The mother of an NYPD cop accused of hiring a Long Island grifter to stab his ex-wife denied that her son could plot the attack even as investigators moved closer Sunday to arresting the officer.
Officer Anthony Battisti, who was suspended by the NYPD on Saturday, is under investigation for allegedly paying Timothy Gersbeck $5,000 to assault his former flame outside her Franklin Square home.
"He would never, ever do anything like that," said the cop's mother, Mary Ann Battisti, 66. "I can't take this. ... It's killing me."
"Why would he want to hurt the mother of his children?" she asked. "He's the best father in the world."
Gersbeck, 37, told Nassau County cops that Battisti, 42, commissioned the hit because he was jealous of his ex-wife's new love interest, police sources said.
Gersbeck - who had done some odd jobs for the NYPD officer - was arrested Friday after he plunged a screwdriver into the neck of Patricia Battisti, 44, outside the house she used to share with her ex-husband.
Anthony Battisti has not yet been charged with a crime, although sources said yesterday that an arrest could be forthcoming this week.
Patricia Battisti is listed in serious but stable condition at a Nassau County hospital, police said. Sources said she was one of the victims of Michael Mastromarino, who ran a New Jersey biomedical firm that illegally harvested body parts from corpses and sold them to tissue-transplant companies for surgeries around the world.
Patricia Battisti had charged that she contracted syphilis after undergoing a transplant that used a bone from the ghoulish facility, but when subsequent tests came back clean, she was sued for false claims by Long Island Jewish Health Systems.
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