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A cape-wearing Soho art dealer described as “the real Auntie Mame’’ was fatally strangled in 2024 by a sick hobo — who was only nailed Sunday when he shoplifted from a TJ Maxx, cops and sources said Monday.
Suspected homeless killer Larry Powlis — a 60-year-old convicted sex offender — was done in when he tried to lift $25 in art supplies around 1:10 p.m. from the retail store near West 57th Street in Midtown, cops and law-enforcement sources said.
Powlis — who tried to throw off Sunday’s cops by giving the fake name Larry Davis, only to be foiled when they ran his fingerprints through the system — was charged Monday with Egizio Panetti’s murder, police and sources said.
Powlis had met Panetti, an eccentric legally blind 67-year-old with cancer, on the street while the doomed beloved art dealer and decorator was out to dinner with a friend in Greenwich Village in September 2024, authorities said.
The suspect and victim eventually went to a nearby ATM before they both ended up at Panetti’s posh pad on Spring Street near West Broadway — where Powlis ended up fatally choking him, sources said.
Powlis was allegedly caught on surveillance video later leaving the victim’s home wearing a different pair of clothes than he had on when he met the victim.
Panetti was found dead Sept. 24, 2024, by a neighbor during a routine wellness check when he didn’t return an earlier phone call, police sources said.
Pals mourned Panetti as “the real Auntie Mame,” paying homage to Rosalind Russell’s legendary flamboyant title character in the 1958 classic “Auntie Mame.”
They described him as fabulous cape-loving “Venetian count” who was “simply one of a kind.”
Investigators identified Powlis as a suspect early on but were waiting on an official ruling on cause of death from the city Medical Examiner’s Office and crucial DNA evidence, sources said.
They finally got enough to formally name him a suspect Sept. 3, allowing the eagle-eyed cops Sunday to nail him when they spotted the designation in the NYPD computer system, sources said.
Sources said he has a sex offense conviction in Texas.
He was awaiting arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday.
— Additional reporting by Amanda Woods
