'Millionaire' father killed after cutting son's allowance, court documents reveal he was going broke
A spoiled university student accused of murdering his hedge-fund father after his allowance was cut, may have thought twice if he had known his dad was worth less than he presumed.
Thomas Gilbert Jr, 31, is accused of shooting his father in the head on January 2015 after he threatened to stop paying his son's US$2,400-a-month rent (AUD$3,100) and slashing his weekly allowance from $600 to $400, ‘’NY Post’’ reports.
Gilbert Sr. had a successful career and worked on Wall Street for more than 40 years.
He was a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School, founded Wainscott Capital Partners Fund, which has $200 million in assets.
The victim had previously co-founded Syzygy Therapeutics, a biotech asset acquisition fund.
Industry publication Hedge Fund Alert said the fund had a net return of nearly 25 percent in 2012.
But not long ago the company reportedly started to falter and Gilbert Sr. sold his Upper East Side home and began renting a Beekman Place apartment.
Court documents have revealed Thomas Gilbert Sr, 70, was actually worth US$585,555.50 (AUD$763, 396) not US$200m (AUD$260M) at the time of the shooting.
The senior Gilbert had less than US$10,000 (AUD$13,000) in stocks and bonds and under US$20,000 (AUD$26,000) in cash and retirement accounts.
The court papers also revealed he had US$500,000 (AUD$650,000) in “miscellaneous” assets, which were filed last month in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court.
He reportedly also had no life insurance.
Gilbert Jr, like his father, attended Princeton and graduated in 2009 with a degree in economics.
Police say he hasn't had any recent work and his father paid for his rent and gave him a weekly allowance.
The murder is deemed a rare act of violence in the Sutton Place neighborhood, a wealthy enclave just north of the United Nations.
Police said Gilbert Jr. went to his parents' home on Manhattan's East Side and asked his mother to go out to get him some food.
About 15 minutes later, she got a "bad feeling" and went back, said Robert Boyce, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department.
"She found Senior on the floor with a bullet hole in the head," Boyce said. "She also found a gun resting on his chest with his left hand covering it."
But Boyce said it was a staged suicide — his son was trying to cover up the killing.
Officers went to Gilbert Jr.'s West Side apartment, where they found magazines, loose bullets and a shell that matched the gun found at the scene, police said.
The junior Gilbert was arrested on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the death of his father.
During a court appearance on September 10, 2015, a judge ruled Gilbert Jr. as being not mentally fit to stand trial and may be sent to a psychiatric facility as early as next week.
News break – May 3
