Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of assault and murder. Reader discretion is advised.
One of the episodes of Netflix’s true crime docuseries Homicide: New York, which was released on March 20, 2024, follows the brutal murder of Eridania Rodriguez and the subsequent conviction of Joseph Pabon. The episode, titled “Vanished on Wall Street,” is currently streaming on Netflix.
Eridania Rodriguez, 46, disappeared from an office tower at 2 Rector Street in Lower Manhattan, where she was on cleaning duty. She was last seen in a surveillance video between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on July 7, 2009. She was in her blue uniform, pushing the cleaning cart into an elevator, in the video. When she did not show up for dinner that night, Rodriguez’s co-workers grew suspicious and called the police, reported The New York Times.
ABC 7 reported that police found Eridania Rodriguez’s body on July 11, 2009, after they investigated blood that was leaking from a ventilation shaft in the building. Although they couldn’t identify the body at first, authorities determined that it was Rodriguez’s after a medical examination. Police then arrested Joseph Pabon, who worked as an elevator operator in the building where Rodriguez was last seen.
According to NBC News, authorities alleged that Pabon attacked Rodriguez on July 7 on the eighth floor of the 26-story office building. The floor was empty when he reportedly suffocated her with tape and hid her body in the shaft. He then told his manager that he wasn’t feeling well and went home. Following his arrest and interrogation, Pabon was charged with second-degree murder and kidnapping charges.
What did Eridania Rodriguez’s autopsy reveal?
Eridania Rodriguez’s autopsy revealed that she died of asphyxiation. The death was caused by the duct tape that was used to bind her head and face. The New York Times reported that she had been bound and gagged. A gold crucifix, which was part of the necklace that the victim wore, was taped to her mouth. When the police found her body, she was reportedly in her blue custodial uniform and was positioned on her knees. Her hands were bound behind her back with black and yellow tape.
Authorities found Joseph Pabon’s DNA in the victim’s fingernails. Prosecutors argued that he bound and suffocated her with duct tape on the eighth floor before he took her body to the twelfth floor in the elevator and left it in an air duct there. The court convicted Pabon of Eridania Rodriguez’s murder and sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison, per The New York Times.
Eridania Rodriguez moved to New York in the early 1980s from the Dominican Republic with her parents and siblings. At the time of her disappearance and death in 2009, she was a mother of three. She reportedly expressed her anxieties about working alone in the building late in the night to relatives. She even planned to quit her job soon.
“Vanished on Wall Street,” the third episode of Homicide: New York, is currently streaming on Netflix.
