Michael Benjamin’s lawyer swears his client has nothing to do with the murder of Angela Pettifer, a 36-year-old woman found strangled in her apartment last month. But police say they’ve got proof Benjamin was with Pettifer the night she died. Including a piece of spicy incriminating evidence.Pettifer lived on the third floor of the Savoy, a mixed-use complex in Monroe. Benjamin, 45, a self-employed handyman and a registered sex offender, worked in an office-suite one floor below.The night she was murdered, Pettifer went out drinking with her dad. Father and daughter got separated at some point. He took a cab home and never saw her alive again.Angela Pettifer was found strangled and covered in hot sauce.According to a couple who live at the Savoy, later that evening they ran into Pettifer standing outside of the building, trying to find her keys. The two offered to help take Pettifer back to her apartment. But Benjamin insisted on escorting the woman home, saying he was the building’s “unofficial security.”Two hours later, another witness reported seeing a sweaty Benjamin going from the third floor to his office on the second. “Well, it’s an awful night to have sex,” the witness reportedly heard Benjamin say, in what has to be the strangest just-passin’-by quote we’ve ever heard.It’s not yet known how police were alerted to Pettifer’s apartment. But when they eventually arrived the next morning they found her strangled, with hot sauce on her face and in her hair and a broken bottle lying on the floor.When Benjamin was first contacted by police he didn’t exactly portray himself as a man with nothing to hide. He arrived for the interview accompanied by his lawyer and two pre-recorded statements proclaiming that he didn’t know Pettifer, had never gone into her apartment that night and had never touched her.Police, however, say they found Benjamin’s DNA on Pettifer’s chest. They also say they found the same brand of hot sauce smeared on Pettifer in Benjamin’s office.Cops are speculating that the sauce might have been used to blind Pettifer. But so far they haven’t released any evidence justifying that hunch.Benjamin is currently being held on $1 million bail. It’s his second recent run-in with the law. In 2005, three girls accused Benjamin of touching them inappropriately. He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of communicating with minors for immoral purposes and was forced to register as a sex offender.