Daniel Rakowitz, the convicted killer once branded the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” has reportedly been transferred from a maximum-security psychiatric hospital to a facility with fewer security restrictions. The move has prompted speculation among hospital workers that he could eventually be considered for release.
Rakowitz, now 65, was prosecuted in 1991 over the 1989 killing and dismemberment of his roommate, Monika Beerle. During the trial, testimony alleged that he later gave some of her remains to homeless people in New York’s Tompkins Square Park.
A jury determined that Rakowitz was not criminally responsible because of insanity. He was subsequently confined to the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, a maximum-security psychiatric institution.
But sources recently told the New York Post that Rakowitz was transferred about two years ago to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, which is also located on Wards Island but operates with a lower level of security.
One unnamed source claimed the center has been “letting people out prematurely every day” and suggested Rakowitz could eventually be among those allowed to leave.
“They [hospital administrators] kept it a soft opening, like letting people know just before they moved him,” the source said. “They’re trying to get us used to it.”
The source added that employees were stunned when they encountered Rakowitz walking through the lower-security section of the hospital.
Kirby generally receives patients committed through the court system, while Manhattan Psychiatric Center provides both inpatient treatment and outpatient care.
Daniel Rakowitz, now 65, was found not criminally responsible because of insanity in the 1991 killing and dismemberment of his roommate
A witness told Rakowitz’s trial that he distributed Beerle’s remains to homeless people in Tompkins Square Park. He is pictured in the park in 1987 during an argument with an unidentified homeless man
Contemporary newspaper reports claimed a lone juror was behind the jury’s “not guilty” decision
The Manhattan Psychiatric Center also has transitional-living arrangements designed to help some patients move toward greater independence after hospitalization.
New York’s Office of Mental Health, which supervises the state-operated hospitals, declined to confirm whether Rakowitz had been transferred, citing patient privacy rules. The Daily Mail has also requested comment from the agency.
In 2010, Rakowitz asked the New York Supreme Court to move him to a less restrictive institution. The request was rejected, and he was ordered to remain at Kirby.
Then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said the ruling “continues to protect the residents of New York.”
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The case drew widespread attention after Rakowitz was acquitted by reason of insanity. Earlier this month, The View co-host Sunny Hostin said she had been the lone holdout juror in the Rakowitz trial while discussing the Lindsay Clancy case.
Clancy faced trial for the deaths of her three children. Jurors were reportedly prepared to return a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity after hearing arguments about postpartum psychosis, but one juror objected, resulting in a mistrial.
“The reason I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case, in the Daniel Rakowitz case,” Hostin said.
Hostin explained that she believed Rakowitz was experiencing psychosis at the time. “He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her, he panicked,” she said, describing allegations that he dismembered Beerle, boiled parts of her body and distributed them to unhoused people.
Rakowitz was a familiar figure in New York’s East Village, where he reportedly sold marijuana and walked the streets with a live chicken. After years in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital, he has reportedly been transferred to another facility on Wards Island
Hostin recalled that jury deliberations were intense, and one of her fellow jurors threw a chair at her amidst a heated discussion.
The co-host’s claims were later called into question when unearthed newspaper clippings cited the holdout juror as an unemployed man who wanted the trial to continue so he could be paid and get free meals.
The New York Times reported at the time that one holdout juror convinced the others not to deliver a guilty verdict.
‘We don’t think he intended to kill her. But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime,’ juror Asuncion Cummings was quoted in the Times after the case concluded. Asuncion Cummings is Hostin’s full maiden name.
After jurors delivered their decision, Rakowitz thanked them and said he hoped ‘someday we can smoke a joint together.’
‘The prosecution had an overwhelming case against me. But I’ll be getting out soon and I’ll sell a lot of marijuana so I can bring to justice the people who actually committed this crime,’ he added.
Rakowitz testified during the trial that he would rather go to prison than a mental hospital because he did not want to be medicated.
He denied killing Beerle, who was a 29-year-old dance student, but did confess to dismembering her, then bleaching and boiling her bones.
One witness testified that Rakowitz served a homeless man at the park soup that contained a human finger.
Before the nauseating crime, Rakowitz was a known character in the East Village neighborhood for selling marijuana and walking around with a live chicken. He called himself the ‘God of Marijuana.’