Source: New York Times
The first 911 callers early on Friday reported seeing people fall from high up in the Gotham Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. A man would later tell detectives that he heard two crashing sounds — one after another — and followed them to the shattered bodies of a woman and a boy on the hotel’s second-story landing.
“He heard two loud noises and his attention was drawn to that, and he discovered these two deceased individuals,” Assistant Chief William Aubry, commander of Manhattan South detectives, said at a news conference.
Investigators soon learned that the woman was 47-year-old Stephanie Nicolai, a former Playboy model and author who had been enmeshed in a custody dispute over the child found dead at her side: her 7-year-old son, Vincent.
As the police began an investigation into the deaths, searching for witnesses and seeking video evidence to help piece together the events, they said that no assailants were being sought.
But one of the emerging theories was that Ms. Nicolai “may have pushed the son off first and then jumped,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Beyond the fact that the bodies seemed to have fallen separately, the official said, a “high railing” — perhaps somewhat of an impediment to a young boy acting alone — had to be surmounted before the fall.
The deaths occurred at about 8:15 a.m., Chief Aubry said, at a hotel that describes itself as a “boutique” destination with “67 spacious suites and hotel rooms with balconies across 25 floors,” and a Wolfgang’s Steakhouse embedded as a commercial anchor.
Indeed, as investigators and reporters clogged the sidewalk outside the high-rise hotel on East 46th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues, passers-by, including employees of nearby businesses, thought a celebrity had been sighted. Many expressed shock and sadness to learn that the attention was over the death of a woman and her son.
By early afternoon, no suicide note had been discovered, the police said. And a motive for the deaths was still being investigated, said the law enforcement official. Yet details about the victims’ past began coming into focus.
Raoul Lionel Felder, a former lawyer for the woman — whom he referred to as Stephanie Adams, the name she used in…
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