Start with two longtime friends and ardent boosters: Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Bruce Springsteen and the late Lou Reed. Add legendary reggae artist Bob Marley. The renowned avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker Laurie Anderson. Guitar great Vernon Reid, founder of the band Living Colour. And the acclaimed actor Harvey Keitel, a fellow Brooklynite.

“He’s in the great singer-songwriter tradition of Dylan and Neil Young,” says Springsteen near the start of “The King of In Between,” a new documentary about his old friend. “One of the American greats.”

The underappreciated 80-year-old musician takes center stage in the film directed by Claire Jeffreys, his wife of 33 years, with the project premiering this past month at DOC NYC, the largest American documentary film fest. The debut came after eight years of pulling the project together, but the effort paid off: The movie received the audience award at the annual event.

The documentary was a labor of love tinged with melancholy as Jeffreys now battles with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, though he endures as one of rock music’s great chroniclers of his hometown in songs like the lovely “New York Skyline,” “Wild In the Streets” and “Coney Island Winter.”

As the documentary illustrates, though, Jeffreys found inspiration in everything from doo-wop to rock and roll to reggae. He was a rocker, a crooner and a singer-songwriter, shifting easily between genres from album to album.

His 1992 album “Don’t Call Me Buckwheat” dealt bluntly with racism, with a song sharing the same title inspired by a hate-fueled heckler at a Mets game decades after Jeffreys saw Jackie Robinson break the major league baseball color line at Ebbets Field in 1947.

The bi-racial rocker, a child of Black and Hispanic parents, danced along the periphery of making it big: He was once a clue on “Jeopardy” (with nobody buzzing in). He was named the most promising new artist of 1977 by Rolling Stone magazine, and laudatory pieces about Jeffreys appeared in the Village Voice and the New Yorker.

Reed, who met Jeffreys when the pair were students at Syracuse University, became a lifelong supporter.

“Lou really admired Garland as well as loved him,” says Anderson, the late musician’s widow, in the documentary. “He had a great big soft spot for that kind of singing.”

The goodwill extended around the music business, as artists like James Taylor, Luther Vandross and Dr. John played alongside Jeffreys over the decades. Danny Federici and Roy Bittan, two members of Springsteen’s E Street Band, guested on his “Escape Artist” album in 1980.

Springsteen was particularly effusive in his contribution to the documentary, lauding his friend more than five decades after the two first crossed paths in 1972 while respectively chasing their dreams from Asbury Park and Sheepshead Bay.

“It’s incredible,” said Claire. “I knew other musicians thought highly of him, so it was great to do the film and hear people speak of him that way was really rewarding. You’ve heard of musicians’ musicians?

“That sometimes means he was respected by his peers but not the industry,” she adds with a laugh, noting his fan base in Europe became stronger than the U.S. audiences.

Jeffreys, in a long ago interview with late-night host Tom Snyder, offered his own pithy take on his career path: “I really try not to define it. Actually I just like to have the freedom to do it.”

The next move, says his wife, is trying to get a wider release for the film.

“Documentaries are often about very prominent individuals, as opposed to Garland, who has less name recognition,” she said. “I feel if a film has appeal, we can find its place. And we’re in the process of trying to do that.”

Family and friends of victim Jaclyn Elmquist, 24, were left searching for answers after her night on the town ended in horror, with the NYPD saying no criminality was suspected in the tragedy and a police source indicating investigators were looking into whether alcohol was involved in her death.

“It’s the most tragic loss of life,” a friend told the Daily News one day after Elmquist’s body was discovered Friday afternoon inside the luxury Chelsea residence just 11 blocks south of the Ninth Ave. steakhouse where she was earlier hanging out with colleagues.

A missing person poster circulated by friends after her disappearance said Elmquist was last seen hailing a cab outside the Catch Steakhouse after departing around 10 p.m. A security camera later caught Elmquist apparently getting buzzed inside the + arts building on W. 28th St. building on Thursday night, with the victim’s body located there the next day.

There was no word Saturday from the NYC Medical Examiner on autopsy results, and the victim’s distraught sister declined to speak about the tragedy where security video showed the woman walking unsteadily along the sidewalk before entering the residence. The NYPD, one day after police were called to the scene around 2:40 p.m., said her injuries were consistent with falling down the garbage chute.

“No, no, no,” said Davidson Stewart, 59, the longtime super of the woman’s apartment building. “She kept to herself. Friendly, ‘Hi, good evening, how you doing?’ Nice young girl. It looked like she was happy … It’s sad. It looked light she had a bright future.”

Police responding to a 911 call discovered Elmquist’s corpse inside the compactor, a police source told the Daily News. Her phone, apparently dropped by the victim at some point, was later recovered away from the scene of her death, according to online posts by friends.

Apartments in the pricey building where the body was found went for $5,500 a month, with a two-bedroom condo listed for sale on the Street Easy website at $2.48 million.

A distraught cousin of the dead woman posted on Twitter that Elmquist “didn’t come home or show up for work (Friday), please spread the word so people in the area can see it since all of her family lives here in Minnesota.”

Elmquist, a 2022 graduate of Skidmore College and employee of a recruiting firm, was not a drinker, according to a Facebook posting before authorities located the victim’s body.

Monsignor John Delendick, 74, passed away this past Thanksgiving from pancreatic cancer linked to toxins at the World Trade Center, where he arrived before the second tower toppled on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. His flag-draped casket was brought to the funeral atop an FDNY truck, with Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanaugh among those watching as a half-dozen firefighters carried the priest inside to the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

“That morning, he arrived at the World Trade Center soon after the second plane crashed,” she recalled in her eulogy. “He survived the collapse of the two buildings … And he officiated at so many memorials he lost count. He taught us how to live and how to let go.”

Delendick, who took over as the department’s senior chaplain after Father Mychal Judge became the first official victim of the attack, returned to the site multiple times in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, with the toxic dust of Lower Manhattan eventually sickening the veteran priest. He arranged boat trips for 9/11 families to visit Ground Zero only weeks after the attack, gathering the mourners for a prayer on their trip from the Brooklyn Naval Yard to the site.

“I remember spending so much time with him at Ground Zero during the 9/11 period,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a fellow chaplain. “And as the bodies came out, he would turn and say to me, ‘You bless them in Hebrew and I’ll bless them in English because we all belong to the same family.’ When others would leave, he would stay. …. However, that (first) night he went home, on 9/11, and he admitted that he cried like never before.”

Firefighters lined the street outside the Co-Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Brooklyn to salute the revered chaplain as his body was brought inside the church. The Queens native was ordained on Feb. 12, 1977, became an FDNY chaplain 19 years later after serving in churches across Brooklyn, and continued his work in the 9/11 community even after his diagnosis.

“We’re going to leave, but we’re not going to say goodbye,” said Potasnik. “And we’re going to carry him in our hearts, as he carried all of us in his heart.”

The diligent priest was also recalled for his trademark greeting, delivered regardless of the time of day: “Good morning, how are you?” And Delendick’s family was presented with his FDNY helmet once the service was finished.

“I feel sorrow and a loss of words, and I think we all do,” said Kavanaugh. “But I also find gratitude and comfort in knowing he’s finally at peace.”

Monsignor Richard Ahlemeyer, a longtime friend of Delendick, said his fellow priest had shared his fears of World Trade Center-related illness across the ensuing years.

“The events of 9/11 and the aftermath related to sicknesses … claimed the lives of so many,” he said. “And now John’s name will be added to that list.”

Ahlemeyer wrapped up his eulogy with an old Irish prayer for his colleague: “May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

A press release from the Supreme Court cited the jurist’s cause of death as “complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness.”

O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court in 2006, in part to assist her husband John Jay O’Connor III as he struggled with Alzheimer’s disease before his death three years later. In October 2018, she publicly released a letter revealing that she too was diagnosed with the “beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease.”

In the court’s statement, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., said Justice O’Connor “blazed an historic trail as our Nation’s first female Justice. She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor. We at the Supreme Court mourn the loss of a beloved colleague, a fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education. And we celebrate her enduring legacy as a true public servant and patriot.”

The Texas-born O’Connor broke the glass ceiling after 192 years of male Supreme Court justices, and was soon followed by fellow female jurists Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. She became a key swing vote in scores of cases, including the decision upholding a woman’s right to abortion in Roe vs. Wade.

The jurist, appointed by President Reagan, was also the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore, the bitter legal battle following the 2000 presidential election, a ruling that effectively stopped the Florida recount and installed George W. Bush in the White House while making Al Gore an also-ran.

Though nominally conservative, O’Connor consistently voted to protect abortion rights, support affirmative action and express concerns over the death penalty. Yet she was also an ardent defender of states’ rights and checks on presidential power.

And she was often on the winning side of the court’s most contentious debates: O’Connor voted with the majority in 148 of the 193 cases decided by a 5-4 vote between 1995 and her retirement.

Sandra Day was a daughter of the southwest, born in El Paso, Texas, and raised on her family’s Arizona cattle ranch dubbed the “Lazy B” — where the self-described “cowgirl” became adept at horseback riding and helping with various farm duties. She proved an exceptionally bright girl, reading by the age of 4 while excelling in her schoolwork.

O’Connor’s parents opted to send her to school in El Paso, where she lived with her grandmother while classes were in session and returned home for summers on the ranch.

She applied to Stanford University, overcoming the school’s gender bias to win acceptance and graduating in 1950 with a degree in economics. She earned her degree at the college’s law school just two years later, ranking third in a class of 102 students that included her future Supreme Court colleague William Rehnquist.

But the new graduate discovered no law firm in Los Angeles or San Francisco wanted to hire a female attorney. Her lone job offer was for a secretarial position.

She finally landed a non-paying job for a county attorney in San Mateo, Calif., just to establish herself, and worked her way up to deputy county attorney. She also married fellow Stanford Law grad John O’Connor, and the couple moved in 1954 to Germany. John worked as an Army attorney while his wife worked as a civilian lawyer focused on contracts.

The couple resettled in Arizona in 1958, with a stint in private practice leading to a 1965 position as the state’s assistant attorney general. That four-year stint ended with her appointment to fill a vacant seat in the Arizona state senate, where she became the first female majority leader. In 1973, O’Connor — the mother of sons Scott, Brian and Jay — changed jobs by winning election to a seat on the Maricopa County Superior Court.

She was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals in 1979, and formally nominated to the Supreme Court by Reagan on Aug. 19, 1981 as the new president made good on a campaign promise to put a woman on the bench. A month later, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and was sworn in the court’s first female justice on Sept. 25, 1981.

“It did not seem possible that a ranch girl would grow up to serve on our nation’s highest court,” she wrote in her autobiography “Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.”

During her time on the Supreme Court bench, O’Connor was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988 and underwent a mastectomy. She went public with her ailment and treatment in a 1994 speech before the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship.

She finally left the Supreme Court on Jan. 31, 2006, replaced by incoming Justice Samuel Alito.

Following her retirement, President Obama presented O’Connor with the the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2009. Arizona State University also named its law school in her honor.

Nine years after Alzheimer’s claimed her husband, O’Connor — by then age 88 — went public with word of her struggle with the same debilitating ailment. By then, a hip injury had left her reliant on a wheelchair to get around.\

“As this condition has progressed, I am no longer able to participate in private life,” she wrote in October 2018. “Since many people have asked about my current status and activities, I want to be open about these changes, and while I am still able, share some personal thoughts.

“While the final chapter of my life with dementia may be trying, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings in my life.”

The jam-packed service for Rocco Rodden, 17, began shortly after 10 a.m. with his father Douglas and mother Angelina joined by their three other children and relatives in the front pews of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Stirling, N.J. The siblings and their parents stood together with their hands on his casket as the funeral began, taking their seats after leaving a crucifix behind.

“Today we give thanks to God for the gift of Rocco,” said Bishop Kevin Sweeney of the Archdiocese of Paterson as the sad 75-minute service neared its finish. “As we gather in faith now, we promise our prayers to Rocco’s family.”

The victim’s brother Anthony and their sister Gianna were with the teen when the deadly encounter began, with the trio earlier attending a private party at a lower Manhattan ax-throwing venue on Lafayette St. near White St. in Tribeca. Video of the incident obtained by cops shows Rocco taking a punch to the face from his killer, setting the confrontation in lethal motion, with the shoeless attacker stabbing both brothers.

Anthony, 19, took 50 stitches to close his wound after Rocco died in his arms, their father said.

The 6-foot, 280-pound offensive lineman was remembered fondly, with one eulogist encouraging the mourners to “strive to live as he did. In the final stretch of his life, Rocco went down fighting …. let us keep his spirit alive.”

Once she finished, Frank Sinatra’s anthemic recording of “My Way” echoed through the silent church. The service ended with the song “What Does It Look Like in Heaven?” by the duo Dani and Lizzie as Rocco’s casket was wheeled down the aisle.

“He leaves behind a legacy of kindness, a contagiously bright smile, and a life characterized by a profound sense of caring compassion, and the utmost loyalty,” the family said in a statement. “A true warrior, the light of the darkest room, the eye of the tiger.”

One day earlier, the wake for Rodden was packed with mourners devastated by his shocking death, with the family heading to the victim’s Thursday entombment at St. Gertrude’s Cemetery in Colonia.

Accused killer Gianluca Bordone, of Oyster Bay, L.I., was released Wednesday from Rikers Island, Department of Correction records show, after his bail was reduced to $1 million and then posted.  The suspect, charged with manslaughter and assault, was arrested about a mile from the crime scene after fleeing in a taxi and was initially jailed on $4 million cash or $12 million bond.

Cops charged 19-year-old Jayden Rivera in the grisly triple homicide, saying the promising teen was the one who stabbed his own father to death, murdered his 5-year-old stepbrother and the boy’s mother after he snapped Sunday morning in the family’s Mott Haven Home.

Dead at the scene were Jonathan Rivera, 38, his wife Hanoi Peralta, and their young son Kayden Rivera.

Cops found the dad slumped against the wall in a first-floor hallway of his family’s building on E. 136th St. near Cypress Ave. around 6:40 a.m. Sunday.

Peralta was found face-up in bed with multiple stab wounds. Little Kayden was found face-up on an air mattress inside with numerous stab wounds.

The suspect checked into a suburban psychiatric ward after the slayings, police said.

Cops charged him with murder, manslaughter and weapon possession Wednesday night.

The boy’s grandfather, whose son died in the carnage, said he was trying to piece it all together.

Miguel Rodriguez said he is convinced of his other grandson’s guilt. The question he said nagging him is, “why?”

“He was there,” the grandfather said. “The cops got everything. I know how the law works. Ninety-nine percent it’s him. I know he’s the guy.”

He also said that the suspect’s father had recently bought $2,500 snowboarding shoes for him.

“He was into snowboarding,” the grandfather said.  “These shoes are expensive, but my son got them for him. Whatever he wanted, he got it. I don’t know why he would do something like this. I don’t know if he was on drugs or whatever.”

Cops said Rivera was baby-sitting the child while the two adults went out to a “paint and date” before the killings began. The suspect confessed to the crime after “hearing voices,” police said.

Rivera was an A-plus student with a full college scholarship and a bright future, his lawyer told the Daily News.

“This kid is not only an honor student, an A-plus student, Regents scholarship, full scholarship to Oswego,” defense attorney Nicholas Ramcharitar told the Daily News. “He had never once picked up a bowling ball in his life and took his team to the championships. Baseball, basketball.

“This kid had everything going for him, everything,” he added. “Even NYPD was confused … Maybe the kid being so advanced, so intelligent, maybe it was an ego thing, a societal thing … The only thing I can garner from this is it must have been a psychotic break. He doesn’t do drugs. It wasn’t even that.

“He was a loved family member who was doing amazing things with this life … I want to understand. Everyone wants to understand.”

The grandfather said he will be at every hearing listening for details.

“I will be going to all his court dates,” he said. “Every day. Every court day.”

Kissinger was among the 20th century’s busiest and most influential diplomatic figures: He negotiated an end to the Vietnam War, championed détente with the Soviet Union, opened the door for U.S.-China relations. The expression “shuttle diplomacy” was coined during the 1970s as Kissinger flew back and forth to the volatile Middle East following the Yom Kippur War.

His rise to prominence started in unlikely fashion. Kissinger, German-born and Jewish in the years before World War II, arrived in New York City as a 15-year-old boy with parents fleeing the rampant anti-Semitism in their homeland.

Three decades later, he was a key player in the White House.

The globe-trotting one-time Secretary of State served as one of Richard Nixon’s closest confidantes during the Watergate scandal that forced the disgraced president’s resignation. Kissinger memorably prayed alongside the sobbing president during Nixon’s last days in the White House — a poignant scene revealed in “The Final Days” by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

“It was the most wrenching thing I have ever gone through in my life — hand-holding,” Kissinger later said about the Aug. 7, 1974, session in the Lincoln Sitting Room. The overwrought Nixon resigned two days later.

But the two men shared six years of better days in Washington before the president’s historic decision to leave office, driven off by the scandal exposed by the two Washington Post reporters.

Kissinger’s clandestine 1971 trips to China paved the way for Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing and the eventual normalization of U.S. relations with Chairman Mao’s nation.

Though he captured the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire agreement in Vietnam, Kissinger was castigated as a war criminal by critics over the secret bombing of Cambodia. The secretary of state’s commitment to “peace with honor” in Southeast Asia was blamed for extending the unpopular war at a cost of 20,000 more American lives.

1973

A taped August 1972 Oval Office chat between Nixon and Kissinger caught the president declaring the war couldn’t end before the November election and his bid for a second term.

Late journalist Christopher Hitchens feuded openly with Kissinger over his Washington legacy, even penning an intensely critical book dubbed “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Kissinger replied by blasting Hitchens as a “Holocaust denier.”

But Kissinger was generally held in high regard. He was honored in 1977 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, and with the Medal of Liberty in 1986. Among his most recent public appearances was a eulogy at the Washington funeral of U.S. Sen. John McCain.

The rotund Kissinger, with his white hair and thick accent, was also an unlikely ladies’ man — linked with glamorous, high-profile women including Diane Sawyer, Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine and Liv Ullman.

“Power,” he once noted, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Kissinger appeared as often in the gossip columns as the news pages over the years. He wed philanthropist Nancy Maginnes in 1974, and they were married until his death. He had two children, David and Elizabeth, from a previous marriage that ended with divorce in 1964.

1972

Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923, in Fuerth, Germany, where the bookish young man was exposed to rampant antisemitism. He arrived in New York City in 1938 after his Jewish parents fled the Nazis.

The immigrant became a naturalized citizen five years later, and served his new country in the Army during World War II — fighting in France and Germany. Kissinger earned a doctorate at Harvard and became a faculty member, all the while turning an eye toward Washington and international affairs. When Nixon was elected in 1968, Kissinger became his National Security advisor and eventually Secretary of State.

He was among the few Nixon aides to emerge unscathed from the crushing Watergate scandal. Kissinger served as Secretary of State from September 1973 through Jan. 20, 1977, working for Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Kissinger remained active for decades after Nixon’s resignation, opening the international consulting firm Kissinger Associates, Inc.

Under President Reagan, Kissinger chaired the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America. He also served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George H.W. Bush. Kissinger served briefly as chairman of the 9/11 investigation commission before resigning in Dec. 2002 amid complaints from victims’ families about possible conflicts with his business.

The diplomat also wrote extensively on foreign affairs and diplomatic history, penning 13 books, including “White House Years” in 1979 and “Ending the Vietnam War” in 2003. He met several times in recent years with NYPD brass at One Police Plaza to discuss global terrorism, and offered foreign policy advice to GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

The bespectacled man with the lingering German accent endured as a staple of the New York City scene, joining Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in his box at Yankee Stadium or sharing dinner with Joe DiMaggio. He swam at the indoor pool inside George Washington High School in Washington Heights, and was among the A-list witnesses at the trial of philanthropist pal Brooke Astor’s son.

He became a regular at Le Cirque and the Four Seasons. And he was once introduced backstage at a Madison Square Garden concert to R&B great Wilson Pickett.

“Henry Kissinger, my man!” barked the Wicked Pickett, wrapping the diplomat in a bear hug.

Kissinger will be interred at a private family service. There will be a memorial service in New York City at a later date.

Hilarion Joseph, 57, was working as a flagger for a track-work crew about 150 feet south of the 34th St.-Herald Square station when an in-service uptown D train running on the express track rolled past about 12:20 a.m. The train somehow snagged the father of six and dragged him under the wheels as his co-workers cleaned up trash from the tracks, sources said.

“He was fairly new,” the victim’s oldest son, Japeri Smith, 24, told the Daily News. “He loved the job. He wanted to make a career working there. … He was a great person, a veteran. He was from Trinidad. He was a father, an uncle, someone who everyone loved.”

John Chiarello, secretary-treasurer and director of safety for Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, said Joseph was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital only days before his probationary period was set to end.

“This development has shaken our union,” said Chiarello. “This incident serves as a stark reminder of the challenges our members face each and every day.”

Flaggers are responsible for alerting oncoming trains to track work further down the line.

Joseph’s family learning of his death in a 1 a.m. phone call from police.

“That was around his normal shift,” said Smith. “He usually gets ready and leaves around 8 p.m. to get to work for 9 p.m. and works until 6 in the morning. … He was a godly and family man.”

Cops and MTA officials were investigating the possibility that an article of the worker’s clothing was caught by the passing train before Joseph was pulled to his death, a source said.

“Whether there was not enough clearance, whether he stumbled, we don’t know,'” said NYC Transit President Richard Davey. “Obviously, a flagger shouldn’t under any circumstances be coming into contact with the train, but he did. We’ll talk to the dispatchers, we’ll look at the equipment itself to make sure it was functioning appropriately.”

MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said the tragedy was “very much still under investigation on what went wrong.”

“There was work taking place, scheduled work. The fellow was flagging,” Lieber said at a Wednesday morning meeting of the MTA Board Safety Committee. “Our folks were at the hospital last night with the worker’s family. Obviously they’re very much in our thoughts right now.”

The front cars of the train had arrived at the Herald Square station when the emergency brake was pulled, a source said. Riders were able to walk to the front and exit onto the platform as medics rushed the severely injured employee to Bellevue.

Joseph died there less than an hour later, cops said. All nonessential track work was suspended Wednesday after the fatality.

A train traveling through such a work zone would have been going about 10 to 15 mph, said Demetrius Crichlow, head of subways for the MTA.

Davey asked those at Wednesday’s MTA meeting to observe a moment of silence for Joseph.

“These are dangerous jobs that we ask our people to do day in and day out,” he said.

A department bulletin obtained by the Daily News showed the MTA ordered all track workers to attend an eight-hour special safety briefing “on track flagging and track safety commencing [Wednesday].”

Deranged teen Jayden Rivera, 19, confessed hours later to a horrifying Bronx triple-homicide in which he disemboweled the 5-year-old boy and fatally bashed his dad and the toddler’s mother with a pot left dented by the savage attacks at their apartment, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said as the suspect remained inside a suburban psychiatric ward on Tuesday.

Rivera’s attorney told the Daily News he suffers from “extreme mental health issues.”

The attacker, who was tending to young victim Kayden Rivera at his father’s home this past weekend while the youth’s parents went out for dinner, returned later to his mother’s residence to say he believed the three innocent victims were going to kill him before acknowledging he “did something wrong,” said Kenny. Jayden Rivera had told her about the voices before heading over to watch the little boy at the home of their father, the chief added.

Police were called hours later to the building to find dad Jonathan Rivera, 38, lying dead in the hallway outside his apartment, with the boy’s 33-year-old lifeless mother Hanoi Peralta discovered on a bed with 15 stab wounds to the back, seven to her chest and four more to the face on Sunday.

The 5-year-old was stabbed eight times in the torso before the killer gutted the child, said Kenny, adding criminal charges were pending in the multiple murders. The father was stabbed once in the chest, with police finding a slash wound to his forehead and defensive wounds on both hands.

“While being looked after by medical personnel, (the suspect) made spontaneous utterances that he did something bad and killed somebody,” said Kenny. “When he returned home, he stated to his mother that he was hearing voices and that Rivera and Peralta were going to hurt him.”

Neighbors recounted hearing someone “screaming the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish” at one point, according to the chief.

The dented pot used to attack the victims was recovered at the crime scene, with the little boy’s intestines “out on the bed” when cops arrived, said Kenny. Rivera was taken to the psychiatric ward at Westchester Medical Center after telling his mother about the bloody massacre.

The accused killer was home with the child as the couple went out to dinner at around 6 p.m. at the Paint and Pour restaurant on the Lower East Side, with the pair returning home about two hours later.

The couple had left Rivera with little Kayden only a few weeks after his 5th birthday, with neighbors hearing screams from the apartment at around midnight, again around 2 a.m. and once more around 5 a.m. this past Sunday. Kenny said one neighbor looked outside and saw nothing, with police finally called around 6:40 a.m.

After discovering the body in the hallway, officers peered through an apartment building window to see the lifeless little boy inside. Once in the apartment, cops discovered the third victim. Police recovered bloody clothes and sneakers from the suspect’s home, with the footwear matching sneaker prints left at the crime scene, said Kenny.

The suspect was a recent college dropout and had been working as a doorman, according to his grandfather Miguel Rivera.

Jayden Rivera had no prior arrests, and he was taken by his mother to the hospital and admitted to the psychiatric ward about four hours before the bodies were found.

“We are coordinating with Bellevue Hospital to arrange the proper mental health care in which Mr. Rivera needs,” Jayden Rivera’s lawyer Nicholas Ramcharitar said in a statement. “We send our condolences to the family of this tragic event and will be looking forward to ongoing conversations with the NYPD and Bronx District Attorney’s Office.”

Hanoi Peralta, 33, was brutally stabbed to death this past weekend along with her 5-year-old son, Kayden Rivera, and his dad, Jonathan Rivera, in their Bronx apartment, leaving the murdered mom’s devastated sister to wonder what sparked the savage bloodbath.

“None of them deserved it,” the sister told the Daily News. “I’ve known [Rivera] to be a good man, a good father. He cared for my sister just as much as he cared for his child. She was a loving person, caring person.”

The sister said her nephew, who celebrated his fifth birthday Nov. 3, wanted to stay and spend more time with his cousin when the family gathering came to an end last week. The sweet little boy was known as “Kit Kat,” a nickname linked to his favorite candy, and was excited about his upcoming graduation from school.

“My baby,” said his still-reeling aunt. “A ball of energy. He loved to dance. He loved him some good old cha-cha slide. I was just going through the party photos and I’m in disbelief. I’m waiting for someone to say, ‘Hey it’s a joke, it’s a prank.’ … He was the sweetest kid. He loved Ninja Turtle action figures. The kid owned the ‘Toys “R” Us,’ I’ll tell you that much.”

Family members said Jonathan Rivera’s older son checked himself into a hospital after the stabbings, with police saying the 19-year-old triple homicide suspect immediately asked for an attorney and refused to answer questions about the killings. The bodies were discovered in the slain family’s apartment building on E. 136th St. near Cypress Ave. in Mott Haven about 6:40 a.m. on Sunday.

“She did not deserve that, the sweetheart that she was,” the slain mom’s 63-year-old aunt, Olga Peralta, told The News. “Hanoi was a great girl, very sweet, lovely, hardworking girl, always smiling, always laughing. … I’m still in shock. I’m shocked, everybody’s shocked. You go to her job and … anywhere they’re going to say the same thing — she’s always there when you need her.”

Son taken in for questioning over Bronx stabbing deaths of dad, 5-year-old brother and boy’s mom

The body of 38-year-old Jonathan Rivera, dressed only in a pair of underwear, was discovered lying against a first-floor hallway wall with a deep cut to his chest, while the slain child and the mother were found in the family apartment. The little boy was discovered lying faceup with multiple stab wounds on an air mattress, while the oft-stabbed mother was found faceup in a bed.

Olga Peralta said Hanoi’s father was in the Dominican Republic and family members were trying to get him up to New York.

Bronx grandpa reeling with grief after son, 5-year-old grandson stabbed to death along with boy’s mother: ‘I want to die’

“I spoke with her on Thanksgiving Day, we’d always be in touch,” said Peralta. “We would like to know what happened so she can rest in peace, and the baby.”

With Thomas Tracy