older article with lots of details - published Mar 20, 2006
Tracing Petra’s rocky history
Highland Falls Petra Muhammad’s problems began long before she vanished from this sleepy Hudson River village.
Adopted by relatives as an infant, the Caribbeanborn toddler bounced between family members growing up, raised by parents other than her own.
When she was 14, she fled her native Grenada for Trinidad, packing her bags when neighbors questioned who her real father was, relatives say.
And at 22, while on vacation in New York City, she met a guy named William Jackson now William Muhammad and fell in love.
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Petra Loretta Muhammad, 30, whose maiden name is Boatswain, came to the United States around 1998. Sometime during that brief visit, she met an intelligent, thoughtful young man who respected her desire to save sex for after marriage, Petra’s uncle said.
She was staying in the Bronx; William was teaching computer classes at the Crown Heights Computer Learning Center in Brooklyn.
Two years later, during a second trip to the United States, she quickly developed a relationship with William, said her uncle, St. John J.J. Joseph, during a telephone interview last week from his home in Amsterdam. They eventually found a place together, got married on Aug. 14, 2001, and headed north to be near William’s family in Highland Falls.
A year later, Petra was pregnant with the couple’s only child. But a difficult nine months with frequent hospital visits distanced Petra emotionally from her husband, relatives said. William was working near Washington, D.C., at the time.
“She figured William wasn’t involved in the pregnancy, so she didn’t want him involved in the baby’s life,” J.J. Joseph recalled. “There were difficult times from the beginning.”
Minor disagreements eventually grew into verbal and physical threats, according to relatives. Some family members point to William’s conversion to Islam four years ago as the cause; others say it was due to a brewing child custody fight.
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On more than one occasion, Petra sought refuge in Brooklyn. She always brought her child.
“She said she had enough of William,” said Angela Joseph, another cousin living in the city. “Sometimes, she can’t sleep at night. He’d slam all the doors, break stuff in the house. I said, ‘Petra, just come down here.’”
By July 2005, William, too, decided he’d had enough and filed for divorce. But the break didn’t go smoothly.
According to court papers filed in September, Petra requested an order of protection from her husband, claiming that William “was going to kill her, but didn’t know what to do with her body.”
Her uncle said the threats weren’t new. He recalled his niece telling him about a dark night years earlier when William took her to a park “somewhere upstate,” said he was going to kill her, but left her when people appeared.
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The divorce also grew sticky, digressing at times into a potential tugofwar over their son. At one point, William Muhammad called up the chambers of acting state Supreme Court Justice Stewart Rosenwasser and wanted to know why he had to show up for court when his divorce was uncontested.
The judge’s staff explained to Muhammad that since there was child support to be decided and property to be divided, getting a divorce wasn’t a drivethrough kind of deal. The state Office of Court Administration assigned Petra a lawyer, since she didn’t have the money to hire one on her own.
On Jan. 25, after the Muhammads were noshows in court for the second time, Rosenwasser dismissed the divorce case.
A month later, on Feb. 24, Petra didn’t show up in Family Court, where her husband faced a charge of harassment. Judge Carol Klein ordered Child Protective Services to conduct an investigation into the living conditions of the Muhammads’ son, who remains in his father’s custody, police say.
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Her divorce was nearing an end. She was back working parttime at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a cashier. She was about to sign a lease for her own apartment. And she was taking classes at SUNY Orange in Newburgh, earning credits toward a degree in diagnostic imaging.
Relatives called Petra stubborn and said she wasn’t going to let William stop her from taking control of her life.
But sometime around — p.m. on Jan. 7, after paying her cell phone bill, finalizing some divorce papers and making a quick trip to the mall with a friend, Petra was gone.
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Timeline
July 7, 2005: William Muhammad files for a divorce from his wife, Petra Muhammad, in state Supreme Court in Goshen.
Sept. 5, 2005: Petra Muhammad tells an Orange County Family Court judge that her husband repeatedly threatened to kill her. She receives an order of protection against him.
Jan. 7: A member of Muhammad’s family sees her walking into her house at 35 Schneider Ave. in Highland Falls. It’s the last time that anyone sees her.
Jan. 7: Sheriff’s deputies are due to serve William Muhammad with court papers pertaining to his application for a divorce.
Jan. 11: William and Petra Muhammad are due in state Supreme Court for a conference on the divorce. Neither appears.
Jan. 25: After a second noshow by both the Muhammads, acting state Supreme Court Justice Stewart Rosenwasser dismisses the divorce case.
Tracing Petra's rocky history
