Jennifer Billo (
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WHERE IS THE LOVE? Anna Gristina and Jennifer Billo were arrested in 2004 over violent threats they made during a fight over the alleged prostitution pad above. (Chad Rachman/New York Post)
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It was a cathouse catfight eight years ago that first put an upstate hockey mom in the cross hairs of Manhattan authorities.
“I own New York!” accused Upper East Side madam Anna Gristina threatened a woman named Jennifer Billo in a June 2004 argument over use of the East 78th Street apartment that Manhattan district attorney investigators say was operating as a brothel, sources told The Post.
“I’m going down to the city, and I’m going to beat your head in with a baseball bat,” Gristina allegedly told the blond beauty, resulting in the mother of four’s first — and, until this year, only — arrest.
GRISTINA’S DEFENSE LAWYER BRACING FOR COURT SHOWDOWN
Gristina had been calling from her 200-acre farm in upstate Monroe, where she lives with her husband, children and an assortment of rescue pigs.
Billo, then 24, was at the apartment that investigators now say was an “in-call” brothel connected to Gristina’s alleged law enforcement-protected, multimillion-dollar escort service.
The argument involved Gristina’s pique at Billo for fighting with other women who used the East 78th Street apartment.
It was the culmination of a series of angry calls in which Gristina demanded that Billo leave the place and never return.
And what a fight it was, according to two people familiar with the case.
“You don’t know who I know,” Billo claimed the alleged madam howled into the phone.
“I’m going to send someone right now. Right now, they are coming to your apartment,” Billo claimed Gristina threatened, according to two sources.
“You better watch your back. I own New York!”
Billo, now believed to be living in Las Vegas, allegedly upped the ante — threatening in a return phone call to slaughter Gristina’s entire family.
“I’m going to have someone put a bullet in your children’s head, your husband’s head and your head!” Billo threatened, according to one of the sources.
The verbal altercations prompted both women to go to the 19th Precinct and report each other.
Billo was arrested in late June and Gristina a month later.
Ultimately, the charges against both were dropped.
But the arrests clarify the start date of the massive investigation into Gristina, who prosecutors have said has been on their radar only since 2007.
Sources said that the brothel battle three years earlier was the actual jumping-off point and that DA investigators were on the case virtually from that point on.
A mere six months after the phone fracas, the DA’s official-corruption investigators had begun gathering dirt on Jonas Gayer, Gristina’s alleged “laundryman.”
Gayer’s alleged brothel-money misdeeds date from Jan. 1, 2005, according to the charges against him.
Sources have told The Post that the investigation is in the hands of official-corruption prosecutors because its primary target is crooked cops.
But the Manhattan DA’s investigation into Gristina — which is now in its eighth year — has yet to result in the arrest of a single member of law enforcement.
This, despite prosecutors’ assertions at Gristina’s February bail hearing that she has been caught on surveillance tapes boasting of enjoying the protection of law enforcement and wealthy johns.
Gristina remains in jail on Rikers Island, unable to post a whopping bail of $1 million cash or $2 million bond, set by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
Her former lawyer, Peter Gleason, has offered to post his TriBeCa loft as collateral, but Gristina can’t yet wrangle the cash for the premium to pay for the bond.
That could approach $100,000, according to a source close to those negotiations. Accused accomplice Jaynie Mae Baker is free on $100,000 bail.
Gayer, arrested on charges of money laundering and promoting prostitution, remains free on no bail, as do at least two accused escorts.
Lawyers for Gristina and Gayer declined to comment. Billo did not respond to requests for comment.
Gristina, who is represented now by Chester, NY-based lawyer Gary Greenwald, and Baker, whose lawyer is Robert Gottlieb, have maintained that they were involved in, at most, a legitimate dating company.
But lead prosecutor Charles Linehan said at Gristina’s arraignment that officials had her on wiretaps claiming “to have made millions over the 15 or so years she has been in business as a madam,” according to court transcripts.
Gristina, 44, boasts on the tapes that she had law-enforcement pals “poised to help her out, to let her know if there is trouble on the front that she needs to be concerned about, particularly back during the Eliot Spitzer investigation,” Linehan said, referring to the ex-governor’s 2008 hooker scandal.
Linehan also claimed that on at least one occasion “minors were involved,” an accusation made by an alleged hooker that Gristina has adamantly denied.