She spied on her estranged husband obsessively throughout the last month, following him in two states, certain he was cheating.
When he commuted to the Upper East Side, she watched. When he strolled through shopping malls, she tailed him.
And when he slept in his new home in North Jersey, she was outside — waiting with the well-meaning cabby she paid to drive her on her jealousy-fueled jaunts.
But this week, it was the hack who put Veronica Escalona in jail — after she turned to him in the cab and, referring to her husband, allegedly announced: “I want him dead!”
The short and portly Queens housewife spent last night in jail on charges of attempted murder for asking the cabby, Rachid Rakhis, to hire her a hit man for $2,000 — then giving an undercover cop a down payment on the hit, police said.
Her road to vengeance began early this month, when, by chance, she hailed Rakhis in Manhattan and told him to follow
her husband, Ramillo.
“I told her, ‘Call me if you need to do this again,’ ” Rakhis said he told her after that first time.
Escalona did call the cabby, over and over.
She was so certain Ramillo had another woman that for most of this month, she repeatedly hired Rakhis to help her tail him throughout Manhattan and North Jersey.
The chauffeuring fees rose to well over $1,000, the cabby remembered.
“We would sometimes sit outside his [New Jersey] house for an hour or two watching,” Rakhis, of Elmhurst, told The Post.
“This would happen from 10:30 p.m. to sometimes 3 a.m.
“I said to myself, ‘This guy is innocent. I’ve never seen him with another woman.’ ”
They’d go from the husband’s job on the Upper East Side to the Port Authority Bus Terminal — where Escalona would hop out to watch Ramillo get on a commuter bus to his new home in Lincoln Park, NJ.
Sometimes, Escalona had the cabby take her to New Jersey, where she’d hop out and tail him through the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne. Rakhis
would always wait for her.
“She’d say, ‘He never shops like this. He’s going to see the other girl!’ ” Rakhis remembered.
But the cabby never saw any “other girl.”
“He went straight home,” the cabby said. “Sometimes he’d shop. Mostly, he’d sleep.”
Then one day at the PA terminal, Escalona allegedly confided she wanted her husband dead. Thinking quickly, the cabby lied, “Well, I can get that done for you for $2,000.”
He went directly to the closest cops he could find — two PA officers. Soon, investigators had set up an undercover cop to pose as a hit man.
On Wednesday, Escalona made her move at the Leisure Time Bowling Alley inside the PA terminal, giving the “hit man” $500 and photos of her husband, authorities said.
She was picked up on the spot.
“Rather than ignoring a dangerous situation, this New York City cabdriver acted quickly and courageously, helping to possibly save someone’s life,” said proud TLC Commissioner David Yassky. “He deserves our thanks.”
Rakhis was more modest. “I just did it to do the right thing,” he said. “That’s why I turned her in.”
The PA also credited the two cops that the cabby approached in a panic, realizing he might have a would-be murderess in his back seat.
“The case was developed and proceeded successfully because of the initial investigation by Officer Thomas Gerard and Daniel Tancreto,” a supervisor said.
Escalona has a 26-year-old daughter and another child. Sources said she has made a videotaped confession while in police custody.
Efforts to reach her husband were not successful.