A criminal justice activist is facing murder charges after cops found a dismembered body inside a Bronx apartment — with the accused killer caught on surveillance video disguised in a blonde wig at the scene of the crime, according to witnesses and police sources.
Sheldon Johnson, a 48-year-old staffer for the public law firm Queens Defenders, was being held at the 44th Precinct stationhouse Thursday awaiting arraignment after police made the grisly discovery — a human torso in a blue bin and a head stashed in a freezer in the sixth-floor apartment, sources said.
Neighbors told cops the victim was heard desperately pleading with his killer shortly before two shots rang out in the apartment near Odgen Avenue and West 162nd Street shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, sources and neighbors said.
“Please don’t,” the doomed man was heard saying. “I have a family!”
Investigators were first called to the building on a wellness check after the shots rang out and neighbors reported seeing a stranger coming and going from the apartment with cleaning supplies, the building superintendent said.
“I said, listen, I want to do a welfare check on a tenant because the person who is coming in and out is not the tenant,” the super, who asked not to be identified, told The Post on Wednesday.
He said Johnson carried a blue bin into the apartment at 2 a.m. — and never brought it back out.
“He brought in the bin … I told them why is he bringing in the bin at 2 o’clock in the morning? He’s bringing in a bin so late,” the super said. “We tried to see if he took out the bin. He never took out the bin. I told them, look for a bin. And sure enough, it was there.”
The super also saw the suspect leaving in the victim’s blue Audi and returning in an Uber wearing a blonde wig.
“He is coming in, he is dressing differently, changing his character,” he said. “I said, that’s not normal, he is hiding something.”
He said police made an initial check on the apartment but left without busting the suspect.
“The guy stood there,” the super said. “They took him out and everything. They looked in the apartment, but they didn’t find anything. They apologized, said somebody called, and they have to come.”
He said Johnson then asked to speak with him.
“I went back to the house and a neighbor called and said the guy is looking for me, he wants to talk to me,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m gonna go to him, I’m gonna ask him what he wants, then tell the police what he tells me.’ That was the plan.”
But before the meeting took place police were back and took Johnson in for questioning.
“If I’d gone, you never know what he was going to do,” the super said. “He was gonna frame me or shoot me or offer me something to get rid of the cameras or something.”
Tenant Jose Marquez told The Post he saw Johnson walking a small dog days before the murder.
“It feels like the devil just crawled through here last night,” Marquez said.
The neighbor described him as “quiet” and a “loner.”
“Sometimes we get fooled with the appearance – well dressed….he looks clean,” Marquez siad. “You are assuming this guy has a professional career – went to work, came back, walked the dog and continued with his personal life.”
Johnson started working as a client advocate at the public defender’s office in Queens sometime after being released from prison in 2019 after serving 20 years for a series of armed robberies in 1999.
In an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast Johnson, who claimed he used to be a member of the Bloods gang, told host Josh Dubin he was arrested and sentenced to a maximum of 50 years for using a gun to rob several men who owed him money for drugs.
But after spending some time in and out of solitary confinement, the convicted felon said he decided to “turn his life around” and got his GED while in prison. Johnson said he also took courses on deep breathing and conflict resolution while in the slammer.
The Queens Defenders office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The victim won’t be publicly identified until the family has been notified.
Sources said the fatal dispute may have stemmed from a feud when both men were in prison.