Cops from the New York Police Department (NYPD) were conducting a wellness check on an elderly man in the Cypress Hills neighborhood when they found the decomposing body of a gentleman known in the neighborhood as “John the Knish Man.”
FBI Investigates Decomposing body found in Brooklyn home with Biohazard Materials
STORY: https://t.co/SmaYmACkRs
Video by HG /FNTV pic.twitter.com/O5AbDO1nUE
— Oliya Scootercaster (@ScooterCasterNY) August 11, 2022
FACT-O-RAMA! A knish is a tasty, potato pocket kind of thingy, of Eastern European Jewish decent found almost exclusively in New York City. They can also be filled with mushrooms, onions, kasha, spinach, or almost anything Eastern European Jews from the early 20th century in New York City could scrounge up. Eaten warm with mustard, Yonah Schimmel sold them from a cart before opening the Big Apple’s first knish shop on the Lower East Side in 1910. The company is still in business today. You can also still buy knishes from carts on the streets of New York City
The classic kasha knish. Famed in song and story as one of the 2 original knishes Uncle Yonah sold from his cart before opening our shop in 1910. A great #vegan treat! Come in and pick some up or order online for nationwide delivery at https://t.co/2Ed1ffG8vx pic.twitter.com/jRB8kH3Aan
— Yonah Knishes (@YonahSchimmelNY) August 4, 2022
The cops believe the “Knish Man,” who was found sitting in a chair, had been dead and decomposing in the brutal August heat for at least a week. What they found next was even more disturbing.
The Knish Man had a collection of canisters in his apartment with biohazard labels stuck to them. Police also found sealed jars. Then the cops located schematic drawings for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The entire building was ordered emptied as officials in biohazard suits began to clear the apartment of anything deemed potentially dangerous. Officials from the FBI and NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection joined the case. Air quality tests were conducted for radioactive and toxic elements but nothing foul was detected in the air. Police did find amounts of ricin, a potentially deadly poison that comes from castor beans.
A neighbor told told the NY Post that the Knish Man openly spoke of making poisons, which he kept in his apartment to “ward off intruders” and keep people from following him home. He also believed the CIA was after him.
“He always thought the CIA was going to kill him. He says ‘they’re out to kill me,’” Dave, a long time neighbor of the Knish Man, told the NY Post. “I always thought it was folklore. He was a little mysterious. He said he did covert stuff for the military. He didn’t get into details.”
The wellness check on the Knish Man came after the owner of the restaurant below the Knish Man’s apartment smelled what he though was a piece of rotting meat in his establishment, or perhaps a dead rat.
“There was a smell coming down in the restaurant, since a week now. I thought it was something in my restaurant,” owner Sohail Zaman told the NY Post. “I check in my restaurant, I clean up everything, I don’t find anything in the restaurant.” That’s when the police knocked down the dead man’s door.
Authorities have not yet identified which WMDs were identifieded in the diagrams.
No cause of death for John the Knish Man has been released as of yet. The Department of Environmental Protection has not yet released the contents of the canisters and sealed jars.
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