A homeless woman savagely beaten to death with a stick in Central Park was once the subject of an eye-opening documentary about a gifted artist brought low by a tragic cycle of drugs, prostitution and mental illness.
Nearly two decades before her body was found near a gazebo not far from the Central Park’s popular boathouse Sunday, Elise Bainbridge Hill, 63, was the focus of a sobering documentary about how life’s twists and turns can shape a person’s existence.
In the documentary, “Begging Naked,” which was filmed after she asked a friend to record portions of her life, Hill explains that she ran away as a teen to New York to escape an abusive father only to fall into prostitution and addiction.
In rehab, she says in the film, she learned to paint, sculpt, make dolls and design jewelry. The film follows her desolate path of continued addiction and homelessness, circumstances that don’t appear to have changed since the documentary’s release nearly 20 years ago.
[The image is from that documentary.]
It appears Hill had been living in the park recently.
Hill was found dead a short distance from the Ramble and the Central Park boathouse near East Drive and E. 74th St. shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday. She had been beaten with a wooden stick, which has not been recovered, police say.
Hill also went by the name Francis Lee Rogers.
Jonathan Robles, 36, was charged Sunday night with murder and weapons possession for the slaying after turning himself in at a local NYPD stationhouse, police said.
The suspect lives in a transitional housing facility in Hell’s Kitchen, according to cops. He was taken to a hospital to be treated for an injury to his hand after his arrest.
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