Cops thought the battered body they found at the bottom of a Midtown elevator shaft last month belonged to a homeless drunk on a bender.

They learned days later it was Patrick Casabona Jr., a promising 26-year-old employment-agency recruiter with a master's degree who was raised in Katonah in Westchester, the son of a renowned economist.

The identity only deepened the mystery.

Casabona and at least one friend spent the night of Feb. 21 in a luxury suite at Madison Square Garden, drinking and watching a concert by rock-rap group Linkin Park.


The pal, whose name wasn't revealed by the Casabona family, said the young men hadn't consumed much alcohol, yet Casabona was "acting strange."

After the show, Casabona and the friend got separated. Casabona hailed a cab to go home, but either couldn't tell the cabby where that was or had no money, cops said.

The driver dropped him off outside the Garden.

Two patrol cops allegedly saw him behaving strangely and approached him, but let him go, according to attorneys for the Casabona family. Then, just before midnight, disheveled, without a wallet and alone, Casabona walked into an office building on West 31st Street.

He exchanged words with security guards and pushed his way into a freight elevator, sources told The Post.

Security froze the elevator on the fifth floor and told Casabona, via intercom, to wait for cops, police said. But at that point, Casabona ripped open the elevator's security panel and either tried to climb into another elevator or slide down the cable, sources said. He fell 60 feet to his death.


Authorities couldn't identify Casabona because he was carrying no ID. His frantic family was not contacted for two days - and only after they filed a missing-persons report.

"We didn't know what was going on," said his devastated father, Patrick Casabona Sr., of his only son. "We're sick. We're dead."

The couple has consulted a Westchester attorney to investigate the many unanswered questions that still plague the grieving family: Did the missing wallet indicate he was mugged? Why didn't patrol cops or MSG security stop him if he was acting strange? Had someone slipped him a mickey?