“GET A NEW HANDYMAN.”
Detectives investigating the murder last weekend of Queens mother of two Orsolya Gaal found those words written on a household memo affixed to her refrigerator, a senior NYPD supervisor told The Daily Beast.
The old handyman, so far as police could tell, was 44-year-old David Bonola, who was arrested for the savage killing early Thursday morning. Police say he confessed to stabbing Gaal 59 times, stuffing her body into a hockey bag, and leaving her at the edge of a park near her home. It was not clear if he had an attorney on Thursday afternoon.
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According to the supervisor, Bonola became a focus of the investigation early on. Detectives had his home under surveillance when a sanitation truck made a regular pick-up on Wednesday. They stopped the truck around the corner, and a search of Bonola’s garbage produced a bloody pair of work boots, along with a number of other blood-stained items, he said.
An earlier search had extended into Forest Park from the nearby sidewalk on which the body was discovered, packed into the rolling duffel bag. Police found bloody rags the killer likely used to bandage his hands. Blood is slippery, and assailants in frenzied knife attacks often cut themselves.
Deeper into Forest Park, police soon spotted something orange stuffed into a hollow tree. It proved to be a bloody jacket that they believe the killer discarded.
On Thursday, the detectives continued their surveillance of Bonola’s residence in working-class South Richmond Hill, on the far side of the park from Gaal’s home in more well-to-do Forest Hills. The senior NYPD supervisor told The Daily Beast Bonola engaged the detectives in conversation, saying he had been seeing them around, and asking if they were looking for him. Detectives replied that they wanted to talk to him at some point; he told them he had been very busy with work.
“How about now?” a detective asked.
By the supervisor’s account, Bonola agreed and rode with the detectives to the 112th precinct station house. He was questioned in “the box,” as the interrogation room is called in real life, as well as TV.
For about a half hour, the supervisor continued, Bonola sought to divert the detectives’ attention to other men—even other handymen. The detectives asked him about an injury to his left hand and the supervisor said he told the cops that he had hurt it the other day at work.
But detectives then showed Bonola a photograph of him with his left hand bandaged. They noted the picture had had been taken after the murder, but before he said he had suffered the injury, according to the supervisor.
Bonola ended up making a full statement, informing the detectives that his relationship with Gaal had been on and off for two years, according to police. Bonola is said to have further told the detectives that he had seen text messages she exchanged with another man, and had gone to talk to her about that shortly after midnight on Saturday.
They had argued, and police speculate that she took him down into the basement so they would not wake up her 13 year-old son, who was on the top floor. Her husband was out of town with their 17-year-old son, looking at colleges. Attempts by The Daily Beast to reach the husband, Howard Klein, have been unsuccessful this week.
The supervisor added that Bonola confessed to grabbing a knife that was in the house and repeatedly stabbing her. He is said to have told the detectives that he stuffed the body into a hockey bag belonging to one of her sons and then wheeled it off toward the park because he did not want the family to come upon it. The bloody bandages and the blood-stained jacket were later found discarded along a route he would have taken walking on to his home, on the other side of the park.
After a dog owner found the body on Saturday morning, a blood trail led police to Gaal’s home. Detectives began examining what had become a crime scene, and saw the memo affixed to the refrigerator.
