Police are investigating whether a Queens mom found beaten and strangled next to a bloody iron in a SoHo hotel last week may have been a sex worker, The Post has learned.
The victim — 38-year-old Denisse Oleas-Arancibia — stayed for several nights each month at the SoHo 54 Hotel in Lower Manhattan going back about a year, law enforcement sources said.
Oleas-Arancibia is also believed to have been working for a man in Manhattan who she communicated with on WhatsApp, according to the sources.
Police have gathered shreds of evidence — including a security camera video of a man leaving the building after her death and a restaurant receipt left in the room — that they think could lead them to the killer, sources said.
And the crime scene showed indications that there might have been a dispute in the room, they added.
But cops haven’t named a suspect yet.
A maid found Oleas-Arancibia’s corpse under a blanket Feb. 8 at the Watts Street hotel at about 10:30 a.m., authorities said.
Next to her lay a blood-splattered iron that sources say appeared to be broken.
A resident of Jackson Heights, Oleas-Arancibia had been staying at the hotel for several days, according to sources.
Sources say the woman — who has no arrest history — had checked in that morning.
The NYC medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, with her cause of death being compression of the neck and blunt head trauma, a spokesperson said Monday.
No arrests have been made.
The victim’s 18-year-old son reportedly said his mother appeared nervous in the week before she was killed.
“In the week (before) she was like, sad,” Edwin Cevallos told the Daily News. “She was so nervous and she was worried.”
Oleas-Arancibia had moved to New York from Ecuador, the outlet said. She’d been living with Cevallos and a nephew while her parents and a younger son stayed in South America.
“She was always working for us to give us the best life in this country. She always had money to cover anything in the house,” he said. “She didn’t owe no money to anybody.”