A Manhattan live-in nanny was held captive and tortured for three days in an East Side apartment by her boss — who told her he was the “black Hitler,” police sources said on Wednesday.
The woman allegedly was held in the East 23rd Street home from 9 p.m. Saturday until 7 p.m. Tuesday, when she convinced her captor to let her run out to the bank, the sources said.
Instead, the 22-year-old woman ran to the 13th Precinct and told cops about her torture, allegedly at the hands of Sherman Gamble, 54.
Gamble was arrested that night and charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, assault, strangulation, reckless endangerment and weapons possession.
Sources said the victim is the nanny for Gamble’s 9-year-old grandson, who was home during the weekend attack.
A police source said Gamble choked the woman until she passed out, “beat her with a fist, pulled her hair out and beat her with a cellphone on the head.”
He also allegedly “rolled up a newspaper and shoved it down her throat, and shouted, ‘I am going to kill you. You don’t know who I am. I am the black Hitler.’ ”
After she finally reported the alleged savagery to police, the woman was treated at Beth Israel Hospital for bruising, swelling and pain over her entire body, sources said.
“She was beat up really badly,” a police source said.
A relative of the victim said the young woman has done baby-sitting to earn money, but was unsure how long the victim had been working for Gamble or how they met.
Gamble, who owns a contracting company, Cut Rate Construction, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court early Thursday on charges of kidnapping, attempted murder, assault and strangulation. He was being held in lieu of $80,000 bail.
He has a prior arrest for allegedly assaulting one of his children in 2003 and one in 1998 for allegedly patronizing a prostitute in the Hunts Point section of The Bronx, law enforcement sources said. He has at least three other arrests that are sealed.
Audrey Bailey, the mother of one of his five children, said she couldn’t believe Gamble would do anything like that. They have a 30-year-old daughter together and broke up 28 years ago.
“It’s hard for you to believe that he would torture someone,” Bailey said. “I’ve known him for most of my life and he’s not that type of person. That sounds a little funny to me. I am very shocked. That’s not the person I know.”
Neighbors said they’ve seen Gamble come and go with different women and that he was rarely without one.
“I saw him with different women over time,” said a resident of his building.
Additional reporting by Matt Abrahams