'Disgruntled client', 64, is charged with murder for 'stabbing NYC divorce and real estate lawyer, 65, to death because he was angry about home foreclosure'

Charles Zolot, 65, was stabbed to death in his Queens office last Thursday. Nando Perez, an alleged former client, was arrested for his murder on Monday 

A suspect arrested in the stabbing death of a Queens lawyer launched the attack because he was angry over a foreclosure, it has been claimed.  

Bronx native Nando Perez, 64, was taken into custody at 8.15am on Monday - five days after 65-year-old Charles Zolot was found dead in his office on August 5. Perez is being held on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon. 

Sources told the New York Post that Perez was a 'disgruntled' client of Zolot, who practiced divorce and real estate law in the city.  

The alleged killer and his brother were previously alleged to have threatened Zolot the night before he was killed.  

Specific details of the relationship between Zolot and Perez have not been disclosed by police, who did not return DailyMail.com's request for comment.   

Zolot was found in a pool of blood with 'trauma to his face' and 'puncture wounds to his chest,' according to the New York Police Department.  

A maintenance worker discovered the battered body at around 5.50am in the second-floor office at 37-06 82nd St. in Jackson Heights. 

He called 911, but Zolot was declared dead at the scene.

Coroners are seen rolling Zolot's body out of his office after he was found dead of multiple puncture wounds on August 5 

Police have said they retrieved surveillance footage from the office but the video has not been released.

Other lawyers in the building alleged that Perez had threatened the lawyer, and then returned the night before the murder. 

'Sounds like a disgruntled client,' Mark Drucker, a lawyer who owns a firm in the same building, told FNTV.

'They think that someone came in last night and I think one of the secretaries was afraid of this guy.

'From what I hear, he came in with his brother I think. Charlie took him up to the office and never came down.

'I think the secretaries are really upset by it. We have cameras on the floors and we were asked for that, so I think that they have pictures of what's going on.'

Drucker said he was in the building at the time, but had not heard any noise or disturbance.  

 The body was found in a pool of blood with 'trauma to his face' and 'puncture wounds to the chest', according to the New York Police Department

'Sounds like a disgruntled client,' Mark Drucker, a lawyer who owns a firm in the same building

Other lawyers in the building said Perez had threatened the lawyer, and then returned the night before the murder 

 Zolot's friend and tailor Horacio Navas, 70, said: 'The maintenance guy told me he came in this morning and saw a pool of blood and followed it and that’s when he found his body beaten to death.'

'I don’t know why anyone would want to do this to him,' Navas told the New York Post. 'The neighborhood is changing. This would never happen here .'

A tenant working at another law office in the building who wished to go unnamed told DailyMail.com that his dog had discovered red droplets near the building's elevator the evening before - but he had dismissed them as juice.

He said: 'I bring my dog to work sometimes and I had my dog here yesterday. Around 4:30, she wanted to go outside. When we got to the elevator, she was looking at something on the floor like she wanted to lick it.'

Zolot specialized in divorce and child custody cases, according to his website. He advertised himself as having experience with guardianship, pre and post nuptial agreements, alimony cases, child custody and child support cases, the settlement of estates, adoption law, the negotiation of visitation rights and bankruptcy

'I was like "that looks like blood, wouldn’t that be crazy? But it’s probably just juice". 

'One of the secretaries in the office saw the four or five drops and asked me if I thought it was blood - I said that I thought it was juice.'

'When I got a text saying Charlie was dead this morning, I thought it was a heart attack - then someone told me he was murdered.' 

The tenant said that neither he nor his coworkers heard anything out of the ordinary. 

He was unable to return to work until about 4 pm today, he said, due to the closed-off police crime scene. 

A tenant in the building who wished to remain anonymous told news outlets that two clients had threatened him in his building the night before in reference to Perez and his brother 

Zolot was not married, and did not have any children -  another tenant described him as an 'almost retired bachelor.' 

'I was referring him business - most lawyers are really expensive and Charles was probably the most reasonable rate of any lawyer in Jackson Heights,' another attorney working out of the building told DailyMail.com. 'A lot of immigrants and crazy kinds of cases - typically a lower-middle class clientele.' 

The attorney said that it was typical for Zolot to work late into the evening. To get into the building without a key, he said, you need to be buzzed in or to sneak in after someone else leaves.  

Drucker added: 'As a lawyer, you're always afraid of some clients that could get really upset with you, and we're living in a very crazy time when people get very agitated very quickly.' 

Zolot specialized in divorce and child custody cases, according to his website.

He advertised himself as having experience with guardianship, pre and post nuptial agreements, alimony cases, child custody and child support cases, the settlement of estates, adoption law, the negotiation of visitation rights and bankruptcy. 

He graduated from Syracuse University college of Law in 1981, and had been practicing in New York since the following year, records show. 

Zolot was scheduled to represent a client in a preliminary conference at the Queens Supreme Court on August 5, according to ABC 7 New York.