Jonathan Robles, 36, turned himself in to police late Sunday after allegedly bludgeoning a homeless artist to death with a stick inside a Central Park gazebo.
The victim was Lee Rogers, 63, a fixture in the Manhattan green space who spent years sleeping rough while selling intricate wildlife watercolors to birdwatchers and parkgoers. Law-enforcement sources said Rogers died Sunday near 74th Street and East Drive, in the shadow of the park’s boathouse, following an argument that spiraled into violence.
Robert DeCandido, a nature walk guide known as “Birding Bob,” had known Rogers through her work at the bird feeders. “She was like the Grandma Moses of Central Park,” he told The Post on Monday. “When she did the bird feeders, the birders loved her. They would buy her artwork in the park.”
Rogers cultivated an air of mystery during her decades in the park, often appearing with a sketchbook and a twisted walking stick. She politely declined to give her age or biographical details when the outlet profiled her in 2012, comparing her work to that of naturalist artist John James Audubon. On her website and Facebook page, she identified herself as Francis Lee Rogers, though law-enforcement sources said she was also known as Elise Bainbridge Hill.
That alternate name connects to a 2007 documentary, “Begging Naked,” which traced her path from teenage runaway to New York City. The film detailed how she fell into prostitution and drug addiction, worked as a stripper, and continued developing her artistic skills through years of hardship.
“For many years I was homeless,” she wrote on her website. “I worked on my paintings at the Central Park boathouse.”
Word of a body in the gazebo spread quickly through the park’s overlapping communities Sunday. Birdwatchers and homeless people who frequent the green space began circulating Rogers’ name before authorities confirmed her identity. The brutal manner of death — bludgeoning with a stick — and the artistic legacy she maintained despite her circumstances combined to deepen the shock among those who had encountered her.
Sources said the precise nature of the dispute between Rogers and Robles remained unclear, though it escalated from some type of argument into the fatal attack. Robles was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan court Monday on murder and criminal possession of a weapon charges.
Rogers sold her paintings while camping out at churches near the park, building a reputation that outlasted her most difficult years. DeCandido’s comparison to Grandma Moses, the 1950s American folk painter discovered late in life, captured how park regulars viewed her: an unlikely artist whose talent emerged from adversity and found an audience among the binocular-wielding birders who gathered where she worked.
