed him making the transaction late
in the morning of July 13.
Investigators believe Saleh was killed around 1.45pm that
afternoon.
Surveillance footage from Saleh’s luxury apartment building –
located at 265 East Houston St – shows him followed into a elevator by a man
wearing a black suit and mask. It’s believed that man was Haspil.