New Scotland murder suspect Jacob Klein to be arraigned

Police said Klein had a prior relationship with Radin but it ended several years ago. They said Radin was not aware that Klein was in Albany County last week or that he had allegedly been stalking the couple.

Klein was arrested Friday evening by police and federal agents as he drove across the Virginia border from Tennessee. He has been held at the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail Authority in Abingdon, Va., since his arrest. He was arraigned in a local court there this week and waived extradition to New York.

Klein emerged as a person of interest in the slaying of Rabadi, who was a physician assistant at St. Peter’s Hospital, in the wake of the homicide. The victim was found bound and stabbed multiple times in his residence several miles south of Albany.

Klein spent much of his childhood in Cobleskill. A former schoolmate of Klein’s at The Albany Academy, who asked not to be identified, said that growing up Klein was known as “Larry” or “Lawrence,” which is his middle name. The former schoolmate said Klein had commuted from Schoharie County to the private school in Albany for seven years and had graduated in 1999. 

Rabadi, who was a surgical physician assistant and began working at St. Peter’s Hospital in 2019, is from Albany and attended Guilderland High School, where he was a top athlete and well-liked student, according to some of his former classmates. He graduated from the University at Albany and Albany Medical College, where he had been an honors student.

Klein had rented a vehicle at an Enterprise car-rental business on Central Avenue and apparently used that vehicle to surveil the couple’s residence and also to visit St. Peter’s Hospital, where both Rabadi and his wife worked, according to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple. Radin also is a physician assistant.

The sheriff said Klein drove to Albany three days before the murder. After covertly stalking Rabadi’s wife, he waited until she left for work at St. Peter’s Hospital early Wednesday morning and went to the couple’s residence, Apple said. Ring and Nest cameras of neighbors captured footage of part of the confrontation when Rabadi opened the front door at about 7:30 a.m., he said.

Radin had left the residence to go to work at St. Peter’s around 6 a.m. that morning.

A source briefed on the investigation said that as Klein confronted Rabadi, the resident appeared to react as if a weapon was brandished before he retreated into the house with Klein behind him. Police recovered a handgun from the glove box in Klein’s vehicle when he was arrested just after 6 p.m. on Friday.

Rabadi did not show up for his shift at the hospital around noon that day and when he could not be reached, his wife called 911, Apple said.

She and Rabadi’s father arrived at the house about the same time as a sheriff’s deputy, and they were “right behind” the deputy when she found Rabadi’s body in the garage, he said.

Rabadi was bound and deceased at the time they discovered his body, with injuries that included multiple stab wounds to his upper body and head injuries.

Klein allegedly drove away from the residence and returned the rental vehicle that morning just before 10 a.m. at the Enterprise business at 900 Central Ave. On Thursday, license-plate readers in Virginia showed him traveling in that state in his vehicle. He returned to his residence and federal agents kept watch on him overnight Thursday, according to a person briefed on the investigation.

On Friday, investigators continued undercover surveillance of Klein, largely based on tracking his mobile phone, and initially thought he was fleeing as he drove into Tennessee. But later that day, Klein, who had stopped in Memphis, began driving back toward his residence in Virginia.

Radin has ties to the Syracuse area and she attended the SUNY College of Medicine in Brooklyn, graduating in 2016 — a year after Klein had graduated from the same school. They had a personal relationship for several years, but it’s unclear whether they met while attending medical school or became acquainted during their medical careers. 

Klein is a military veteran with no prior criminal record. He previously worked as a physician assistant in California and upstate New York, including at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson. He has ties to the Cobleskill area and central New York, and also previously lived in Southern California, according to public records.

The Times Union first reported Friday that police sources said video evidence, witness accounts and other evidence placed Klein in the Albany area, including at the New Scotland residence, on the morning Rabadi was killed.