Syracuse Woman Pleads Guilty To Torturing, Killing 93-Year-Old For Her Apartment

A Syracuse, New York woman will spend much — if not all — of the rest of her life in prison after pleading to the murder-by-torture of an elderly woman and then living in the apartment with her victim's body.

Victoria Afet, 23, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to the murder and robbery of Concetta "Connie" Tuori, 93, on Feb. 26, 2021 and the concealment of her body as part of an agreement with prosecutors to drop the more serious murder-by-torture charges and its mandatory life sentence, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard.

In the grand jury indictment last May, obtained by Andrew Donovan of local ABC affiliate WSYR, prosecutors alleged that Abet broke into Tuori's 12th floor apartment in the notoriously crime-ridden Skyline Apartments in downtown Syracuse. Using a knife, she burglarized the apartment, tortured Tuori by stuffing items in her mouth and down her throat — ultimately asphyxiating her — and stabbing her, and then dragged Tuori's body into the bedroom to conceal it. 

Afet, prosecutors said, then lived in Tuori's apartment with her decaying body for weeks before a concerned friend of Tuori's requested a welfare check on the elderly woman. Police discovered her body on March 17, 2021, according to the Post-Standard.

Security footage showed Afet following Tuori into the elderly woman's apartment around 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 26 and leaving about two hours later, according to the Post-Standard. Police told WSYR that they believe Afet used Tuori's keys to take up residence in the apartment for 19 days until her body was discovered, and that Afet had a variety of visitors during that time.

Under the terms of the plea deal, Afet received a nearly 30 years-to-life sentence, and will be eligible for parole at the end of slightly less than 30 years.

She pled guilty to murder, robbery and concealment in the Tuori case, as well as to charges of a strong-arm robbery of another elderly resident of the same building on Feb. 18, 2021 (she was released without bail by the judge in that case over prosecutors' objections, according to WSYR) and to another stabbing she committed in August 2020. She was indicted on the latter charges on Feb, 2, 2021 and was listed as failed to appear on those stabbing charges on Feb. 18 — the same day she committed the other robbery to which she's now pleaded guilty and for which she was initially granted release with no bail.

She was also charged by the New York State Police on Feb. 26, 2021 — the day she murdered Tuori — with stealing a friend's car, and then charged with stealing and crashing another car on Feb. 28, 2021.

Afet had been convicted of two crimes in the year before she murdered Tuori: a larceny at a Rite Aid in May 2020 for which she pleaded guilty in July 2020 and received three years probation; and a violation of that probation, issued in August 2020, for which she pleaded guilty in January 2021 and was sentenced to time served, WSYR reported.

She was also facing a host of other charges at the time of Tuori's murder, police noted.

The Skyline Apartments, at the time of Tuori's murder, was, and remains a notorious building in the city, as the Post-Standard reported, known for a lack of security, violence, filth and drugs due to what tenants and later city officials said was improper maintenance and security by the building's owner and management company. The building's common areas have been declared "unfit to live" by the city three times in the year since Tuori's murder, according to the paper — including as recently as last week. At the time of her death, police were responding to an average of 81 calls in the building per month.

The owners of the building told the Post-Standard that it's under contract for sale to a "national entity," which they did not identify.