Wainscott Founder Gilbert's Son Charged in Killing of Father

(Bloomberg) -- The son of Wainscott Capital Management founder Thomas Gilbert Sr., who wanted to follow his dad into the money-management business, was charged with murder after New York police said he staged the shooting death of his father to look like suicide.

Thomas Gilbert Jr., 30, was arrested after his mother returned to the family’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and found her husband, Thomas Gilbert Sr., 70, lying dead in the bedroom with a bullet wound to his head, police said. A .40 caliber Glock was resting on his chest and his left hand covered the gun, they said.

“This is a strong case,” Assistant District Attorney Craig Ascher said as the younger Gilbert was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court, where he was ordered held without bail. “The defendant brazenly shot his father in the head.”

The younger Gilbert, who appeared in court wearing white sweat pants and a dark gray jacket, is charged with murder, two counts of illegal weapon possession and 22 counts of possession of forgery devices.

Defense attorney Marc Agnifilo didn’t request bail and declined to comment after court. In court, prosecutors said Gilbert is accused of contempt in a pending case in suburban Long Island in New York.

The elder Gilbert spent decades investing in stocks, private-equity, real estate and fixed-income markets before starting his business in 2011, according to Wainscott’s website. The fund, which focuses on biotechnology and health-care investments, reported assets of $7.3 million and returns of 10.6% through November, according to an investor who has seen its performance and asset data and asked not to be identified because the information is private.

'BAD FEELING'

The fatal clash began after the younger Gilbert visited his parents about 3 p.m. yesterday and asked to speak to his father alone, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at a press conference today. Shelley Gilbert left the eighth-floor apartment to get food for her son but returned about 13 minutes later after “she got a bad feeling,” Boyce said.

She discovered her husband dead and her son missing.

Homicide detectives later determined by the position of the weapon that the shooting was “staged,” Boyce said. Police went to the younger Gilbert’s East 18th Street apartment and awaited his return. At around 10:30 p.m. yesterday, after seeing a light flick off, they entered the unit and found a “substantial amount of evidence,” Boyce said. Prosecutors said Gilbert was home when police arrived but refused to open the door.

HOLLOW-POINTS

The evidence in the apartment included four loose rounds of .40 caliber ammunition, two of which were hollow-point; two magazines for a Glock firearm; a manual, carrying case and speedloader for a Glock; and a red dot sight for a handgun, according to the complaint. Police said they recovered a shell- casing envelope that had the same serial number as the gun found at the shooting.

The defendant also had 21 blank credit cards and a skimming device, which swipes credit and debit-card information when affixed to an ATM, prosecutors said.

The older Gilbert was a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, Princeton University and Harvard Business School, according to his profile on LinkedIn. His son, a graduate of Deerfield Academy and Princeton, according to his Facebook page, was preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. In May, he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise money for New York-based Mameluke Capital, a hedge fund.
Wainscott had three-year annualized returns of 22.5%, according to the investor familiar with the fund.
The elder Gilbert was also co-founder of Syzygy Therapeutics, a biotech private-equity firm, where he stayed for a little more than a year, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before that, he was founder and chief executive officer of Knowledge Delivery Systems Inc., a provider of online teacher education, where he worked for a decade. He spent seven years as a managing director in the private-equity group at Loeb Partners Corp.

--With assistance from Linda Sandler in New York.

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