A 28-year-old Italian man found himself in a harrowing situation when he was held captive and subjected to torture for several weeks in a luxurious Manhattan apartment. He managed to escape on Friday morning and sought help from a traffic enforcement officer.
According to reports by WABC, the man had previously been in business with a group of crypto entrepreneurs who resided in a lavish SoHo brownstone. After disagreements led to his return to Italy, the crypto enthusiasts enticed him back to New York on May 6 under false pretenses of business opportunities, only to then abduct him and subject him to a brutal regimen of torture.
One of the entrpreneurs, identifed as 37-year-old John Woeltz of Kentucky, was taken into custody, WNBC reported.
The victim recounted to the authorities that his captors took away his passport and coerced him into granting them access to his crypto account. The perpetrators engaged in sadistic acts such as binding him with electrical cords and using electrocution and other forms of shock therapy to inflict pain. Shockingly, they also tased him while his feet were submerged in water, beat him with a pistol, and made gruesome threats of dismemberment using 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.
