"The Story" continues...

He said that while riding the subway home from the Prince Hall Masonic Temple in Harlem on Monday, he heard voices and felt powerful. Strangers began speaking to him about his mother and he "felt like Neo from 'The Matrix.'" When he got home to the Prospect Heights apartment he shared with his Haitian immigrant mother, Yannick, 55, he gave her a hug, knowing what he had to do.

Inside was a single, child-sized bed, a small chest of drawers, three upright wooden chairs and a gas heater – all furnished by Jenny Elliot. The place was "spotless": two iPhones, some sim cards and an Apple notebook sat on a table.

"I knew I would never see my mother again," he said. "I gave her lots of love." He went to his room and lit candles, placed a dagger and a 3-foot ceremonial Freemason sword by his side.

A lettings agent who held a spare key showed the policeman in. He was asked to wait downstairs as the officer went up and entered the curtained rooms. Then he entered the bathroom, and found a holdall in the bathtub. Red liquid seeped from it. Inside was a body, in such a contorted position that he thought its "legs and arms had been cut off".

Det Sgt Dave Thomas described the attack as "nasty", and "completely unprovoked and cowardly".

In normal circumstances, they would be required to make a physical identification. However, given the degree of decomposition, police would rely on family photos.

The building in which the body was found was owned by a private company, registered offshore, called New Rodina. Rodina was Russian for "motherland".

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He spent more than a decade in federal prison after being convicted in the late 1980s of taking part in what federal prosecutors called the "largest domestic marijuana syndicate in American history," a string of 29 farms in Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Wisconsin.

"The Story", a short built from the latest news stories from around the world continues.