Thomas Gilbert Jr Accused of Killing Thomas Gilbert Sr, Founder of Wainscott Capital (+Photos)

Thomas Gilbert Jr Accused of Killing Thomas Gilbert Sr, Founder of Wainscott Capital (+Photos)
Zachary Stieber
1/6/2015
Updated:
1/6/2015

Thomas Gilbert Jr. has been accused of shooting his father Thomas Gilbert Sr. in his bedroom.

The younger Thomas Gilbert, 30, allegedly went into his father’s apartment after asking if he could talk with him in private.

Shelley Gilbert, wife and mother to the two, agreed and left to buy her son a sandwich.

After just 15 minutes, she returned to the home, and found her husband dead. She called 911. 

The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. on January 4.

Thomas Gilbert Jr., known as Tommy, was upset that his father had cut his allowance to $300 a week, a source told the New York Daily News. Other reports put the cut from $600 a month to $400. That change also included his father not paying his rent anymore. 

“He was on a stipend from the family. Looks like he was in debt,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said.

Boyce says Tommy tried to stage the scene to make it look as if it was a suicide.

Gilbert Jr. was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. He refused to talk to detectives and requested a lawyer. 

Gilbert Sr. founded the Wainscott hedge fund in 2011, after more than four decades of experience on Wall Street. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

Neighbors and others in the area said Gilbert Sr. was a nice guy. 

“He was a pillar on Wall Street — somebody everyone looked up to,” neighbor Hector Torres told the New York Post. “Very nice gentleman . . . They seem like a normal family. Every time I saw him in the elevator, he would say, ‘Hi.’ He would ask how I was.”

Tommy, meanwhile, was a prominent socialite who has often been pictured around Manhattan at parties, although that changed, friends say, in recent years. He graduated from Princeton in 2009, but hasn’t appeared to hold a job since then.

Anna Rothschild, a former girlfriend of Tommy, told the Post that Tommy “couldn’t do anything right” in the eyes of his father.”

“He talked a lot about his dad and how mean he was to him and how nothing was good enough,” she said.

Gilbert Jr. tried to start his own hedge fund at one point, but his father wouldn’t help him and even ridiculed him. 

“He’s very much a loner. His phone never rang. No one texted him or called him,” said Rothschild. “The one time it rang in four months while we were together, it was his mother.”