A celebrity photographer who shot the rich and famous ends up naked, bloodied and charged with murder

A former in-demand photographer, who’d shot a galaxy of celebrities from Nicki Minaj to Benedict Cumberbatch, was found naked and bloody on a Bronx lawn after police say he smashed a woman’s head in with a kettlebell, resulting in her death a week later.

The episode marked a tragic fall for Benjamin Lozovsky, 41, who before his encounter with Jacklyn Timinski had been arrested four times — including for a random attack of a stranger on the Upper West Side.

Before that, though, he was an accomplished photographer.

He’d shot stylish portraits of rappers Nicki Minaj, A$AP Rocky and Big Boi; rockers Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry and Chuck Berry; actors Rose McGowan, Benedict Cumberbatch and Chris Rock and climate activist Greta Thunberg, but hadn’t been working as a photographer in recent years.

This is the second part of a two-part series of a pair of seemingly unrelated killings in the Bronx the Daily News has found share a common – and tragic – thread. Read the other part here.

“Benjamin was a photographer who was in unbelievable demand,“ said his mother, Sabina Lozovsky. “All the designers. All the singers. He knew all of them.”

The mother said Lozovsky was attacked in a McDonald’s on W. 95th St. in 2020 by several men, resulting in a severed median nerve in his left arm leaving him no longer able to lift a camera as well as a diagnosis of PTSD.

On Sept. 8, Timinski, 37, met her accused killer outside an Upper West Side Petco where down-on-their-luck people are known to gather, according to Lozovsky’s mother.

The pair, strangers to each other before that day, went back to Timinski’s dilapidated house in Throggs Neck on an otherwise tidy middle-class block to do drugs together, according to law enforcement sources.

The mother of the suspect told the Daily News she believed the two were together for a different reason.

“She’s a good-looking and nice girl. She invites him to her house in the Bronx and he goes with her,” said Sabina Lozovsky. “He doesn’t do drugs.”

Inside the home on Shore Drive near Barkley Ave., Benjamin Lozovsky struck Timinski in the head with a kettlebell when their encounter went sideways, according to an indictment. Though there is no such indication in official reports on the killing, Sabina Lozovsky said she believes her son was acting in self defense.

Timinski was rushed to Jacobi Hospital, according to police, and clung to life for a week before succumbing to her injuries Sept. 15.

A photograph obtained by The News of the aftermath of the attack shows a distraught Benjamin Lozovsky sitting naked and bloodied on the ground outside Timinski’s home.

A friend of Timinski’s scoffed at the suggestion she might have had a romantic encounter with Lozovsky.

“She don’t chill with a person like that,” the friend, who asked that his name not be used, told The News. “She was with her man and her man only.”

That man is Juan “Joey” Boria, who went into a crazed downward spiral after Timinski’s death, ending in his own senseless slaying weeks later when he fought a homeless man for a cardboard box in the Bronx.

Timinski’s last months alive were also full of upheaval. After her 18-year-old daughter Olivia Rios died on Jan. 31, the grieving mom lost the will to live, her friends say. Rios committed suicide at her home in Pennsylvania, according to the local coroner’s office.

Before her daughter’s suicide Timinski, who grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was the life of the party.

“She was a loving person. Everybody loved Jackie in Greenpoint,” her friend said. “She’s got the music on. She’s singing. She’s dancing. But at the end she wasn’t like that.”

Timinski had been turning her life around and was set to go into rehab the day after she was killed, the friend said. She had only been delayed because she was looking for someone to take care of her two cats.

Benjamin Lozovsky is due back in court Jan. 15 for Timinski’s slaying. He is being held without bail at Rikers Island, where his mother has been visiting him twice a week.

Benjamin Lozovsky has four prior arrests on charges including assault, aggravated harassment and criminal mischief. Two of the instances involved breaking two different people’s cell phones inside the W. 92nd St. apartment building where he lives with his mother. Sabina Lozovsky says both times were accidents and one of the cases had been dropped.

On August 11, 2023, the suspect was arrested and charged with attacking a man, also in his building, hitting him “multiple times in the head with a hard metal object, causing lacerations, bleeding, and substantial pain,” according to a criminal complaint.

Sabina Lozovsky said her son defended himself from being attacked by a down-on-his-luck man he had invited home after meeting him outside the same Petco where he would later meet Timinski.

Benjamin Lozovsky was also arrested for punching a man in the head on Broadway and W. 92nd St. on June 19. According to police, the unprovoked attack took place when the victim, who was a stranger, walked past Lozovsky sitting on a bench and Lozovsky got up and hit him.

On Oct. 29 Benjamin Lozovsky pleaded guilty to lesser charges in those previous cases and was sentenced to time served, said the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

“Prior to COVID he was a very accomplished photographer and that’s really all I can talk about at this point,” said Jodi Morales, Lozovsky’s lawyer in the murder case.

“I always emphasize that people are innocent until proven guilty and it’s very early in the case. Of course, I know that people will hear the story and make their decision. But there’s a lot that needs to be revealed and so I always hope that people will have an open mind.”

Timinski’s devasted friends are set on Benjamin Lozovsky being held responsible for her death.

“I don’t want her to be looked at like a nobody. She had a lot of people that cared about her,” Timinski’s friend said. “(Lozovsky) did something so brutal. He needs to pay for that.”