A 28-year-old Italian man was held captive and tortured for weeks in a Manhattan luxury apartment before escaping Friday morning and finding a traffic enforcement officer for help.
Police say the man was a former business partner of several crypto entrepreneurs who lived in the opulent SoHo brownstone but had a falling out with them and returned to Italy, WABC reported. The crypto enthusiasts lured him back to New York on May 6 with false business promises then kidnapped him and began a regime of torture.
One of the entrpreneurs, identifed as 37-year-old John Woeltz of Kentucky, was taken into custody, WNBC reported.
The victim told police his torturers confiscated his passport and demanded access to his crypto account, WABC reported. Police said the sadistic attackers tied the man up with electrical cords and tortured him with electrocutions and other forms of shock treatment. They reportedly tased him with his feet in water, pistol-whipped him, and threatened to cut off his limbs with a chainsaw.
Investigators said they found Polaroids of the torturers doing their work, including one showing the victim bound to a chair with a gun to his head. Detectives said they believed the photographs were intended to extort money from the victim or his family in Italy.
They also forced the victim to take drugs and subjected him to a variety of psychological torture, telling him he would never escape. They even put a tracking device on his neck.
The victim made a concerted effort to escape on Friday, he said, because the men told him that was the day they would kill him.
Police found one of the kidnapping torturers upstairs, wearing a bathrobe, when they arrived. They are looking for several other men who lived at the townhouse.
The 8-bedroom, 10-bathroom townhome was rented for $30,000 to $40,000 per month, according to police, who said the inside was trashed with broken glass, helmets, night vision goggles, and a bulletproof vest. When they found a gun, they requested a search warrant for a deeper search.
The victim had numerous cuts on his body and was taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.
Detectives are also interviewing two butlers who were at the home working for the man they took into custody.
Formal charges for Woeltz have not been announced.
