TRAGEDY

Real-Life ‘Home Alone 2’ Bird Lady Found Murdered

“To people she’s a nobody, but to us who were regular here, she’s a somebody.”

The real-life “bird lady” who inspired comparisons with a character in the movie Home Alone 2 has been found murdered in New York’s Central Park. The body of the homeless 63-year-old Francis Lee Rogers, who also went by the name Elise Hill, was discovered in a park gazebo on Sept. 27, police said. She was barefoot and covered in dirt next to a bloodied stick, with cuts to her head, which had been shaved. A 38-year-old homeless man, Jason Robles, later claimed responsibility, according to police. He said that Rogers/Hill had attacked him with a stick until he wrested it away to use it as a weapon against her, according to the NYPD. “She hit me on my body with a stick, so I took the stick from her. I hit her with it more than 20 times. I did it until she couldn’t hit me anymore,” Robles said, according to court documents. Robles was questioned Thursday in a hospital bed. He is being treated for injuries and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation. Rogers/Hill was strikingly similar to the “Pigeon Lady” played by Brenda Fricker in the popular 1992 holiday movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The lonely character develops a friendship with stranded Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister. Rogers/Hill, well known to park birdwatchers, lived in the park for years and painted watercolors of Central Park’s wildlife. “To people she’s a nobody but to us who were regular here, she’s a somebody,” said a friend. Her life was memorialized in the 2007 documentary Begging Naked.