The drug-addled suspect accused of torching a dozen mezuzahs during a two-day hate crime spree says he has no alibi — because he can’t remember a thing.
“I’m nothing but a lost boy in a man’s body,” a tearful Ruben Ubiles told the Daily News during a rambling Rikers Island interview.
“I don’t hate nobody,” he said Saturday. “I don’t even remember. . . . It don’t make no sense.”
Police said Ubiles was captured on security cameras inside a pair of Williamsburg buildings where 11 apartments were targeted Monday and a 12th on Tuesday.
The mezuzahs — small pieces of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah — were all set afire.
“I don’t remember a thing,” the bearded suspect insisted as his two legs twitched. “I don’t remember burning nothing. It doesn’t make sense. Why would I do that?”
Ubiles, 35, said he was blasted those two days on enough drugs to stock a small pharmacy: Methadone, cocaine, marijuana and pills, along with alcohol.
“I was clean since February, and then three weeks ago I went back to getting high,” he said. “I’ve been in jail since I was 16. I’m tired of this cycle, it’s killing me.”
Ubiles was arrested Wednesday morning while hiding beneath a bed in his girlfriend’s Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment. Cops said his rap sheet included 52 previous arrests, including drug and assault charges.
A law enforcement source said that Ubiles was taken to a hospital before he was charged because he was high on drugs.
The suspect was booked Thursday on an assortment of hate-crime charges linked to the fires — burglary, arson and criminal mischief.
The father of two said he was eating a bowl of cereal when he first heard about the fires. Ubiles said his problem was drugs, not anti-Semitism or a criminal mind.
“I don’t hate Jews,” he said. “I worked for Mr. Fleischmann at Bedford Signs back in the ’90s.”
By Denis Slattery AND Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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