WORCESTER—Charges against Marcel Santos-Padgett now include one count of murder in connection with the discovery of a deceased woman found inside a “bodyworks” spa Thanksgiving morning.
Santos-Padgett, 32, was arraigned Wednesday on the murder charge along with several firearms charges related to the slaying.
In Central District Court, Santos-Padgett was ordered held without bail during an appearance before Judge David Despotopulos. He wore navy blue scrubs and appeared to look back at members of his family who were in the gallery for the proceedings.
It is alleged that Santos-Padgett shot an employee of Angie’s Body Works Spa in the head at 2:30 Thanksgiving morning. Her boss found her nine hours later and called 911, court records show.
During the arraignment, Assistant District Attorney Terry McLaughlin told the judge that evidence, including video collected from cameras in the area, led police to Santos-Padgett.
The cameras showed him entering Angie’s Body Work Spa at 383 Pleasant St. at 1:58 a.m. and at 2:30 a.m. the audio from the camera depicts what police believe to be a gunshot, court records show.
McLaughlin said Santos-Padgett appeared in the video to have a gun with a laser sight attached.
Police used cameras and license plate readers positioned around the city to track Santos-Padgett as he drove away from the spa, parking on Hamilton Street and going inside an apartment his mother rents but does not occupy, according to court documents.
Police searched the apartment and found clothing similar to what the suspect in the shooting was wearing and they recovered a Polymer80 9 mm handgun with a laser mount, like the one they saw in the video from the spa, a detective wrote.
The spa where the killing took place appears to be closed now. A bag of rice and an electric cook pot sat outside the front door amidst other trash Wednesday afternoon. The door was locked and posters depicting massages and flowers still covered all the windows.
A look inside the unlocked door Nov. 27, revealed the entrance in disarray with ceiling tiles on the floor and a generally grungy appearance. A woman answered from the rear of the spa but did not come to the entry to speak with a reporter.
The spa is an example of an unregulated business where records are poorly kept – or not kept at all. There are no local or state licenses needed for “body work” spas, though massage parlors and hair salons require state licensing.
When police arrived to the call of a woman having a medical issue Thanksgiving morning, the spa’s owner, Ywying Jiao Etpison allegedly told officers that she’d known the victim, an employee of hers, for about a year but did not know her name.
“Mrs. Etpison stated that she knows the decedent by the nick-name of ‘CeeCee’ or ‘CC’,” a detective wrote in a request for a search warrant.
Etpison also told police she’d contacted the employee earlier to set up an appointment with a client and she’d driven her to 383 Pleasant St. because the woman did not drive. She said she had no record of who’d made the appointment and said she uses a business phone or an app called “WeChat” to set up scheduling for clients, according to court documents.
She said her employees are also allowed to set up appointments for themselves and she keeps no clients list or visitor logs, a report from a detective shows. Clients pay electronically, with a credit card or with cash, she allegedly told police.
A check with the state shows Etpison holds no license as a masseuse nor is she a licensed cosmetologist, though she told police she operates a salon on Millbury Street. Neither Angie’s Body Work Spa nor The Dove Salon are licensed by the state, something required by law for the hair salon, a check of state records shows.
The single-story building that houses Angie’s spa sprawls back from the street and appears to have several smaller rooms off a main hallway. The city received a request from James Bahnan and Benjamin Bahnan in 2018 to convert the building from a print shop to a massage parlor.
The only other interactions with the city include reports of trash accumulating behind the building and a medical call outside the business a few years ago.
In the past, city officials have expressed concerns about such businesses and it was uncovered that some spas, in stings across the state, were offering more than so-called “bodywork.” Some were allegedly being used in human trafficking operations and others were shut down after investigators found they offered sex for a fee.
A committee to study this issue in Worcester was created in 2019 but the group’s work was reprioritized with the onset of COVID-19 and the pandemic lockdown, a spokesman for City Manager Eric Batista said.
Because the meetings were internal, there are no minutes available for public viewing.
While elected city officials have not spoken specifically about the Pleasant Street murder, court records revealed disturbing details about the incident including indications that a police officer who viewed the scene wrote that it “suggests that some sort of sexual activity occurred,” court documents show.
The victim was found partially clad and there were “clear signs of blunt force trauma all over the female’s body,” one officer wrote.
While the spa’s hours were listed as 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Santos-Padgett allegedly arrived at about 2 a.m.
Police wrote that during an autopsy evidence was found indicating the victim was shot in the face at close range and officers found a “bullet casing surrounded by what appeared to be teeth” between the door and the victim’s body.
Etpison also indicated to police that one person was living inside the spa, renting a rear room and sleeping there for about a month, court records show, though it was unclear whether that person was inside when the shooting took place.
When she was attorney general, now-Gov. Maura Healey and state Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, filed legislation seeking to close the loophole that allows bodywork spas to skirt regulations but none of the bills have been signed into law.
In court on Wednesday, members of the victim’s family sat quietly watching as Santos-Padgett was arraigned. The name of the woman killed has not been released and police have said they will not identify her without her family’s permission.
Kim Ring fell into journalism in the 1980s as a correspondent at the Telegram & Gazette and eventually left her initial career to pursue reporting full time. In her years of writing she has penned articles for several Massachusetts-based publications, taking a brief hiatus to work as chief of staff for a state representative. She can be reached at Kimringwrites@gmail.com
