NEW YORK — When Nisaa Walcott’s teenage son returned from school to their East Harlem apartment last week, his mom wasn’t home — but his mom’s cousin was there to greet him, cleaning the floor with bleach.
The teen had gotten a mysterious text from his mom that day explaining the 21-year-old cousin would be there to take care of him while she was unexpectedly away on business.
What the boy didn’t learn until days later was that his mother, a beautician at a Harlem barbershop, had been strangled. Her body was rotting in a plastic container on the rooftop of their apartment building, part of NYCHA’s Lexington Houses on E. 99th St. near Park Ave.
The cousin, Khalid Barrow, killed her, according to prosecutors — and used her cell phone to text the son and other relatives to dupe them into thinking she was alive.
Barrow scrubbed Walcott’s apartment with bleach after killing her, enlisted an accomplice to eventually move her body from the roof to the Bronx, where he dumped her, and used her phone to make credit card purchases, prosecutors said in court Sunday.
Walcott’s son last saw her on Feb. 16, when she woke him up to go to school.
When he returned to their home, Barrow was there cleaning the apartment, the powerful smell of bleach in the air, according to prosecutor Elizabeth Clerkin.
“Over the course of the next week, the son never spoke to the mother on the phone or saw her again,” Clerkin said during Barrow’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Sunday. “He received text messages from the defendant from his mother — but it was the defendant who used her phone.”
All the while, Barrow and an accomplice were trying to cover up the heinous crime, caught on video as they dragged Walcott’s body to an elevator and took it to the roof of her building on Feb. 18, prosecutors charge.
The ruse started to fall apart by Wednesday, when another relative became suspicious the victim was communicating only by text rather than talking over the phone. When that family member asked for a photo as proof that she was OK, Barrow sent a photograph relatives recognized as old.
“They became concerned and contacted her son,” Clerkin said.
On Wednesday, the son got a text message from his mom’s phone, telling her that his uncle would be calling to check on her and that he should tell his uncle everything would be OK, that his mother was out of town on business, and that he shouldn’t have to explain further, the complaint alleges.
The next day, Barrow met with the relative in the Bronx, who noticed Barrow had Walcott’s phone, Clerkin said. Her family took the phone from him and filed a missing persons report.
In the wee hours Friday, Barrow and his accomplice allegedly decided to move the body, bringing it to a waiting vehicle.
Surveillance video shows Barrow get out of a Toyota Highlander SUV with Taxi & Limousine Commission plates on University Ave. in the shadow of the Major Deegan Expressway in Highbridge, the Bronx. There he hauled a clear plastic bin with a blue plastic lid out of the trunk and dragged it down the sidewalk, according to the complaint.
Police found the bin later in the day and learned Walcott’s fate. She was decomposing, covered in clothes, sandals and slippers.
“This is so crucial, the time line. It’s really disheartening that they were moving her around,” Walcott’s sister-in-law Anginette Butler told the Daily News on Sunday.
“Khalid is 21 years old. He was probably a little boy when I met him,” she said. “He looks like a calm person, he looks like a little kid. We don’t know what ticked him off. What would tick you off to do something like this?”
“We want to see the video footage,” she added. “It’s hard to believe that he did this to her.”
When a detective spoke with Barrow later in the day Friday, he was wearing clothes, including a Canada Goose jacket and a black ski mask, that matched those of one of the men in the video from Feb. 18, the complaint alleges.
Cops had no information on the accomplice Sunday, who has not been named or charged.
About 10 of Walcott’s family and friends watched as the 5-foot-10, 150-pound Barrow arrived at his arraignment Sunday wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and a light blue sweater wrapped around his waist.
“There he go, that bastard,” one woman said. He made no eye contact with any of Walcott’s loved ones, staying silent and looking forward at the judge.
As the prosecutor described the crime in detail, the faces of Walcott’s relatives twisted from enraged to worried to tearful.
“This is terrible. Oh my God,” one man gasped.
Judge James Burke ordered Barrow held without bail.
His lawyer, Adam Freedman of the New York County Defender Services, worried that one of the victim’s relatives is a correction officer.
“I would urge the people to take all steps necessary to make sure my client and the correction officer do not have any contact or have any reason to be in contact,” he said. “I’m also concerned generally that because the correction officer is involved as a potential witness in this case, that may somehow affect my client’s custody and incarceration.”
Freedman said it’s not clear who’s visible in the video footage and said the videos don’t show everything that Barrow is accused of.
“Whether or not this is a strong case is very much subject to question,” he told the judge. “My client is entering a plea of not guilty and he intends to fight this case Judge and we will do so on his behalf.”
Barrow has a domestic violence arrest from March 2020, when he was accused of grabbing his girlfriend by the throat and pushing her against the wall in his Bronx apartment, according to police sources. He also reported himself as a victim in that incident, sources said.
The resolution of that case was not immediately known.
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(Thomas Tracy and Rocco Parascandola contributed to this report.)
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