Antonio Litman started temporary work in the mailroom of International Registries Inc (IRI) in New York some 28 years ago. In an early conversation there, IRI managing partner Clay Maitland dissuaded Litman from aspirations of seeking work as an undertaker.

Over the next three decades, Litman would rise to a role as Maitland’s right-hand man at the helm of the Marshall Islands flag while running a charity for underprivileged children, named after Maitland’s mother.

But a remarkable career ended this week when Litman’s body was found with stab wounds in the lobby of his Brooklyn brownstone townhouse, which had been set on fire.

New York police suspect Litman, 55, was murdered. As officers pressed their investigation this week, Maitland and his many shipping colleagues inside and outside of IRI were left to pick up the pieces of a senseless tragedy.

“We’re all shattered by the experience,” Maitland told TradeWinds on Tuesday from IRI’s New York offices on Broadway.

“It’s the end of a very important part of my life. I’m an old man now, I’m 77. Antonio would drive me all over the place, he did so much for me. He was my life. I’ll never be the same.”

Maitland spent four hours on Monday with three detectives in the 88th precinct in Brooklyn in a police investigation that “is gathering momentum”, Maitland said.

Police probe

The working theory is Litman confronted an intruder inside his four-storey dwelling sometime after midnight on Monday.

“Somebody got in and stabbed him,” Maitland said.

Police suspect the assailant then started a fire in a failed attempt to destroy the crime scene.

Maitland last saw Litman, who was also office manager at IRI New York, last Friday evening after the two dined at the Lambs Club near Times Square.

Litman headed to his residence in the cornfields of New Jersey near the Delaware River, but planned to return to Brooklyn on Sunday.

Maitland was told of the death by an IRI employee on Monday morning.

“The shock hits you but it goes right over you,” Maitland said, invoking memories of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

Hundreds of phone calls and emails have poured into the IRI offices over the past 48 hours, he said.

Maitland mourned a friend who, despite lacking a college education, learned the intricacies of the Marshall Islands registration regime and charmed almost everyone he met.

“He had a way with people,” he said. “He was like a hot stove. He warmed up a room.”

Plans are in the works for Virginia’s House of Hope, the charity Litman founded in 2004 in honour of Maitland’s mother, to continue in Antonio’s name, Maitland said.