The Queens landlord accused of stabbing his girlfriend and two tenants to death blamed the grisly slayings on “a lot of pressure” Wednesday — as cops searched his car for the missing murder weapon and his bloody clothes.
David Daniel, 54, wearing a white Tyvek suit, held his head down as police led him out of the 113th Precinct stationhouse, one day after arresting him in the gruesome killings.
“Why did you do it?” a Post reporter asked Daniel.
“A lot of pressure,” he answered.
“Did you say a lot of pressure?”
“Yeah,” the accused killer replied. “Pure pressure.”
Daniel was taken into custody at the precinct at around 7:05 a.m. Tuesday after he walked in and told an officer that he was “having issues” with his tenants, who were late on their rent, according to NYPD officials.
“I did something bad,” he allegedly said.
Cops responding to the single-family home in the St. Albans neighborhood found Daniel’s 51-year-old live-in girlfriend — identified as Coleen Fields — lying face-down in a second-floor bedroom with her throat slashed and multiple stab wounds, including to her left breast, law enforcement sources told The Post.
The tenants, Wayne Thomas, 57, and Evette Sweeney, 55, were discovered dead in the basement, each with multiple stab wounds.
Surveillance footage obtained by cops showed Daniel leaving the home around 6:20 a.m., carrying a black garbage bag into his gray 2015 Nissan Murano and driving off, according to sources.
Cops were searching the car, which was still parked at the precinct Wednesday and appeared to be well-kept.
NYPD officials said Daniel was eerily calm as he confessed to cops “that he killed three people and he gave the location and that he left the backdoor open,” recounting the crime in a “very matter-of-fact” way.
His arraignment on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon was pending in Queens Criminal Court.
Several neighbors in the St. Albans neighborhood, where Daniel bought the single-family home in 2017, said they were shocked by the crime and recalled the accused killer as quiet and cordial.
“I didn’t know he had tenants living there,” one local said Wednesday. “I never saw them.
“The whole thing is tragic. He could have found another way to deal with his problems,” she said. “He has ruined his life. I don’t see him ever getting out of jail. He killed three people.”