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Priscilla Kelly Delmaro’s Times
Square. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times
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The
32-year-old man from Brooklyn , who is not named in court documents, told his
story in a written statement prepared with
Bob Nygaard, a private investigator, and presented to detectives at the Midtown
South precinct early May.
In summer 2013, the man had a good
job in marketing, with an office in New York, some support staff and a growing
list of connections. But he had met a woman in Arizona named Michelle. He was
in love. She was not. “The girl didn’t want to be with me, and the girl had
categorically made that clear,” he wrote in the statement.
On Aug. 24, 2013, he walked across
the Williamsburg Bridge and wound up in front of 253 West 43rd Street. The neon
sign in the window read “Psychic.”
Ms. Delmaro greeted him and assured
him that he and Michelle were “twin flames,” but that negativity was keeping
them apart. “Spirits talk to me,” she said, according to the man’s statement,
but there was a price. He paid her $2,500 and, after a second visit, $9,000
more.
A month later, in September, Ms.
Delmaro told him she needed diamonds to protect his energy. He paid $40,064 for
a ring from Tiffany’s and gave it to Ms. Delmaro, who promised he would use it
as an engagement ring someday, the man said.
Michelle lived in Los Angeles. Go to
her, Ms. Delmaro said.
He went. He texted Michelle. I’m on
a boat, she replied, but let’s meet tomorrow.
“I was ecstatic,” he wrote. They met
and talked and made plans for that night. But she backed out.
“She felt I had been acting
strange,” he wrote.
Ms. Delmaro told him the trouble had
come from a spirit that was stalking him. She needed $28,000, then $28,000
more. Michelle had grown cold so suddenly, he thought, that the spirit
explanation sounded right, and so he paid.
A month later, Ms. Delmaro suggested
they perform a fake funeral ritual to make the spirit think the man was dead.
Another $40,000.
When that didn’t work, Ms. Delmaro
said she needed a time machine to go back and cleanse his past. When the man
balked, she said a suitable watch would do the job, and gave him a list of
choices. He said he selected one of the cheaper ones: a rose gold Rolex for
$30,000.
In December, Ms. Delmaro said that
they had to lure the spirit over a bridge of gold in the other realm, so that
it would become trapped. She said $80,000 would buy an 80-mile bridge.
Sold.
Ms. Delmaro, it should be noted,
promised to return most of the money when her work was done. By year’s end, the
bill had reached more than $320,000.
The spirit was crossing the bridge,
“although very slowly,” the man wrote. Then Ms. Delmaro said they needed a
second bridge, for Michelle’s spirit, and it needed to be 10 miles longer than
the first one.
“I thought to myself, ‘I have the
money just sitting in the bank,’ ” the man wrote, paying out $90,000.
Then he made a devastating
discovery. On Feb. 17, 2014, he pulled up Michelle’s Facebook page and read the
most recent post.
Michelle was dead. She had been for
nine days. The man, shattered, told Ms. Delmaro. “I told you she had evil
spirits” she said. “They killed her”.
“Delmaro then told me she was going
to reincarnate Michelle,” the man wrote. The new Michelle “wouldn’t be exactly”
like the old one, but her spirit would be placed into the body of a 31-year-old
woman.
One year and many payouts passed. By
then, Ms. Delmaro said she was working so many hours on his behalf that she had
no time to tell fortunes and was behind in the rent. He sent money — even
borrowing $28,000 from a colleague that he guaranteed with his future earnings
— until he finally ran out.
“I’m broke”, he told Ms. Delmaro
after selling his car and borrowing from friends and relatives in addition to
the colleague.
The new Michelle was in Los Angeles,
she told him. Go find her.
He met a woman in California that
Ms. Delmaro later said was the new Michelle. But the woman was 24, not 31, and
Michelle did not seem to be inside her.
He had lost his apartment. He had
had enough and returned to New York. He sought out Mr. Nygaard, and they went
to the police in May. Bank statements were given to detectives: He was out
$713,975.
Ms. Delmaro and her companion, Bobby
Evans, 27, were arrested on May 26 in a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. A steakhouse.
They were charged with grand larceny and remain in jail.
Their lawyer, Jeffrey Cylkowski,
denied the man’s allegations.
The man recalled his disappointment
upon meeting the new Michelle. “This caused me to start thinking,” he wrote.
edited from The New York Times
