Mother of Bronx man fatally stabbed after fight with girlfriend always knew she was trouble

The mother of a Bronx man stabbed to death after a fight with his girlfriend in their apartment said the woman was trouble from the start.

“I knew there was something wrong with that girl from the day I met her,” said Mabel Gonzalez, 50, days after her son, Michael Bookhart, 32, was fatally stabbed Sunday in a Mott Haven apartment.

“I knew her story didn’t add up with me. I felt there were gaps in between her stories and, as a mother, that mother’s intuition never fails you.”

Cops said Bookhart’s girlfriend, Jamaya Nelson, 33, plunged a knife into Bookhart Sunday night after an argument that a neighbor said could be heard through the apartment walls. Medics rushed Bookhart to Lincoln Hospital, but he could not be saved.

Nelson was arrested at the apartment she shared with the victim on E. 138th St. near Brook Ave. She was charged with murder, manslaughter and aggravated criminal possession of a weapon, police said.

She was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court and remanded without bail

A neighbor said the couple had been arguing for a couple of hours that night.

Gonzalez said she knew something was wrong when a chest pain out of nowhere woke her up about 4:30 a.m. on Monday.

“It was like more of an anguish,” she said. “I couldn’t explain it, a mother’s intuition of just feeling different, like something was off.”

Gonzalez said she returned to bed only to be awakened an hour later by police at the front door of her Mott Haven apartment building with news of her son’s death.

“I don’t even know how to console my own self,” Gonzalez said. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. Overall I just [hope] she pays for what she did to my son.”

Gonzalez said she and Nelson got off on the wrong foot.

The heartbroken mother said she became aware of her son’s relationship with Nelson after coming home one day and hearing a toddler wailing inside the apartment she shared with her son.

“Michael introduced me to that girl,” Gonzalez said. “I never met her before. I never knew she had been in my house without my consent. I was not aware she had two children. I went out, I came home late. The next morning I hear a baby crying in my house. So I came down, I see the door open from his room and I’m like, ‘Whose baby is that?’”

She said Bookhart introduced Nelson’s oldest child as her daughter, but then the couple lied to Gonzalez about the toddler’s identity, saying she was really the daughter of Nelson’s mentally ill sister. A judge had named Nelson the girl’s guardian, they told her.

“I didn’t believe that the little baby was her niece,” Gonzalez said. “Her story was off. She said that she had a sister who had mental illness, that she was helping her sister out babysitting this 6-month-old baby. Then, later on, I find out through other people that that was her daughter.”

Nelson also told Gonzalez that she had a job at Foot Locker, but Bookhart’s mother said she never saw his girlfriend work a day while living under her roof and said her whole story reeked of lies.

She said Nelson had been living there for weeks without her knowledge and that her son’s room was filled with her stuff.

“We had a big dispute in September, a week before my birthday,” Gonzalez said. “I found out that he actually had her staying here since August, almost a whole month. She practically moved into the room. She had a lot of her baby stuff here, her personal clothes and stuff like that.”

Gonzalez said the tension caused by Nelson’s unwelcome presence led to strife between her and her son, and that he often complained of wanting to harm himself.

Gonzalez said she arranged for him to be hospitalized.

“I called the ambulance for Michael on Oct. 2., just to get him evaluated,” she said. “I felt he needed to speak to someone.”

Bookhart was given a psychiatric evaluation and held for a day, during which time Nelson grabbed her stuff from Gonzalez’s home and left. When Bookhart was released from the hospital, he didn’t go back home.

“After that, when my son was released, he didn’t come back here,” Gonzalez said. “He stayed with her.”

Gonzalez said Bookhart also struggled with the loss of his father, who died two years ago.

She said her son, who worked as a security guard, was a kindhearted, hard-working man, who had many friends, and was never violent to women.

“Everybody that lived in this building can tell you how Michael was,” she said. “He was loving, he was caring. He loved his family.

“One thing I know for sure as a mother, my son would never have put his hands on her, no matter how verbal the dispute got,” she said. “Especially since there were little kids there. He loved kids. They loved doing things with him. He was a joker. He didn’t have any malice in him.”

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