Metro

Nun slayer’s boss: Give up

A wealthy debt-collection executive pleaded with his Guatemalan landscaper to turn himself in to Hamptons cops after the laborer fatally ran over a Catholic nun and allegedly fled the scene, sources told The Post.

Andrew Zaro — related to the prominent New York family behind Zaro’s Bread Basket — was the last person to hear from the suspect, who called to tell his boss about the crash that killed Sister Jacqueline Walsh, 59, last Monday.

“Andrew told him to turn himself in, that he’d get him a lawyer and straighten it out. But the guy took off instead,” said a source with knowledge of the call.

The 28-year-old landscaper — whose name is being withheld at the request of authorities — ditched Zaro’s 2009 Touareg a half-mile from the scene and disappeared.

“Look, I’m sure he was terrified, he was illegally in the country, had no license, and just killed someone,” the source said, although it could not be verified if the driver is an undocumented immigrant. “He should have stayed, but he ran away.”

Zaro yesterday said he wasn’t in his sprawling East End mansion when he got the call.

“I had nothing to do with any of this. I was having dinner in a restaurant with my wife in New York City when I received a call,” Zaro told The Post in his first public comments on the case.

“The poor woman is not here anymore. She is no longer with us,” added Zaro, who is the CEO of the upstate debt-collection firm Cavalry Portfolio Services, a philanthropist and a Democratic donor.

Walsh was walking down Rose Hill Road in Water Mill after spending the day in a spiritual retreat with the Sisters of Mercy when she was struck and killed.

The source said the landscaper might have borrowed the car without permission, but the car was not reported stolen.

It’s unclear if the suspect had a valid license. His rap sheet includes two charges for driving without a license.

“There is no way that Andrew would have lent him the car if Andrew thought that he did not have a license,” the source added.

A former roommate of the landscaper — who has worked as a groundskeeper at several Hamptons mansions over the past six years — said he expected him to head back to his native Guatemala.

Local police and US marshals are trying to track him down.