A homeless convicted sex offender was arrested Sunday after allegedly shoplifting from a Manhattan TJ Maxx, leading police to discover he was wanted for the 2024 strangulation of a beloved Soho art dealer.
Larry Powlis, 60, tried to give officers the alias Larry Davis when they stopped him around 1:10 p.m. At the store near West 57th Street, but his fingerprints betrayed him, cops and law-enforcement sources said. He had attempted to steal $25 in art supplies.
Powlis was charged Monday with the murder of Egizio Panetti, 67, a legally blind eccentric known among friends as “the real Auntie Mame” for his flamboyant style and cape-wearing wardrobe.
Panetti, who also battled cancer, met Powlis on the street in September 2024 while out to dinner with a friend in Greenwich Village, authorities said. The pair eventually visited a nearby ATM before ending up at Panetti’s upscale apartment on Spring Street near West Broadway, where Powlis allegedly choked him to death.
Investigators had identified Powlis as a suspect early in their probe but were held up waiting for the city Medical Examiner’s Office to officially rule on cause of death and for crucial DNA evidence to come back, sources said. They finally gathered enough to formally name him a suspect on Sept. 3.
The breakthrough allowed the eagle-eyed cops who stopped him Sunday to spot the designation when they ran his information through the NYPD computer system, sources said.
Panetti was found dead on Sept. 24, 2024, by a neighbor conducting a routine wellness check after he failed to return an earlier phone call, police sources said.
Powlis was allegedly caught on surveillance video leaving the victim’s home wearing different clothes than he had on when he first encountered Panetti, sources said.
Friends remembered Panetti as a fabulous “Venetian count” who was “simply one of a kind,” drawing comparisons to Rosalind Russell’s legendary title character in the 1958 classic “Auntie Mame.” His distinctive personal style and warmth made him a fixture in Soho’s art scene.
Sources said Powlis has a sex offense conviction in Texas.
He was awaiting arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday.
