A wealthy New York couple thought they’d found the perfect nanny to care for their daughter at their breathtaking compound – only for her to turn into a terrifying monster who refused to leave, it is alleged.
Jamie Carano Nordenström and her husband, Philip Nordenström, said they considered themselves lucky when they first hired Barbara Molnar, an experienced child carer who answered an advert they put out on staffing website Nanny Lane.
Both busy consultants, the couple welcomed Molnar into their newly-renovated $1 million Colonial farmhouse complex in Hillsdale, upstate New York, The Cut reported.
Jamie is said to have insisted on white clothing, food and flowers to better complement her stunning home.
Molar initially presented herself as a picture of calm perfection, with her fluent German a huge bonus for the Swedish-speaking Nordenströms, who want their daughter to be bi-lingual.
Jamie told The Cut that Molnar seemed a natural fit, as she was ‘absolutely in love’ with children, understood babies, and appeared to be a kind person.
But things started to go wrong after Molnar asked to move into an annex property at their home in December 2024, despite only working there part time.
Jamie, a Democrat and member of the Hillsdale town board who had campaigned for affordable housing, said she allowed Molnar to move in rent-free, partially to avoid any paperwork and headaches.
Chaos ensued.
Molnar defied a ban on pets by secretly moving in a Labrador.
She’s also accused of exploiting the Nordenströms goodwill by asking them to let her son visit her from boarding school for Christmas, then letting him stay for a month.
The Nordenströms noticed Molnar beginning to leave trash lying around the house and not pick up her dog’s poop, it is claimed.
Molnar’s annex began to stink of fried food.
But the situation reached breaking point in early June, when Jamie said she returned with her husband and baby from a vacation to find strangers’ cars parked on her front lawn.
A group of teenagers were swimming in the family pool. Jamie said she found her fridges were filled with burgers and dog hair had clogged up her vacuum.
Jamie was too exhausted to argue and went to bed – only to be woken up by the sound of Molar loudly banging pans.
Astonishingly, Molnar is said to have lost her temper when confronted and accused Jamie of embarrassing her son in front of his friends
Jamie said she fired Molnar after the incident, but says she attempted to do so in a sensitive way by paying her through to the end of the month and offering to help her find a new place to live.
Molnar is then said to have given Jamie chapter and verse on her rights as a squatter, making her employer’s blood run cold.
‘You don’t know the law,’ Molnar allegedly said
‘This is my home, my furnished apartment. This is my designated parking space.’
Jamie recalled: ‘We knew, at that point, that she had engaged with us to gain access to our home.’
Deep background checks ran by the couple found that although Molnar had no criminal record, she had a history of disputes with landlords and employers, and Jamie recalled: ‘Everyone said she was dangerous, to pay her off.’
‘We made a decision at the beginning that we weren’t going to give into her extortive practices,’ Jamie added. ‘We weren’t going to let her take over our home.’
This included a landlord in Chatham, around 20 miles from Hillsdale, saying that Molnar and a man she was with paid only three months’ rent for over seven months, before trashing the place when they left.
Another landlord in upstate New York said Molnar owed him over $27,000, and another claimed that Molnar made up allegations that she was discriminated against for being ‘fat’ when they tried to move her out.
Jamie said the landlord told her that Molnar told him she would ‘do anything to keep a roof over her head’, and when she moved out, they found writing on a wall reading: ‘Thanks for putting us on the street, you greedy old hag!!! I’ll send you a postcard.’
Jamie said she was terrified over fears Molnar was an unstable con artist living under her roof.
Their relationship grew strained, and both women recorded each other numerous times as they faced standoffs in Jamie’s home over why Molnar hadn’t moved out yet.
In one text exchange shared to The Cut, Molnar told her: ‘I am interviewing for several jobs and once that is secured, I promise you, I cannot get away from you and this place fast enough.
‘You are now night and day, 180 degrees from the kind and generous person you were when we started.’
In a court filing, the Nordenströms described Molnar as ‘a professional con-artist, with a well-documented history of ingratiating herself with well-off individuals, unlawfully occupying their property in bad faith, and then refusing to leave and abusing the protections afforded by eviction laws.’
Police were also called to the property on multiple occasions as relations between the warring factions worsened.
Despite lingering on their property for months, Molnar would text Jamie in all-caps: ‘STOP HARASSING ME.’
Eventually, a judge ordered Molnar to leave by September 10, and the nanny was hit with a temporary order of protection from the Nordenströms.
When she finally left, Jamie said mattresses and comforters were drenched in urine, and rugs were so soaked that the urine had seeped into her floorboards.
Molnar told The Cut that her life as a nanny was far from her previous lifestyle, and said she was once the one who had housekeepers and nannies.
‘I’ve lived in castles and probably had more things than (Jamie),’ she said.
She said she had lived a life of luxury on Park Avenue and with wealthy wine tycoons in France, and was even scouted as a model and worked for the Parisian fashion house Guy Laroche.
Her ex-husband Pasquale Fabio Granato opened New York celebrity haunt Serafina Fabulous Pizza, and Barbara said he ‘went out of his mind’ after becoming ‘the king of New York overnight.’
She said she was assaulted, and was later awarded $2 million in a divorce settlement – money that she claimed was stolen by him when they reconnected years later.
Molnar said she and her son were left homeless for some time, and claimed that she became an FBI informant to try get the millions back, but never managed to.
Jamie and Molnar gave conflicting accounts over what they had agreed to when she worked for the couple as a nanny, including being paid up to $40-an-hour, with $15 going toward rent, which Jamie says never happened.
Molnar insisted that she was allowed to throw the pool party while Jamie and Philip were away on vacation, saying: ‘She never said you can’t have anybody over when we’re not here. So how would I know that?’
In August, Molnar filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against Jamie, who countered that it was ‘baseless and frivolous and AI-generated’, and told the court that Molnar was mentally unstable.
‘I still fear that she might come back,’ Jamie said. ‘Or try to interact with me or my daughter.’
In court, a judge went on to hit both Molnar and Jamie with restraining orders.
It emerged Jamie owned family heirloom handguns and she was ordered to surrender them.
She told The Cut that she has only ever been shooting in the English countryside and declared: ‘I don’t support the NRA.’
Now, with Molnar out of their home, Jamie said she hoped to use the strange saga as a warning to other affluent couples who could be targeted by those looking to take advantage of squatter laws, as she alleged that Molnar did.
‘It’s like we lost this summer of our lives,’ she said.
