more ...
According to interviews and public records, Graswald has lived at various residences in Connecticut and Dutchess County, often staying with lovers or friends. She is a native of Latvia, a Baltic state in northern Europe bordered by Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Belarus.
She has been married twice. Her maiden and married names account for the aliases provided by police.
She met her first husband in Connecticut when both were in their early 20's. He repaired air conditioning and heating systems. She was a nanny. They met, he said, on one of his jobs. "She was honest. She was a sweetheart. She was fun to be around," said Shawn Maloney, 36, who now lives in Grand Junction, Colorado, and has since remarried. Maloney said the two were married for barely a year. Court records show the marriage was dissolved in 2003. It was the last time they ever spoke, he said. "We were two young people who jumped in a little too quickly," he said. Graswald never exhibited any behavior that would indicate she was capable of killing anyone, Maloney said. "She sounds like a completely different person than the person that I knew," he said.
Graswald married once again in Connecticut, to a man whose surname she kept after they divorced and the name authorities have used to identify her. That marriage ended shortly after Graswald moved to Dutchess County in 2009.
Elizabeth Mele, a 45-year-old former Poughkeepsie resident who now lives in Bayonne, New Jersey, met Graswald shortly after she came to the area. "I used to call her 'Angel,'" Mele said. "She was a sweetheart. She is a sweetheart. That is the person I know. I don't know this other person."
Neil Caplan, executive director of the nonprofit Bannerman Castle Trust, said Graswald did gardening work on the island. "She was a wonderful worker and very pleasant person," he said. "Very reliable."
However, Graswald had a side that could be less-than-angelic, according to Mike Colvin, the former on-air personality at WPDH (101.5 FM) and a longtime DJ at Mahoney's Irish Pub in Poughkeepsie. Colvin and Graswald started dating while she was still with her second husband, he said. She had come to Hyde Park on a photography assignment for a Connecticut-based company, he said. They met at Mahoney's. Graswald is not a U.S. citizen, he said, but has a green card valid until 2018. After they started dating, she left her second husband, Colvin said. During the separation process, Graswald, in a fit of anger, took a car and emptied her husband's home not only of her belongings, but also many of his, Colvin said. "She has this angry side of her personality," Colvin said. "That is when I would say her 'Russian was coming out.'" Colvin said he got a first-hand look at that when, after about a year and a half, their relationship soured. Graswald, he said, wanted to keep a cat the couple had adopted. "I said, 'You can't have the cat,'" Colvin said. "And she said, 'Then I will break into your house and take her.'" She made her point, Colvin said, by laying down prone in his driveway behind his vehicle as he was getting ready to leave for a work assignment. He gave her the cat, he said. The next day, he called to have an alarm system installed at his home.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/...elika-graswald-poughkeepsie-profile/26742931/
