Another Gay Internet Hookup Murder

The NYPD suspects that a man found stabbed to death in his Queens apartment last week was murdered by a man he met on the internet.

Michael Pecora's nude body was found in his Forest Hills apartment late Wednesday, hours after his sister called his cell phone only to have a stranger answer, the sources said. The man with Pecora's cell phone was a cab driver, who told the sister he was given the phone earlier in the week by a passenger who said he didn't have any money to pay the fare, sources said. The passenger gave the cab driver the phone and a watch as payment when he was dropped off in the Bronx. The panicked sister called police, and detectives interviewed the cabbie, who told them he picked up the mysterious passenger near Pecora's 65th Ave. apartment, sources said. The building super climbed onto the fire escape and let cops into Pecora's sixth-floor apartment through the window where they found his body sprawled in a hallway near his bedroom. He had been stabbed three times.

Pecora was a 38 year-old University of Tampa graduate, but no other information about him has been released. There has been a rash of internet-related killings of late, including the March stabbing death of gay ABC newsman George Weber.