(PHILADELPHIA) — Police now have a person of interest they are trying to identify in connection to the strangulation of a former Playboy model near Philadelphia last week.
The Lower Merion Police Department released surveillance video of someone who spent time with Christina Kraft, 36, in the early morning hours the day she was killed at her apartment in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. They have not referred to him as a suspect.
Police say the man “had contact with the victim during the early morning hours” of Aug. 22 in Philadelphia, and was seen on surveillance footage near a SEPTA subway entrance at 15th and Market streets in the city and “may have also utilized a ridesharing service” to get to Ardmore.
Ardmore, Pennsylvania, is a suburb just nine miles northwest of Philadelphia.
In the surveillance video released by police a woman has her arm around the man, though she has been blurred out.
The man in the images can be seen entering Kraft’s apartment building, and riding the elevator, but he never is seen leaving, a source told Philadelphia ABC station WPVI, leading authorities to believe he might have jumped from her second-floor balcony to escape.
Kraft’s body was found Wednesday night after police conducted a wellness check.
The model appeared in Playboy, Vanity Fair and Maxim, according to WPVI.
Authorities said last week they were searching for Andre Melton, 31, in connection to a robbery that took place at Kraft’s apartment the weekend before her murder. Designer handbags and jewelry belonging to Kraft were found in Melton’s apartment, but he has not been located.
He was not named as a suspect in her death.
Police asked anyone with information to contact the Lower Merion Police Department at 610-649-1000 or the Montgomery County Detective Bureau at 610-278-3368.
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