Law enforcement flocked to the scene of an Extra Space Storage location in Staten Island on Thursday morning to investigate human remains that were found there.
The police were still working to identify the body as of 9:30 a.m., a police spokesman said. They had not yet determined whether the body was that of Jeanine Cammarata, 37, a mother of three who has not been seen in public since Saturday night.
“A connection to the missing teacher has not been verified,” the spokesman said.
Cammarata was reported missing Tuesday. She had last been seen Saturday night at a house six miles from her own home in Staten Island.
Friends and family became alarmed when she did not show up for her job as a first-grade teacher Monday morning. She also did not attend a court appearance Monday for the divorce proceedings that she had initiated against her husband, Michael Cammarata, 42.
Michael Cammarata was taken into police custody Wednesday on charges that he assaulted his wife in an incident unrelated to her disappearance, a police spokesman said.
He was still being questioned at the 120th Precinct in Staten Island on Thursday morning when investigators discovered a body in a unit at the storage facility.
Jeanine Cammarata had filed for divorce from her husband in February, court records show. They had separated nearly two years ago, according to Jeanine Cammarata’s landlord, Jose Perez.
Perez said Jeanine Cammarata had said that her husband mistreated and harassed her. She told Perez, who lived above Cammarata, that Michael Cammarata would follow her in his car and send her menacing text messages.
“It was not good,” he said. “It was all sexual and inappropriate.”
Perez said Jeanine Cammarata’s reports alarmed him enough that he told her to watch out for her physical safety.
“I told her, ‘You better be careful,’” he said. “She said, ‘Oh, he’s harmless, he would never do anything to me.’”
Jeanine Cammarata also told Perez that she took out an order of protection against her husband.
Cammarata and her husband have two children together. She also has a third child from her first husband.
In the time that Jeanine Cammarata and Michael Cammarata had been living apart, the couple had worked out a visitation agreement. Recently, however, Jeanine Cammarata had been upset about the arrangement because it was breaking down, Perez said.
“She was very angry about not being able to see her kids,” Perez said. “He didn’t follow his end of the agreement. She said, ‘I can’t see my kids; that’s unacceptable.’”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.