NYC’s Notorious “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” Could Be Closer to Freedom After Decades in Custody

Posted by Team - September 26, 2026

The notorious New York City cannibal known as “The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” has been moved to a lower-security wing of the Wards Island loony bin — putting him one step closer to freedom, The Post has learned.

East Village weed dealer Daniel Rakowitz became infamous for slaughtering his roommate Monkia Beerle in 1989, chopping up and cooking her, and slurping up a revolting soup of brains and fingers. He then fed it to unsuspecting hobos in Tompkins Square Park.

With or without the help of “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin — who propelled the case back into the headlines this week after saying she was the lone holdout juror in the murder trial, a claim since debunked — Rakowitz, 65, was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in 1991.

Instead of state prison, he was sent to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island in the East River.

Since 2020, more than 200 criminal patients were moved from the original maximum-security Kirby facility — a mᴀssive brick structure with barred windows — to one side of the nearby and more modern, state-run Manhattan Psychiatric Center.

Rakowitz, 65, was quietly moved to the civilian side about two years ago, and has less security around him as a result, the source said.

“They’re letting people out prematurely every day,” the source said. “He may be one of those that end up getting out.”

“Ninety-nine percent of patients who are released” get moved to lower security first, the source said.

Hospital employees were alarmed when the state moved Rakowitz to the less secure wing, the source said.

“They kept it a soft opening, like letting people know just before they moved him,” the source said, noting that seeing Rakowitz walking around is nerve-racking. “They’re trying to get us used to it.”

Still, many staffers weren’t “on board.”

“They’re basically breaking down the barriers between criminal and civil,” the source said. “Letting them out is a very bad idea.”

The hospital also has transitional housing on its campus, which is usually the last stage before freedom.

A patient in the hospital’s transitional housing walked out and traveled to Macy’s in Midtown last year and stabbed a tourist from California while she was changing her baby in a bathroom.

Kerri Aherne, 43, allegedly used a kitchen knife as she hacked the tourist’s back and right arm, according to court documents. She was indicted on an attempted murder charge in Manhattan in January.

The state Office of Mental Health — which oversees MPC — said confidentiality laws prevent it from discussing the Rakowitz case.

A judge would ultimately need to decide to release Rakowitz because he was committed by the court — but does not get a say in whether the convicted killer could be moved to the hospital’s transitional housing.

MPC has reason to release patients to make room at the hospital. Rikers Island inmates who must be declared mentally fit to stand trial are taken there for treatment but there are few beds, the source said.

In February 2005, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Donna Mills ruled against Rakowitz’s bid to be transferred to a less secure facility.

Female jurors cringed at the hearing as they watched police video of him describing killing and dismembering his girlfriend, then boiling her in pots “so I could manage the meat better.”

“I was having to deal with a lot of rotted flesh and maggots,” the longhaired Texan drifter said in the gruesome confession tape from 1989.

Former Manhattan ᴀssistant District Attorney Gary Galperin litigated Rakowitz’s case for 32 years, handling reviews of his hospitalization every two years up until 2023.

“He has long been considered a psychopath,” Galperin told The Post.

Now an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law, Galperin said Rakowitz has been trying to get out of Kirby “for many, many years.”

“He said he’s done everything he’s been asked to do and he should be able to go to the next step down,” Galperin said.

But when Galperin asked Rakowitz what his treatment goals were in front of the judge, he was unable to list them “after being told his treatment goals hundreds and hundreds of times,” Galperin said.

“I said, ‘Clearly you haven’t met your goals if you don’t know your goals,’” Galperin recalled. “And he said ‘Yes, that would be right.’”

Even more disturbing was the fact that Rakowitz seems to have no insight into what he did wrong, the former prosecutor said.

“He has given dozens of different versions of the crime,” Galperin told The Post. “That’s one of the most troubling parts of his hospitalization. There’s almost as many versions of the crime as there were people asking him.”

Hostin said she changed her fellow jurors’ minds to find Rakowitz not criminally responsible by reason of insanity in his 1991 trial.

She made the boast during a discussion Tuesday about killer-mom Lindsay Clancy’s own insanity defense and the holdout juror in that case. Hostin later doubled down, telling The Post it was her, despite sources who identified the holdout as a man.

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The notorious New York City cannibal known as “The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” has been moved to a lower-security wing of the Wards Island loony bin —…

NYC’s Notorious “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” Could Be Closer to Freedom After Decades in Custody

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