Tragic twist in sickening murder of woman burned alive on NYC subway

The woman who was burned alive on a New York City subway last week is yet to be identified, most likely because of how badly charred her remains were, according to a law enforcement official. 

NYPD confirmed detectives are yet to determine the victim's identity, and a separate source told DailyMail.com this is likely due to the dire state of her remains.

'She was burned, she was torched to death,' the official said when explaining the ID delay. The woman, who is believed to have been homeless, was not thought to have been carrying an ID at the time of the attack. 

It's the latest horrific twist in the sickening murder, allegedly by Guatemalan migrant Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, who appeared at Brooklyn Supreme Court charged with murder and arson on Tuesday. He has not yet entered a plea. 

Zapeta-Calil is accused of lighting the unnamed passenger on fire as she slept on the F train at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island just before 7.30am on Sunday. 

Disturbing videos show the suspect watching from the safety of the platform as the woman became engulfed by the blaze, and even stopped to fan the flames at one point. 

Meanwhile, New Yorkers filmed the carnage on their phones and NYPD cops appeared to stroll by without intervening. 

NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told a press conference that officers who responded were not aware the suspect was on the scene at the time.

Zapeta-Calil appeared stony-faced when he appeared at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday. Officers said he told them he was drunk at the time of the horrific subway homicide, and doesn't remember it. 

His friends at the homeless shelter where he had been living said he was a heavy drinker who chain-smoked a synthetic drug known as K2. 

They added that on the day of the murder, Zapeta-Calil shared a breakfast of French toast, sausage and grits at the facility with one of his roommates, before things took a heinous turn.

'He said, 'I'm going out to make my normal run,' then the next thing I hear what he did on the news,' Raymond Robinson, who slept next to Zapeta-Calil at the shelter, told the New York Post. 

'He smoked K2, drank and bugged out,' Robinson said. 'He would bug out and talk to himself when he was high, but he never harmed nobody or himself. When he wasn't high he'd talk like we're talking regular.' 

Following the alleged murder, Zapeta-Calil eventually boarded the F train again, and he was flagged by high schoolers at York Street Station in downtown Brooklyn who recognized him from police pictures distributed on Sunday. 

NYPD officers alerted MTA, who stopped the train eight stops north from the sighting at Herald Square in Midtown Manhattan. Cops boarded the subway and detained Zapeta-Calil as he sat in a busy carriage, as caught in dramatic videos shared online. 

Police Commissioner Tisch praised the police response to the heinous incident as 'an example of great technology and even greater old fashioned police work' during a press conference on Sunday night.

She added that detectives do not believe Zapeta-Calil and the victim knew each other, while giving more details about the 'depraved crime'.  

'The suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car,' she said. 'The suspect used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim's clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds.

'Officers who were on patrol on an upper level of that station smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate. What they saw was a person standing inside a train car, fully engulfed in flames. 

'With the help of an MTA employee and a fire extinguisher, the flames were put out. Unfortunately it was too late, and the victim was pronounced (dead) on the scene.

'Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect had stayed on the scene and was seated on a bench on a platform just outside the train car. 

'The body-worn cameras on the responding officers produced a very clear, detailed look at the killer.' 

Zapeta-Calil was wearing the same 'gray hoodie, distinct wool hat, paint-splattered pants and tan boots' when officers tracked him down, and he also had a lighter in his pocket, the NYPD said. 

Fox News described him as a Guatemalan migrant. This has not been confirmed by police.