The Queens tarot-card reader allegedly killed by a disgruntled client performed rituals including love spells and removing evil spirits for hundreds of people, a former neighbor told The Post on Friday.
“One time my house caught on fire because of what she was doing, she had candles,” said her former landlord, Tulha Bakh.
Bakh said Anna Torres, 51, once ran her booming fortune-telling business out of the first-floor apartment that the victim rented from her multifamily home in Hollis, Queens — conducting “home cleansings” and ceremonies to help customers get their “spouses back.”
“She used to see hundreds of clients when she lived here,” Bakh said.
“There was no sign, it was all word of mouth. She did tarot cards, house cleansing [and would] get someone’s spouse back, husband back or whatever,” the landlord said.
Bakh said Torres was a “very nice lady” but that he himself “didn’t believe in” the readings.
Anna Torres performed tarot card readings and cleansings across New York City. Facebook / Anna torres
Alleged killer Giuseppe Canzani is escorted out of the 106 Police Precinct. BRIGITTE STELZER“None of that stuff made sense to me. I think people who read cards and stuff take advantage of people. They use information that’s based on a lot of fake stuff,” Bakh said.
Torres’ former neighbor, who identified himself as Mr. Brown, said that the fortune teller was “a good woman” who “helped you if you needed her help.”
He said he didn’t know what she did for work, but denied that she was some kind of spellcaster.
“She ain’t no witch. She ain’t no demon. She’s a human being that got gunned down by a psychopath,” Brown told The Post Friday.
Brown said Torres, who’s the mother of an NYPD cop, “was a good mother, a good lady … and she’s got good kids.”
“He’s a good brother,” he said of her cop son. “I like the kid. I feel sorry for what he’s going through. He shouldn’t have to go through that.”
He said he last spoke to her about two months ago. She lived at the Queens address for 15 years before she moved after a fire broke out in the basement, which he said was caused by another tenant a few years ago.
“She would come over here and visit people and see how they were doing. I wish her apartment never got burned down. They’d probably still be here and that probably would have never happened.”
Alleged disgruntled client Giuseppe Canzani, 41, is accused of fatally shooting Torres at her home in Ozone Park on Wednesday because he believed she was “a witch” who had placed a curse on him, sources have said.
Additional reporting by Patrick Reilly
