Daniel Rakowitz, the notorious New York City killer dubbed “The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” has been transferred to a lower-security wing of the Wards Island psychiatric complex, a move that could bring him closer to eventual release, The Post has learned.
Rakowitz, an East Village marijuana dealer, gained infamy after killing his roommate, Monika Beerle, in 1989. He dismembered and cooked her remains before allegedly serving a soup containing her brain and fingers to unsuspecting homeless people in Tompkins Square Park.
Rakowitz, 65, was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in 1991. The case returned to the spotlight this week after “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin said she had been the lone holdout juror in the trial, a claim that has since been debunked.
Rather than being sent to prison, Rakowitz was committed to the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island in the East River.
Since 2020, more than 200 forensic patients have been transferred from the original maximum-security Kirby facility — a large brick building with barred windows — to one section of the nearby, more modern Manhattan Psychiatric Center, which is operated by the state.
Rakowitz was quietly transferred to the civilian side of the complex about two years ago, meaning he is now subject to less security, according to a source.
“They’re letting people out prematurely every day,” the source said. “He may be one of those that end up getting out.”
The source said that “99% of patients who are released” first pass through a lower-security setting.
Hospital employees were alarmed when Rakowitz was moved to the less secure wing, according to the source.
“They kept it a soft opening, like letting people know just before they moved him,” the source said, adding that staff members find it nerve-racking to see Rakowitz walking around. “They’re trying to get us used to it.”
The source said many employees were not “on board” with the transfer.
“They’re basically breaking down the barriers between criminal and civil,” the source said. “Letting them out is a very bad idea.”
The hospital campus also includes transitional housing, which is typically considered the final step before a patient’s release.
Last year, a patient living in the hospital’s transitional housing allegedly left the campus, went to Macy’s in Midtown and stabbed a California tourist as she changed her baby in a bathroom.
According to court documents, Kerri Aherne, 43, allegedly used a kitchen knife to slash the tourist’s back and right arm. Aherne was indicted on an attempted murder charge in Manhattan in January.
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The state Office of Mental Health, which oversees Manhattan Psychiatric Center, said confidentiality laws prevented it from commenting on Rakowitz’s case.
Because Rakowitz was committed by a court, a judge would ultimately have to approve his release. However, the judge would not decide whether he could be transferred to the hospital’s transitional housing.
Manhattan Psychiatric Center has an incentive to release patients as it seeks to free up beds. Inmates from Rikers Island who need treatment to become mentally fit for trial are sent there, but the facility has limited capacity, according to the source.
In February 2005, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Donna Mills rejected Rakowitz’s request to be transferred to a less secure facility.
Female jurors reportedly recoiled during a hearing as they watched police video of Rakowitz describing how he killed and dismembered his girlfriend, then boiled her remains in pots “so I could manage the meat better.”
“I was having to deal with a lot of rotted flesh and maggots,” the longhaired Texan drifter said in the gruesome confession tape from 1989.
Former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Gary Galperin litigated Rakowitz’s case for 32 years, handling reviews of his hospitalization every two years up until 2023.
“He has long been considered a psychopath,” Galperin told The Post.
Now an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law, Galperin said Rakowitz has been trying to get out of Kirby “for many, many years.”
“He said he’s done everything he’s been asked to do and he should be able to go to the next step down,” Galperin said.
But when Galperin asked Rakowitz what his treatment goals were in front of the judge, he was unable to list them “after being told his treatment goals hundreds and hundreds of times,” Galperin said.
“I said, ‘Clearly you haven’t met your goals if you don’t know your goals,’” Galperin recalled. “And he said ‘Yes, that would be right.’”
Even more disturbing was the fact that Rakowitz seems to have no insight into what he did wrong, the former prosecutor said.
“He has given dozens of different versions of the crime,” Galperin told The Post. “That’s one of the most troubling parts of his hospitalization. There’s almost as many versions of the crime as there were people asking him.”
Hostin said she changed her fellow jurors’ minds to find Rakowitz not criminally responsible by reason of insanity in his 1991 trial.
She made the boast during a discussion Tuesday about killer-mom Lindsay Clancy’s own insanity defense and the holdout juror in that case. Hostin later doubled down, telling The Post it was her, despite sources who identified the holdout as a man.
