The body of a missing Bronx mother of four - the estranged wife of an abusive ex-cop - was found in a patch of woods in Westchester County on Wednesday night by teens riding four-wheelers, sources said.
Investigators identified the body of Tina Adovasio through photographs and a tattoo after she was discovered off the Taconic Parkway in Yorktown Heights, the sources said.
The medical examiner hadn't yet determined the exact cause of death, but sources said investigators believe the 40-year-old was choked to death.
Teenagers riding all-terrain vehicles found Adovasio's body in a wooded area about 100 yards off Baldwin Road and reported it to police at 5:53 p.m., police said.
Edwin Coello, 40, whose marriage to Adovasio was marked by bouts of domestic violence, was expected to turn himself in to authorities Thursday morning, law enforcement sources said.
Adovasio so feared her raging husband that she applied for a restraining order the same day she filed for divorce last month, sources said.
During questioning after her disappearance, Coello seemed to be the "helpful husband" until about 12 hours in when detectives asked to look at his car. He refused and clammed up, sources said.
He did tell detectives Adovasio scratched him before storming out of their home Friday night, sources said.
"It was as if he knew what was going to happen so he told us that they had fought earlier and she had scratched him, in case we found his skin under her fingernails," one source close to the probe said.
The case is now being investigated by Westchester County, Yorktown Heights and NYPD cops.
The hardworking nurse was last seen entering the tidy Throgs Neck house she shared with Coello and their 5-year-old daughter about 7 p.m. on Friday, sources said.
Joe Adovasio, who helped investigators identify the body of his ex-wife, feared the worst and has tried to console their two sons and daughter since she disappeared.
"At least she was found," he said. "There's at least some closure there."
"[Coello] should rot in hell," he said. "[Tina Adovasio] was a beautiful woman and a good mother. Our hearts go out to her side of the family."
Coello, a former housing cop, was pushed out of the force in 2000 amid reports he abused his first wife. She was holed up with her son Wednesday in her Bronx home, too terrified to talk.
A surveillance camera pointing at Coello's home at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday caught a blurry image of a man carrying out a large object - wrapped in what appears to be either a sheet ora duffel bag "big enough to hold a body," sources said.
The man placed it into the backseat of a parked car - and drove off two hours later, the sources said. Cops believe the man was Coello.
Newly unearthed court records revealed that Coello once terrorized his wife while she held their crying baby.
Coello smashed their cordless phone in a fit of fury by hurling it against the wall. Then he knocked the stereo and some trophies to the floor, the papers state.
"Wait till you see what I do to your f-----g car," Coello screamed while Adovasio, holding her 1-year-old daughter, quaked in "alarm and fear for her physical safety."
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