The troubled 50-year-old Brooklyn woman who is refusing to say where her autistic son is and has claimed she doesn’t have a child, told a police officer that she is a single mother before reversing course and describing herself as a single female, according to new court records released this week.
She also told investigators searching for 11-year-old Jacob Pritchett that the toys they spotted in her apartment were hers.
The disclosures occurred during an Oct. 1 visit to the Brownsville apartment of Jacqueline Pritchett as cops and the Administration for Children’s Services searched for young Jacob, The boy wasn’t there, but both NYPD Officer Maksim Kolesnyak and ACS caseworker Gabriel Martindale testified in Family Court on Oct. 10 that they saw two mattresses in the apartment and various children’s toys.
Kolesnyak said that when he had a conversation with Pritchett she told him she had graduated from three colleges but that she had been previously living in a shelter.
“And when I asked her why she (was) in the shelter she said because she’s a single mother, which she corrected right away, saying ‘No, I’m a single female,’” the officer testified, according to a court transcript released as part of family court proceedings surrounding the boy’s disappearance.
“I asked her numerous times where the child is located and she mentioned that she never — she never had a child. She never been with a man.”
Martindale, meanwhile, testified that the apartment had a “very strong” odor from cleaning fluids.
“The apartment was spotless,” he testified.
Martindale also said that when he asked about the toys and if they belonged to her son, Jacob, “she said they were her toys.”
Pritchett also repeated her claim she has never had children, Martindale testified, “that she has never had a period, that she’s never been with a man and that she’s Jesus Christ.”
The transcript also revealed for the first time that police had filed a domestic incident report in 2017 after visiting the apartment to investigate a complaint about a crying child.
Authorities believe Jacob has been missing since at least April.
The Oct. 1 visit was prompted by an anonymous tip to a state hotline number from someone concerned about Jacob’s well-being.
After that visit, Pritchett was taken into custody then taken to Brookdale Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. The woman has a mental illness, according to police sources.
After the Oct. 10 hearing, one of eight in which she or her lawyer has invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself, Family Court Judge Dawn Orsatti ordered Pritchett jailed for contempt.
Pritchett’s lawyers this week filed a petition asking a Supreme Court judge to order her released, saying she is being “unlawfully detained” for exercising her rights.
The NYPD has described Jacob as missing and has asked for the public’s help as they try to find him.
A sketch and a computer rendering of Jacob, who is non-verbal have been released to the media, as has a photo of his mother.
In October, the NYPD and State Police searched an upstate landfill to look through garbage taken there from a dumpster outside Pritchett’s building.
Police went there after Pritchett’s neighbors reported an unusually strong odor at the dumpster.
