Photo Courtesy of NY Daily News
This past Monday, an 80-year-old Staten Island man identified as Robert Raynor was discovered dead in an apartment, the words “I touch little girls” written on his chest, the New York Post reported. As many speculate whether he may have been a pedophile or child molester, his daughter, Carolyn Whetstone, has since spoken out to defend her late father against the rumors, saying to the Daily News that Raynor would “never violate anyone.”
According to the New York Post, the man was discovered with two black eyes and cuts to his face. An autopsy report later confirmed that he died from the fatal beating, the New York Patch reported, with blunt head and torso trauma listed as his official cause.
The case was also reportedly ruled a homicide by a medical examiner.
Defending the Staten Islander against speculation that he may have been a pedophile, Whetstone told the New York Daily News about her father, “He would not touch a child. He would never violate anyone. He’s got daughters and granddaughters that he’s watched when he’s come to visit me … That’s not him. That’s not true.”
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Raynor’s beaten body was found by local police, and also neighbor Isaac Williams, who claimed to have heard loud noises in the Staten Island apartment earlier on Monday morning, according to the New York Post. “I said, ‘What the hell are they doing down there?’ It was loud banging, like ‘boom, boom, boom,’” he told the outlet, adding, “Like people were wrestling or someone was throwing somebody around…The next morning I was coming down to get some cigarettes, and I just happened to look back in the hallway, and I saw him laying there.”
“My first instinct was he was drunk, and he’d just fallen — even though I’d never seen him drunk. But then I just looked. I didn’t get too close, and I was looking at his stomach and chest to see if they were moving,” he continued.
An investigation of Raynor’s murder is ongoing.