The Staten Island teacher found dead in a storage facility last week had encouraged the relationship between her estranged husband and the woman who are now accused of killing her, a friend says.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, Jeanine Cammarata’s landlord and friend Jose Perez told the New York Post this weekend that Ayisha Egea, accused along with Jeanine’s estranged husband of killing her and burning her body, was once a babysitter for the family and began having an affair with Michael Cammarata under the roof of the couple’s Staten Island home while caring for their children.

According to a newer report in the New York Daily News, Cammarata’s friends said she was not bothered by the affair, and in fact had set up Michael with Ayisha, hoping a the new relationship would allow her to more easily extract herself from an unhappy marriage.

“Jeanine actually set up Mike and Ayisha because she wanted Mike to be occupied and leave her alone,” Jessica Pobega, a l close friend of Jeanine’s, told the Daily News. “She actually introduced them in the hopes that Mike would stop stalking her.”

Perez agreed that his friend encouraged the relationship but it said it didn’t stop the abusive behavior of her husband.

“She was trying to get rid of Mike,” Perez told the Daily News. “She thought if he kept busy with her (Egea), he wouldn’t be stalking her. But he continued stalking her.”

Cammarata filed for divorce from her husband two days before she was last seen alive, and was due in court last Monday for a custody hearing involving the couple’s two children.

Michael Cammarata and Ayisha Egea were charged last week with second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and concealing a human corpse.

CrimeOnline has contacted a friend of Cammarata’s to clarify what appear to be conflicting reports about how her husband’s relationship with Egea began. We will update the story once more information is available.

[Feature image: Jeanine Cammarata/Courtesy Jessica Pobega; Ayisha Egea/NYPD]