Her mother said she didn't love her and some neighbors didn't even know she was alive. Nadine Lockwood spent her short, tortured life without friends and anonymous.
The 4-year-old died in a filthy apartment, apparently of starvation.Carla Lockwood, 32, was jailed without bail on charges of second-degree murder and endangering the welfare of her child.
While in custody Monday, Lock-wood complained of pains and was taken to a hospital, where a gynecological examination revealed she apparently was pregnant and could be suffering the effects of a tubal pregnancy.
City prisons spokesman Tom Antennen did not know Lock-wood's condition, and a representative at Elmhurst Hospital declined to comment.
In a videotaped confession, Lockwood said she had not fed Nadine regularly for a year and did not seek medical help even when she realized her daughter was dying. Her motive: She said she didn't want or love Nadine, court
papers said.
"Detectives told me that Carla picked on Nadine because she looked the most like me," Nadine's father, Leroy Dickerson, told the Daily News. "She was the throwaway baby."
Nicholas Scop-petta, commissioner of the city's Administration for Children's Services, ordered an investigation into contacts between his agency and the Lockwoods, since it appeared that files on the family were closed around May 1995.
"This is truly a mind-numbing crime," he said.
Only hours before Nadine's stick-thin body was found in a crib in Lockwood's three-bedroom apartment in upper Manhattan, Scoppetta's agency fired one of its case workers Saturday for failing to recognize warning signs in another recent case of a mother abusing her child.