A Queens housewife angry at her cheating husband has been charged with attempting to hire a hit man to rub him out for $2,000, The Post has learned.
Veronica Escalona, 54, of Forest Hills, allegedly sought the help of a yellow cabby, who began helping her to secretly stalk her estranged husband, Ramillo, 49, after he arrived in Manhattan by commuter bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, sources said.
When Escalona mentioned to the cabby that she wanted her spouse dead, the cabby immediately approached two cops at the Port Authority, who in turn arranged to have an undercover detective pose as a hitman.
“She told the cabby, ‘I want him dead,’ and the cabby says, ‘Well, I can get that done for you for $2,000.’ He then went right to the police and was she was later introduced to an undercover who agreed to the hit,” said a source.
On Wednesday night, she repeated the overture to the undercover cop inside the Leisure Time Bowling Alley, telling him that she wanted her husband rubbed out – and providing him photographs and a $500 deposit.
After the Manhattan DA’s office reviewed the evidence, she was locked up – and she later made a videotaped admission to her role in the crime, source added.
Sources said the events that led to the arrest began June 4 when Ms. Escalona began showing up at the Port Authority to watch her husband arrive on a commuter bus from his residence in Lincoln Park, where the couple had once lived.
Her snooping led her to meet, purely by chance, a cabby, Rachid Rakhis, who agreed to wait for her on Eighth Avenue outside the bus terminal, as she watched her husband from a distance as he began showing up each morning.
She and the cabby would then follow her husband as he headed off to work on the Upper East Side, occasionally in the company of another woman, a source said.
As Veronica Escalona and the cabby grew closer, the taxi driver also agreed to tail her husband and the woman he was seeing as they made their way to the Willowbrook Mall, in Wayne, NJ, where they spied on them as they shopped, the source added.
Her efforts as a part time sleuth took on a sinister turn after she became consumed by jealousy and admitted to him how she wanted her husband dead – and was willing to pay to see the deed done, a source explained.
After announcing her intention to the cabby, the cab driver sauntered up to two cops at the Port Authority bus terminal and told them of Ms. Escalona’s murderous intentions and her hope to have him eliminated for a fee, the source added.
The cops, in turn, quickly arranged to have the cabby introduce her to an undercover detective, who then met her on the bowling alley, leading up to her arrest.
The suspect, who has a 26-year-old daughter and another child, was expected to be arraigned later today.