This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/nyregion/murder-upper-west-side-susan-trott.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Neighbor Is Sought in Murder of Upper West Side Woman In Murder of Upper West Side Woman, Police Seek Female Neighbor
(35 minutes later)
The investigation into the slaying of a 70-year-old woman on the Upper West Side is focusing on a female neighbor who lives in the victim’s building, the police said.The investigation into the slaying of a 70-year-old woman on the Upper West Side is focusing on a female neighbor who lives in the victim’s building, the police said.
“We believe that all the pieces of that puzzle are in that building,” Dermot Shea, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, said at a news conference on Monday afternoon. He did not identify the person the police want to question, but said she is a neighbor of the victim. “We believe that all the pieces of that puzzle are in that building,” Dermot Shea, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, said Monday afternoon.
He did not identify the person the police want to question, but said she is a neighbor of the victim. Chief Shea said the police were investigating the nature of their relationship.
[Read more about the slaying.][Read more about the slaying.]
The announcement shocked residents along the quiet residential stretch of West End Avenue, who were still grappling with the grisly death of Susan Trott, a longtime copywriter. Ms. Trott was found dead early Sunday, her throat slashed, inside a bedroom in her 14th floor apartment. The announcement shocked residents along the quiet residential stretch of West End Avenue, who were still grappling with the grisly death of Susan Trott, a longtime copywriter who neighbors said lived alone.
The 16-story, red brick building, a block away from Riverside Park, has surveillance cameras and a 24-hour doorman. The police have said they found no weapon and identified no signs of forced entry into Ms. Trott’s apartment. Ms. Trott was found dead early Sunday inside a bedroom in her 14th-floor apartment. Her throat had been slashed. No murder weapon was found and there were no signs of forced entry, the police said.
The 16-story building between 94th and 95th Streets, a block away from Riverside Park, has a 24-hour doorman and cameras in the front and the rear of the building.
Detectives told residents that the footage of people coming and going from the building was clear, and there were no recent visitors recorded in the log for Ms. Trott’s apartment, according to a letter written by the building’s board of directors and slipped under residents’ doors late Sunday.
Ruth Chiamulera, who lives on the 12th floor, said it was frightening to hear that a neighbor was being sought for questioning. She said residents assumed the killer had been someone from outside the building whom Ms. Trott had given permission to enter. “I think that’s going to really freak people out,” she said. “I pretty much assumed it was someone she allowed into the building.”
Neighbors described Ms. Trott as an eccentric, divisive figure with strong opinions. She was known to chide people for letting their dogs chase squirrels. Others complained about Ms. Trott’s habit of feeding neighborhood birds.
“She would throw bird seeds literally everywhere,” Ms. Chiamulera, a longtime resident, said. “It attracted lots of pigeons, but it also attracted lots of rats. That caused another problem. People were not happy with her.”
Other neighbors and relatives remembered Ms. Trott as an avid animal lover who rescued dogs and birds off the street. She had even started a rescue organization several years ago.
“I think what was most important to her and her life was her love of animals,” Carmen Lodico, Ms. Trott’s sister, said. “She was always trying to save something.”
One neighbor recalled that Ms. Trott had rescued an old, white pit bull and would push the dog in a cart when it was too sick to walk. “She was just one of those colorful New York characters,” said Bill Sacrey, 73, a local dog owner who knew Ms. Trott. “This is horrible.”
Ms. Trott divided her time between New York and London, writing copy for television, print and social media campaigns with a business partner, Eric Boscia.
For four decades, Ms. Trott was a copywriter for advertising agencies. She worked for marketing giants like Saatchi & Saatchi, handling a wide array of big-name accounts, including Haagen-Dazs, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T and American Express, according to her personal website.
She had been born Susan Lodico in 1948, the daughter of a Sicilian father and an American mother. She grew up in Queens with a brother and two sisters, including an identical twin.
Creativity ran in the family.
Her father, Salvatore, was a senior art director at Young & Rubicam, the advertising agency that produced some of the first color television commercials. Her sisters studied fashion and visual arts, and she attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School on a fine arts scholarship, then studied advertising design and visual communications at Pratt Institute.
After graduating in 1969, Ms. Trott broke into the advertising industry at a time when the business was undergoing a creative revolution in New York City.
“Suddenly everyone from art school wanted to go to advertising,” said Dave Trott, her ex-husband. “New York was 10, 20 years ahead of everyone else.”
Susan and Dave Trott had met at the Pratt Institute and lived together in Brooklyn and Manhattan for a few years, before moving to London, where they married and worked together as copywriters at the same advertising agency.
Mr. Trott said she wrote the lyrics for a song featured in a Pepsi television commercial that became a hit in Britain. “They don’t put up a battle when they hear my ice cubes rattle,” the song went. “My social life is busy since I’ve been buying lots of fizzy. Pepsi!”
The couple divorced amicably after seven years because she wanted to live in New York and he loved London, Mr. Trott said.
“She was a bulldozer, which is a very New York thing,” said Mr. Trott, who still lives in London. “She didn’t care what people think. What I learned from her, which was life-changing, was self confidence.”
Back in New York, Ms. Trott married Paul Wolfe, according to Martha Wetterhall Thomas, who worked with Ms. Trott at BBDO, an advertising agency.
“She was a powerful little devil,” Ms. Thomas said. “Paul was an architect and he wasn’t making a lot of money, so she trained him as a copywriter.”
Ms. Trott stood out in the workplace for her creative chops, her competitive nature and her seamless ability to fit in among male colleagues in the male-dominated era depicted in “Mad Men,” the television series. Younger women in the business looked up to her.
“She was clowning around with the guys and it seemed like fun,” Ms. Thomas said.
At her building late on Monday, detectives came and went, as residents struggled to make sense of the news that the police were looking for someone who lived there.
“She kind of got into people’s business, but she was friendly,” said Denise LeDonne, a friend who lives on the same block. “I figured it would have to be somebody she knew. It’s still sad.”