jeff locker

jeff locker

A motivational speaker from Long Island was found strangled and stabbed in his car in East Harlem Thursday, hours after he was seen buying condoms.

Jeffrey Locker, 52, had his hands tied behind his back and a cord wrapped around his neck and tied to the headrest. He had been stabbed in the chest and robbed, police sources said.

Investigators suspect there were two killers in his 2007 Dodg

e Magnum in the Wagner Houses - one in the backseat with the cord and one in the front passenger seat with the knife.

Teens on the block said they saw Locker park the car on Second Ave. and walk into the nearby Wagner Deli about 3 a.m.

"He got out of the car and bought a bottle of water and a pack of Trojan condoms. He seemed cool, relaxed," said Whitney Young, 19. "The next time we see him, he's here dead."

Cops said they are checking to see if Locker had regularly visited a prostitute in the Wagner Houses on Wednesday nights.

Locker's wife, Lois, reported him missing Wednesday night when he did not return to his Valley Stream home.

It's unclear why he was in East Harlem.

"He was going into the city and coming home. He was supposed to be coming home," she said, without elaborating. "He was supposed to come home. He wasn't there by choice."

The victim was a father of three and a motivational speaker who ran "life-fulfillment" workshops and published self-help books, his Web sites said.

"He probably trusted someone," said his mother-in-law, Annette Serota. "He was a very trusting person. That's probably how it happened. You could sell him the Brooklyn Bridge."

Neighbor Robert Levine, 52, often took bike rides with Locker. "He was a nice, really great guy," he said. "He was a really wonderful father."

Locker was sued in April as an investor who profited from a $300 million, decade-old Ponzi scheme run by Lou Pearlman, former manager of boy bands including the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync.

Pearlman pleaded guilty in March 2008 to conspiracy, money laundering and presenting a false claim in bankruptcy court.

A bankruptcy trustee sued Locker to recoup roughly $371,000 he received from Pearlman's investment company, according to court papers filed in Orlando.

"I am mortified to be accused ... of participating knowingly in a Ponzi scheme," Locker wrote the court in May.