Man Kills Cousin, Hides Her Body and Pretends to Be Her

A man has been jailed for killing his cousin and hiding her body in a plastic storage container while he stole her money and impersonated her.

Khalid Barrow, 23, was sentenced to serve 25 years to life in state prison for the killing of his 35-year-old cousin, Nisaa Walcott, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced in a news release on Wednesday.

Barrow was found guilty on November 29 of second-degree murder, concealing a human corpse, grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.

Officers responding to a 911 call on February 25 last year found Walcott unconscious and unresponsive near a storage facility in the Highbridge neighborhood in the Bronx borough of New York City. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Barrow had "intentionally asphyxiated" Walcott in her apartment in East Harlem, where he was staying at the time, on February 16, the district attorney's office said in the news release.

He then bound her ankles with a Wi-Fi cord and hid her body in a plastic tub lined with fabric scraps that he placed in a storage room before scrubbing the apartment with bleach.

Barrow immediately began impersonating Walcott, sending text messages to her 14-year-old son from her phone, according to prosecutors.

He "repeatedly manipulated" her son through these texts, including to ask for the PIN for her electronic benefit transfer account and to tell him to leave the door unlocked, prosecutors said, and also impersonated his cousin in messages to her co-workers and other relatives.

Walcott's son, Omir Walcott, was in tears as he described how he experienced "trauma after trauma" because of Barrow in a statement delivered during Barrow's sentencing, the New York Post reported. "My whole family is destroyed," he said.

Prosecutors said Barrow had tried to rent a car to take Walcott's body upstate on February 18, but was not able to do so. Instead, he moved the tub containing his cousin's body to the roof of her apartment building and continued to use her credit cards and accounts to buy food, drinks and marijuana.

On February 23, a relative who was concerned about Walcott's safety asked her to send a photo to reassure him that she was okay. Barrow, using Walcott's phone, sent an old photo in response that the relative recognized. When that relative contacted Walcott's son, Barrow—still impersonating Walcott—instructed him to tell the relative that everything was fine.

The following day, Walcott's family members reported her missing after realizing that no one was aware of her whereabouts.

Barrow moved the tub containing Walcott's body just hours after police officers spoke to him about his cousin's whereabouts.

Surveillance video captured him taking the container out of Walcott's building in the early hours of February 25 and later unloading it on the sidewalk in the Highbridge neighborhood, where it was found later that day.

"The defendant's criminal conduct was an unspeakable betrayal," Bragg said in a statement. "Khalid Barrow strangled his cousin in her own home, all for his own financial gain."

Bragg added: "I am amazed by the resiliency of Nisaa Walcott's family members, who have persevered through the horrific murder of their loved one by her own cousin. They attended the trial every single day, listening to incredibly disturbing testimony. No sentence can undo this family's pain, but I hope they continue to heal from this terrible loss."