The head of a multi-million dollar hedge fund was shot to death Sunday in his swanky New York City apartment in an apparent domestic dispute with his son, police said.
Thomas Gilbert Sr., founder of the $200 million hedge fund Wainscott Capital Partners, was found by his wife, dead with a gunshot wound to the head in the bedroom of his East Side Manhattan apartment, police told the New York Daily News.
The 70-year-old victim apparently got into a violent dispute with his son moments before the shooting occurred at around 3:30 p.m. Witnesses said the son fled the eighth-floor apartment on Beekman Place near East 50th Street. A .40-caliber handgun was recovered from the scene.
As of Sunday night a motive for the shooting remains unclear and the son, Thomas Gilbert Jr., is being sought by police.
A doorman working at the time of the murder said he saw a young man, believed to be the son, rush past the front desk moments before the shooting, a neighbor identified as Bernard told the Daily News.
The doorman told police he saw the man enter the lobby wearing a hoodie and got into an elevator before he could do anything, according to Bernard.
"Five minutes later he comes running out covering his face with a hoodie," said Bernard, who criticized the doorman for not doing his job.
Gilbert, who went to both Princeton University and Harvard Business School, was a Wall Street guru with more than four decades of experience in investing. He co-founded a biotech asset acquisition fund before leaving in 2011 to create his hedge fund, the Daily News reported.
Residents were stunned by the gruesome killing in a neighborhood that reportedly hasn't had a murder since January 2006.
"Like everybody else I was shocked," Bernard told CBS New York. "Especially in this neighborhood you would never expect anything like that- such a nice building, such a nice neighborhood."
