Family says Bronx teen nabbed in dismember slay was manipulated by older boyfriend

A Bronx teen charged along with her 40-year-old boyfriend with brutally murdering and dismembering his roommate is an innocent animal lover “brainwashed” by her much older beau, her family says.

Ronei Harris, 18, was arrested Tuesday for murder, manslaughter, concealment of a human corpse, gun possession and multiple counts of drug possession.

Her boyfriend Muhammad Aadil was nabbed four days earlier on the same charges in the shocking slay of his 46-year-old roommate, Lutalo Henderson, whose burning remains — absent his feet, hands and teeth — were found under the Oak St. bridge in Yonkers early Aug. 5.

“That man manipulated my daughter,” Harris’ mother Rebecca Harris, 43, said of Aadil in an exclusive interview with the Daily News. “He brainwashed her with sex and drugs, and she was only a baby. I don’t think my baby did that. I think he forced her. That’s not my baby. That’s not my child.”

Ronei called her mother from the 41st Precinct stationhouse on Tuesday after being arrested.

“She was crying,” the mother recalled. “She just said, ‘They caught me.’”

Prosecutors say the couple killed Lutalo in the victim’s Bronx apartment sometime between July 27 and Aug. 5, the day the victim’s singed dismembered corpse was discovered in Yonkers.

The duo cut off his legs below the knees, his hands and even removed his jaw before wrapping the torso in trash bags and loading it into a foldable shopping cart for the Metro-North ride, prosecutors charge.

“Whoever did this wanted to try their best to make sure the victim was never identified ,” retired NYPD Chief Terry Monahan told NBC New York after the discovery was made. “The reason anyone would take out teeth, hands and feet from an individual is to prevent identification. Once you remove the hands, you no longer can check fingerprints. You take off the teeth, you can’t check dental records to see who the individual is.”

Henderson was not identified by cops as the victim until about 10 days after his corpse was discovered.

But police quickly recovered surveillance footage allegedly showing Aadil and Harris rolling the torso in the folding cart to the bridge from the nearby Mount Vernon West Metro-North station, authorities say.

Investigators then painstakingly traced the duo’s trip with the corpse on the Metro-North back to the victim’s apartment on Rogers Place near Dawson St. in the South Bronx.

The apartment — where they found Henderson’s teeth along with his hands in a crock pot and his leg in a freezer — was a known spot to score and shoot narcotics, police say. Investigators found cocaine, heroin and a pistol in a bedroom and later charged the couple with possessing them.

Sometime in July or early August, Ronei purchased large pots and briefly brought them home, her relatives say.

“She went to Target and bought these massive big pots. Two pots,” her 22-year-old sister Jada Sand said. “She said [Aadil] told her to buy it.”

“We’re looking at each other,” Ronei’s mother said of her and Sand. “Big a– pots. What are you doing with them things?”

“I thought we were gonna cook seafood,” Sand said.

“We need them,” Sand recalled Ronei saying. “He needs them.”

Adding to the strange behavior, her mother said Ronei recently told her she “wanted to go to church and pray for her sins.”

Ronei grew up in her family’s apartment just two blocks from the victim’s apartment.

The teen, who dropped out of high school and didn’t have a job, spent most of her time at her family’s apartment acting as “the second mother of the house,” looking after a younger sister and brother and 1-year-old nephew, her mom said.

But her habits changed after she met Aadil in the neighborhood and then this past summer started spending most of her time with him, according to her family.

Her boyfriend has done three stints in prison, all for New York City drug sale convictions, records show, and was most recently released in 2019. Ronei has two prior arrests, both sealed, police say.

The victim, who had long struggled with addiction, met Aadil in rehab, the victim’s best friend, Jermaine Lynes, 46, told The News.

“They were in an inpatient unit together,” Lynes said. “Muhammad needed a place to stay, so Lutalo said, ‘OK, you can come stay with me.’”

But Ronei’s frequent presence at the apartment soon irritated Henderson.

Henderson told Lynes he suspected Ronei had stolen a set of keys to his home. He also complained of her using his bath products.

“It bothered him,” Lynes said. “He called me about it on several occasions.”

“Look, I got to get him out of here,” Lynes recalled Henderson saying. “This is frustrating. This girl has no respect for me. They do what they want to do.”

Henderson decided to return to rehab and was set to check in on July 28, Lynes said

The strife between the roommates came to a head when Henderson began packing to go, but Aadil complicated his plans by refusing to give up his rented room, Lynes said.

“[Aadil] claimed, ‘I have squatter’s rights. I get mail here. You can’t kick me out. You gotta go through the courts,’” Lynes said. “[They] had gotten into it over that.”

“This is why [Henderson] called me,” added the friend. “He said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to get you involved, but this is what’s going on with my roommate.’”

Lynes said he last spoke to his friend on the phone on July 24. His calls then went unanswered and investigators found Henderson’s remains 12 days later.

Ronei’s family said they were apprehensive about Aadil, given the 22-year age gap between him and Ronei.

“I was looking like, ‘That can’t be your man!’” Sand recalled. “That man looked a little bit too grown. That don’t look right.”

“I’ve seen my sister crying because they would argue on the phone,” she added. “She normally told me everything. There’s a lot she’s been hiding.”

Ronei’s mother said her daughter has a “good heart,” recalling when Ronei rescued a stray cat she found in the garbage on her way home from junior high school. She excelled on her junior high volleyball team and wanted to become a nurse, friends and family said.

After struggling with anxiety growing up, Ronei found comfort in the family’s rescued greyhound pit bull mix and recently got an emotional support vest for the pooch.

Both suspects are being held without bail on Rikers Island after being arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court.

The victim’s sister Aziza Henderson said the couple’s arrest brought some closure for their family, including Henderson’s daughter, who turned 17 Wednesday.

“Everybody’s really excited,” she said. “It doesn’t bring my brother back, but we’re really relieved.”

“He wanted them to leave — that was the conflict,” she added. “They were not that bright at all. …. Just the audacity to think you can do something like that to someone and get away with it. It’s a straight disrespect to the intelligence of the detectives and any human being who abides by the law. It’s really disgraceful.”

Her brother “was seeking to get himself back together, go into a program and clean himself up,” she added. “He was cut short from the opportunity to do that. His main goal was to clean himself up and be the dad he wanted to be.”

With Thomas Tracy