A Sotheby’s realtor was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat and her stepson is now charged with the brutal murder at their gated community home in NJ, authorities said.
Irma Daniels, 48, was found dead inside her $864,000 three-bedroom Cresskill residence. Investigators said she died from blunt force trauma.
Police allege her husband’s son, John Daniels Jr, 30, committed the slaying.
Cops found Daniels’ battered body after responding to a 911 call on Stonegate Trail in Cresskill on Wednesday at 6:46 p.m., the Bergen County Prosecutor’s office said.
Daniels, who allegedly went on the lam, was collared Thursday, a day after the disturbing discovery, prosecutors said.
His father, attorney John A. Daniels Sr., 63, identified him as the killer, the Daily Voice reported.
The younger Daniels was charged with murder, hindering apprehension and unlawful weapons possession and booked into the Bergen County Jail on Thursday, the media outlet said.
A neighbor said the suspect had been acting strangely.
“He was doing odd sprinting, from one driveway to the next driveway. Not sprinting for exercise. He wouldn’t make eye contact,” said the resident, who did not want to be identified.
“One day I saw him wandering around in front of someone else’s house, pacing. It was like circling with an angry and upset look on his face. He looked deranged. And I thought, ‘Somebody is gonna call the police on this guy.’”
The victim, who hailed from Moscow, Russia, shared a now gut-wrenching post Aug. 15 on her Facebook page, spotlighting scenic footage of her homeland.
“Going back to my roots. My beautiful motherland with breathtaking Caucasian Mountains, ancient culture, heartbreaking history, and graceful and noble people. Proud of being Circassian,” she wrote.
The Facebook page also said Daniels had been married since 2011 and that she was a Realtor sales associate at Prominent Properties Sotheby’s International Realty.
In March, she trumpeted that after seven years in the real estate industry, she’d received a Circle of Excellence award from the company.
“I did it…Looking back to the beginning of this new journey for me I will never forget how hard it was the first two years with no deals, no clients, no guidance or support from the company where I started. I was ready to give up. It was a long way to get where I am now. Everything came to me through perseverance, work ethic, failures, creative mind and most importantly my mindset that I am not a quitter.”
Eerily, Irma Daniels died in a tony townhome similar to those in which she made her living.
The accused killer appears to have been out of work.
Daniels received an MBA from the Boston College Carroll School of Management in May 2022 and had previously worked for a year as a marketing manager for Benzel-Busch Motor Car, according to his LinkedIn and Facebook page.
Cresskill has a population of 9,000 people and is located 16 miles from Manhattan.