Geoffrey Tracy, a 25-year-old fitness model and stripper, admitted in court papers to trying to kill his 50-year-old roommate Gregory Kanczes by stabbing him 16 times in the neck, chest, and shoulder after Kanczes “tried to make moves” on him.
Tracy's last Instagram post, published a day before the stabbing:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmcLUXLAFoE/?hl=en&taken-by=geoffreytracy
Tracy, who was arraigned Wednesday, pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault after turning down a plea deal of 20 years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea, the NY Post reports: ‘The violent clash occurred a few days after Tracy arrived in the Big Apple to earn some cash at a strip club. The venue's owner saw Tracy's musclebound Instagram shots, bought him a plane ticket to New York and arranged for him to crash at Kanczes' Hell's Kitchen pad, sources said. The competitive bodybuilder allegedly became creeped out by Kanczes' advances, then the older man blocked him from leaving the apartment and threatened him, Tracy told police.'
Said Tracy to police after the killing: “The guy tried to make moves on me, I told him no, then he said he'd shoot me so I had to defend myself. I had a knife to him, he went for the gun. I filmed myself on my iPhone saying I didn't want to kill him. He had a gun. I had to kill him.”
He later admitted: “He said he was going to shoot me. I didn't see a gun.”
The NY Daily News adds: ‘It was not immediately clear if the [iPhone] recording was actually made or if it was preserved on the device. His attorney, Thomas Kenniff, said after the court appearance that his client was trying to protect himself by recording the ordeal. “As is now typical in circumstances where people are being threatened or victimized, my client had the prescience to use his phone to record an erratic individual who had been scribbling incoherent ramblings on the walls of his own apartment, subjecting my client to unwanted touching, and was now threatening him with a gun if he attempted to extricate himself from his hellish surroundings,” Kenniff said.'
Friends of Kanczes told the NYDN that Kanczes was “a peaceful person — not someone who could be involved in something like this and not somebody whose behavior would cause a rational person to stab him 16 times.”
Kanczes ex-boyfriend told the NYP that Tracy's claims are preposterous: “He's so muscular and Greg's not. You could have thrown him and ran out the door. You don't stab somebody.”