Man Arrested for Murder in Connection to Remains Found in Wildlife Refuge

By Katie McFadden

The discovery of human remains within the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge near Broad Channel, resulted in an arrest for a murder that took place last summer.

Late Thursday night, March 5, a heavily decomposing human head was discovered within the wildlife refuge, off of Cross Bay Blvd. Police investigators and a medical examiner van could be seen on Cross Bay Blvd. on Friday morning, as they processed the crime scene. Upon further search of the area, an arm and legs were discovered on March 6. The medical examiner later determined the remains were human, and it was suspected that the head belonged to torso of a woman found deeper into Queens in September.

Sanitation discovered the woman’s dismembered torso while clearing trash from the edge of Idlewild Park near Brookville and Rosedale on September 22, 2025, 10 miles from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Her decomposing body, with identifiable tattoos, was in a blue moving blanket wrapped with a yellow rope.

A search warrant was later issued and executed on a defendant’s home, resulting in the recovery of plastic wrap and yellow rope, which the NYPD Laboratory determined was consistent with the yellow rope used to bind the victim’s torso. The execution of a second search warrant for the defendant’s work garage resulted in the recovery of a moving blanket, identical to the moving blanket which the torso was found in.

The head, legs and arm found last week completed the case. According to police, on Wednesday morning, 74-year-old Rupchand Simboo was arrested in his South Ozone Park home for the murder of his 34-year-old wife, Salisha Ali, who was last seen alive by a relative during a Facetime call on July 13. She failed to show up for work the next day. On July 19, at the request of the victim’s mother, Simboo had filed a missing person report. Investigators believe he killed her and tried covering his tracks.

Upon the discovery of the additional body parts, detectives searched the wooded area in the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge based upon the Simboo’s GPS coordinates from the Life360 app on his phone. The data showed that the he was present at that location on July 14, 2025 – the day after the victim was last seen alive. Simboo’s Life360 data further showed that the following day, on July 15, 2025, the defendant was present at the location off of Brookville Boulevard and 149th Avenue where the victim’s torso was discovered by sanitation workers.

The couple met in 2023 when Ali lived in Trinidad. They got married in 2024 when she moved back to Queens. Ali was a mother of three children, whose names she had tattooed on her body.

Simboo was charged with murder in the second degree, two counts of concealment of a human corpse, and two counts of tampering with physical evidence. If convicted, Simboo faces up to 25 years to life in prison.