Orsolya Gaal’s chilling fridge note pointed police to alleged killer: ‘Get a new handyman’
Investigators believe the note was a reference to David Bonola – Orsolya Gaal’s handyman and on-off lover who is now charged with her murder
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A chilling note written by Orsolya Gaal before she was brutally stabbed to death and her body dragged to a New York City park helped lead investigators to her accused killer, it has been revealed.
The handwritten note, reading “GET A NEW HANDYMAN”, was found posted on the fridge inside the victim’s Forest Hills home early on in the investigation, a law enforcement source told The Daily Beast.
The memo was reportedly written by Ms Gaal sometime prior to her murder in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Investigators believe the note was a reference to David Bonola, the 44-year-old handyman and on-off lover of Ms Gaal who has now been arrested and charged with her murder.
Mr Bonola handed himself in to police on Wednesday and confessed to killing the 51-year-old married mother-of-two in the savage attack that rocked a quiet neighbourhood in Queens.
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He appeared in court for the first time on Thursday night where he was arraigned on charges of murder in the second degree, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree.
Mr Bonola worked as a handyman at the home Ms Gaal shared with her husband and two teenage sons and was “known to the family”, police said.
He and Ms Gaal had been having an affair on and off for the last two years and it had recently come to an end, police said.
Mr Bonola became a focus of the police investigation not long after Ms Gaal’s body was found stuffed inside her son’s hockey duffle bag and abandoned at Forest Park on Saturday morning.
Investigators had placed his home in Richmond Hill under surveillance, a police source told The Daily Beast.
When a sanitation truck collected trash from his home on Wednesday, investigators stopped the vehicle around the corner and retrieved the contents, finding a bloodstained pair of work boots and other bloodied items, the source said.
Police had earlier found a bloody jacket and blood-stained tissues in Forest Park believed to have been discarded by the killer.
Mr Bonola appears to have become aware he was under surveillance as he allegedly approached detectives in the area, saying he had seen them around and asking if they were looking for him.
When police said they did want to speak to him, he agreed to go with officers to the 112th police precinct in Queens where police said he confessed to the crime.
The source said that the 44-year-old initially tried to throw investigators off by pointing them towards other men including other handymen.
But, after around 30 minutes in which detectives questioned him about injuries to his left hand believed to have been sustained in Saturday’s attack, Mr Bonola readily confessed to killing his on-off lover.
He said he had been having an affair with the married mother-of-two for the past two years and had discovered text messages between her and another man, the source said.
Mr Bonola told investigators he had gone to her home to confront her about it and they got into an argument.
The handyman confessed to stabbing Ms Gaal to death, police said.
Prosecutors said in court on Thursday that Ms Gaal willingly let her alleged killer into her home in the early hours of Saturday morning after she returned home alone from an event.
The pair then got into a verbal fight in the basement and she repeatedly told him to leave, prosecutors said.
Mr Bonola allegedly flew into a rage and slashed Ms Gaal’s throat with a kitchen knife before stabbing her more than 50 times, while her teenage son slept upstairs.
Prosecutors said Mr Bonola then stuffed her body inside her son’s hockey duffle bag, dragged it through the quiet neighbourhood and dumped it in nearby Forest Park.
A dog walker made the grim discovery the following morning and police followed a trail of blood back to Ms Gaal’s home.
A judge ordered Mr Bonola to be held without bond after confessing to the brutal crime.
He is next scheduled to appear in court on 26 April.