Who Is Jeanine Cammarta? Staten Island Teacher Killed By Ex-Husband
Jeanine Cammarata's ex-husband and girlfriends are charged with her murder.
Instagram Jeanine Cammarata was finally breaking free of what she had claimed was an abusive marriage. She filed for divorce from her husband Michael in February and was trying to get sole custody of the two children they shared. Both she and Michael were in new relationships, and Michael’s girlfriend was pregnant with his child. But that didn’t stop them from conspiring to murder Jeanine.
When Jeanine disappeared on March 30, friends and her boyfriend grew alarmed and contacted police. Authorities search for two days before finding her burned remains in a storage facility on Staten Island. She was identified through dental records because what was left of her body was unrecognizable. Now, prosecutors have charged Michael Cammarata and his girlfriend Ayisha Egea with murder and concealing a corpse and tampering with evidence.
What happened to Jeanine Cammarata? Read on to learn more.
1. Jeanine
Jeanine Cammarata was a 37-year-old teacher and mother of three living in Staten Island. She had a brother and sister and she helped raise her brother after her parents' marriage broke up.
Her friend Jessica Pobega said “Jeanine and her sister made sure he was taken care of, made sure he was fed and in school. They supported that house.” Another friend, Carolanne Mahone confirmed, “The girls and their younger brother Anthony did not have an easy upbringing. They both worked very hard from young ages to support themselves, their mother and Anthony.”
Jeanine went on to become a teacher, working in Staten Island’s P.S. 29 where colleagues said she loved her work and her students.
Friends described Jeanine as funny and caring.
2. Abusive marriage
But all was not well at home for Jeanine. She told friends that Michael had been abusing her and he began stalking her after they separated. Her attorney Eric Gansberg says, “She told me on numerous occasions how terribly afraid she was of him. There had been a history of domestic violence. That’s what caused the separation.”
Jeanine ultimately moved out of the couple’s shared residence and looked for a place of her own. But she allowed their two kids to stay with that dad.
Gansberg explained, “She believed the separation was traumatic enough and did not wish to compound it by uprooting them from their home right away. Since they lived in close proximity at first, she had frequent time with her young daughter and son. When the husband moved to Queens and started placing barriers to her parenting of the children, that’s when she found it necessary to take action.”
That was the point at which she filed for sole custody. She and her ex-husband had been scheduled for a hearing on March 30, the day she disappeared.
Husband Michael has been arrested for her murder.
3. Moving on
Jeanine had hoped a new relationship would distract Michael from continuing to stalk her. Jessica Proberg says she set Michael up with his new girlfriend, who was the mother of one of her students.
“Jeanine actually set up Mike and Ayisha because she wanted Mike to be occupied and leave her alone. She (Cammarata) actually introduced them in the hopes that Mike would stop stalking her.” She went on to say, “She thought if he kept busy with her (Egea), he wouldn’t be stalking her. But he continued stalking her.”
Ayisha Egea was also arrested in connection with her death.
4. Afraid
Michael’s took the kids and moved to Queens with them and Egea, who was now expecting a baby with him. He was making it harder for Jeanine to contact her children and she was pursuing legal action in the wake of that. But it was clear that she didn’t trust Michael. In the days before her death, she updated her will to make sure her children would be taken care of and she made it clear that she wanted her sister to raise her children if anything happened to her.
Jeanine was found in this storage facility.
5. Vanished
On March 30, Jeanine left her boyfriend’s house to go pick up her children from Michael’s apartment. In the days that followed, friends and her boyfriend grew concerned when she didn’t come back. Jessica Pobega said she tried to text her and got responses that she did not believe were actually from Jeanine.
“I knew Monday that something was wrong. I got a message supposedly from her that said, ‘I’m okay.’ But I said, ‘Call me right now,’ and she didn’t. I know she would have called if she was alive.”
By Tuesday, she hadn’t arrived at work, she was officially reported missing. On Friday, police found her body in a State Island storage locker. After using dental records to positively identify her, they arrested Michael Cammarata and Ayisha Egea on charges of murder and concealing a corpse and tampering with evidence. According to police officials, he admitted to “Investigators interviewed Michael Cammarata [who] admitted he was with Jeanine on Sunday and also admitted to having sex with her and hitting her.
Friends and family are trying to help Jeanine's children.
At this time, Jeanine’s cause of death is unknown, pending autopsy results.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.