Generosa and Ted Ammon - Part 1

0:00 Hi, I'm rich, and I'm Tina. If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of marriage. It's it some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and. Some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary kill. Hey, Tina, be rich. How are you today? I'm sleepy today. How are you? I'm trying to fake it till I make it. Yeah, did you take a little do a little caffeine gum or something maybe to get your uh. Huh, I sure did. You're telling everyone my secrets.

0:41 You sounded really perky in our opening, so you didn't sound sleepy at all. Trying I said, I was going to fake it till I make it until the caffeine kicks in. Neither of us drink coffee, which is a little known fat. You drink a lot of soda. I don't, but sometimes I do take I chew caffeine gum and I really like it. I wish I could remember the brand because I think it tastes pretty good and it does give me like a little bolt burst of energy. I have these caffeine mints that I take once in a while, and they really do make a big difference. I have to say. Z Energy is the name of the gum. The energy highly recommended. You sent me a video earlier today that has unlocked a new fear of meteors. There's a lot of meteors falling around.

1:23 Yeah, there's a land in southeast Michigan. I didn't do any research to see where it landed. You know where it landed. I don't know. No, I didn't hear where it landed. But there's been a couple in Ohio, a couple in Michigan. I read that there have been actually twenty over the last week or two and one. This is in Houston. A little piece of a meteor went through somebody's roof and fell into their house. Yeah, it could happen. Yeah, it's crazy. What is the difference between a meteor and a meteorite? Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask me. A meteorite is what it becomes after it goes through the act it hits the ground. I think I'll take your word for it. I'm sure we will hear from somebody if we're not right about that. So today I was out doing Aaron's before we recorded, and I canceled the XM radio in my car for various reasons. But I was thinking about getting a new car, blah blah blah, but I don't I was listening to a podcast. I didn't want to listen to the podcast.

2:16 I was wanting to switch over to music, like my liked songs on Spotify. And I try really hard not to touch my phone when I'm driving. And I was like, wait, how can I do that? Oh? I can ask Siri. So I asked Siri, Siri, can you play Tina's liked songs from Spotify? And Siri responded and so, no, I'm going to get everyone. I'm sorry everything, get everyone's series activated now, and it said now playing Michelle and Jonathan. Nice episode of Love Mary Kill. And I was like, Siri, cop stop step serie step step. And then I tried it again and I did the same thing again. I'm like, no, Erry, No, I can't listen to that. Because I subscribe to Love Mary Kill, I don't really listen to.

3:01 That's so sad that you don't listen to Love Mary Kelle and you're so scared of listening to it that you have to yell at honey. If I listened to it, there would be I would because already. I'm like, when I go to bed at and I'm like, I can't believe I talked about our toaster again. No one cares about your toaster, Tina. That's what happens when I So if I listen to it, I'd be like, Tina, you're an idiot. You sent me a video today. I've seen this guy before. He's kind of funny. He's kind of funny. He talks about Michigan people and how we talk differently, and a lot of people are like, oh, your accents are so cute, and I'm like, what accent? I speak English perfectly, but apparently I don't. But I forgot the words he said, But how do you say the word C M F O R T A B l E.

3:42 Well, I sent that because I every time I say that word, I get in my head about it because I know it is pronounced comfortable, but people around here, myself included, pronounce it comfortable. Like, yeah, it's just it's weird. Well, I think I do too. I think I do too. Yeah. And the other word that he mentioned is she a r age? Yeah, that one. I didn't really get. Garage garage garage, Yeah, I think some people do kind of say garage. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. We do have a lot of kind of weird pronunciation. I'm sure it's like that anywhere you go. But I don't know if it's a weird pronunciation as much as we're lazy people and it's just easier to say comfortable than comfortable. Yeah, yeah, I think I do say comfortable not I think about it.

4:26 Yeah, you definitely do. The guy you're talking about is called his name on Instagram as the Michigander, and he's he's pretty funny, I think. Yeah. Well, I think it's time for a snack. Oh boy, we have another, yet another snack that our dear listener Carla sent. She has spoiled us like so much. Carla's heart is as big as Texas. She's just as the sweetest. I love her so much. Well, she wanted us to try some snacks from H. E. B. Which is apparently a very big, well known grocery store. You know what stands for No, I have no idea. You think that you would have done your research, You would think so one shop of I google it while you talk about the snacks. Okay, well I brought two of. Then she sent a lot of things, including stuff from.

5:07 She did she spent? Yeah, she sent kiddie treats and a toy and a really nice recipe book. I chose two things from the latest package, and one is the HGB Sweet Chili blanched almonds, And then I'm really excited to try these twisters Mexican Hot Chocolate. They look like Oreos yea their Mexican hot chocolate flavor, Karla. He has been eyeing those for like five days since we opened the package. One of us ate the entire bag of cheeseballs. I don't know who that was. HB stands for Howard Edward, but the son and founder who took over the Texas grocery store chain in the nineteen twenties. The initials are frequently associated with the slogan here Everything's better.

5:49 I've always wanted to go to one because I hear people saying it's just such a great experience. I worked in grocery stores growing up, and I, you know, when we got on a trip, I always loved to take a walk through the tree store to see, you know, what offerings they have. Yeah, for sure, Well someday we will get there, But why don't we try these. Well, what did you think of the sweet chili almonds and the Twisters cookies. The almonds were really good. You can tell that that's a healthier snack. Yeah, and the twisters were They're so good. They had They're really good. I'm gonna have to make a double stuff out of them later, I think. Okay. I thought that the chocolate cookie part was tastier than an oreo M. Yeah, you know what I mean.

6:32 I thought it had more flavor to it. Yeah, I'd say so, yeah, really good, excellent. Yeah, thanks again, Carla. Thank you, Carla. We love you. Well. If you'd like to send us a snack, send it to LMK pod po box one one one, Dexter, Michigan four eight one three zero. Today's case is a recommendation from Michelle. Thanks for the recommendation, Michelle, and I do want to give a content warning. This case includes discussion of child sexual abuse, so please listen with care. It was Monday, October second, two thousand and one, in the affluent village of East Hampton, New York. A helicopter touched down near the sprawling estate of Ted Ammon, a prominent New York investment banker. His business partner, Mark Engelson, had grown worried. No one had been able to reach Ted since Saturday, so Mark and Ted's driver, Milton, flew out from the city to check on him. What they found inside the mansion would stay with them forever. Ted was dead beaten so severely he was nearly unrecognizable. Ted Amman had it all. He was a self made Wall Street success story, running his own company after leaving a global investment firm worth somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety million dollars. He and his wife, Generosa had adopted twin toddlers from Ukraine. They had a beach house mansion in the Hampton's, a townhouse and a fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan, and a sprawling estate in England. It might have seemed like the perfect life, but things had unraveled over the past year. Ted and Generosa were hearing the end of a bitter, ugly divorce, and Generosa, who stood to inherit

8:04 a significant portion of Ted's estate, had already moved on. She was seeing a Long Island electrician named Danny Pelosi, a man with a colorful, checkered past and a volatile temper. After detectives processed the crime scene. There were more questions than answers. No murder weapon, no fingerprints, no DNA, no witnesses, just a dead man in a mansion with Ted and Generosa's divorce nearly final. The timing was hard to ignore. But how do you make a murder case out of thin air? And who really walked into that house in East Hampton and beat Ted Ammon to death? So you said that Generosa is dating a new man named Danny. Was he the cause of the divorce?

8:47 No, he was not. That's one thing I can say about Danny as he was definitely not the cause of the divorce. Okay, but he did have a checkered past and a volatile temper. He did. And it is interesting that she went from small time millionaire to a working man. Yeah. It almost seemed like she was looking for something the opposite of what she had in her marriage to Ted. Robert Theodore Ammon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August of nineteen forty nine. His father, Bob, managed a steel mill. His mother, Betty Lee, was the kind of mom who made him believe he could do anything he said his mind to. He had an older sister, Sandy, who was just under two years old when Teddy, as everyone called him, came along. From early on, it was clear that Teddy Ammon was wired differently than most kids. He was competitive, sharp, and driven to succeed in whatever he did. He played Little League baseball, football, and raced on the swim team.

9:42 He and Sandy both took piano lessons and shared a love of jazz. So ted and his sister their kids, they're not even teenagers yet and they have a love of jazz music. Yeah, I mean, this was the nineteen fifties, but I did read that once the Beatles came along, they both fell in love with the Beatles as well. When he was in eighth grade, his father was transferred to run a steel plant in East Aurora, New York, a small town about twenty five miles outside of Buffalo. Teddy settled in easily. He was athletic and tall, eventually growing to six foot four, and he had the kind of easy confidence that made people gravitate towards him. He had lots of friends and a steady stream of girlfriends. In the fall of nineteen sixty seven, he headed off to Bucknell University in Central Pennsylvania with a plan to study architecture, but he changed his major five times before finally landing on a double major in arts and economics. He joined a frat, played football, and dated around. He also worked hard, but still wasn't sure exactly what he wanted to do.

10:45 He graduated in June nineteen seventy one with no particular plan. His girlfriend at the time was living in San Francisco, so he followed her west. He worked in a warehouse for a while, then got accepted into a training program for international banks. He threw himself into it and discovered he had a real talent for finance. Things with his girlfriend didn't work out, but in the international banking program he met a young woman named Randy Day. The two fell for each other, and when they both landed jobs in England after graduating, they made the leap together. They got married around Christmas nineteen seventy four in England. Ted he had grown out of Teddy by now, got restless again.

11:27 International banking was intellectually stimulating, but it wasn't enough. He decided he wanted to be a lawyer, never mind that he hadn't gone to law school. He got himself a tutor, studied on his own and sat for the English legal exam. He passed it and then went to work for a British law firm specializing in maritime law. I didn't realize you could just go shake the bar exam on your own. I did not realize that either. I mean, it's just, yeah, that's amazing. That must have been incredibly challenging. Did he pass it the first time? Do you know? I don't know. When Randy was transferred back to New York, they came home together. Ted then studied for and passed the New York Bar exam, again without a law degree, which is almost unheard of, and he joined a prestigious Manhattan law firm, but the work felt small to him.

12:15 Junior associates get handed, the routine tasks, the unglamorous cront work, and that didn't suit Ted. The long hours and the time apart had been wearing on his marriage as well. He and Randy both had been burning the candle at both ends and traveling a lot. In nineteen eighty three, Randy told him that she wanted out. Ted wanted to try to save the marriage, but she was resolute. They separated and eventually divorced. It was cordial. They promised to stay friends, and they did. Ted was thirty four, newly single and restless as ever. He'd been watching a firm called Kolberg Cravis Roberts KKR making waves doing leveraged buyouts of major corporations, and he wanted in on that world.

12:59 But first he needed a new apartment on the Upper east Side. He called a real estate firm, made an appointment to see a place, and then blew off the appointment. The next day his phone rang. It was the realtor, Generosa Rand. She was incensed. She told him that he'd been rude, that he'd wasted her time, and that she deserved better. Had felt guilty, but he was also a little intrigued. He wasn't used to someone standing up to him like that. He apologized and made another appointment. This time he kept it, and he was glad he did. To understand, Generosa, we have to start. Before she was born, her mother, Marie Therese Legay, known to everyone as Babe, had grown up deeply religious, even spending time in a convent after high school. Before swinging hard in the other direction.

13:47 She became a party girl with little ambition and even less stability. She married twice, had children from both marriages, and neglected them all. It was during her second marriage, while separated from her husband, that Babe met a man named Generoso at a bar in California. He was Italian, passionate, and gone in just over a week headed back to Europe, but during that week Babe got pregnant. She wrote to Generosa in Italy multiple times, but he never replied. Generosa Joe Mary Rand was born in Long Beach, California, in March nineteen fifty six. Her first name was a feminine version of her biological father's name, while her last name belonged to Babe's husband at the time. Oh so did he think that Generoso was his daughter?

14:36 I don't think so. I think they were separated at the time. And how many other kids did Babe have. I It's not completely clear to me. I think maybe four before Generosa, but it was, as you can tell, it was kind of a broken family situation. Babe loved her little girls, but loving someone and being present for them are two different things, and Babe seemed incapable of the latter. Generosa and her older sister Dolly were left alone often increasingly in the care of others. When Generosa was five or six years old, an unidentified male relative began molesting her. He told her it was their secret. If she told anyone, they wouldn't believe her and they'd think that she was bad. So Generosa said nothing, and it kept happening. In nineteen sixty five, Babe found a lump in her breast, but ignored it, throwing herself harder into the parties and drinking as if she could outrun what she knew deep down. By the time she saw a doctor, it was too late. Generosa was nine, then ten years old, watching her mother deteriorate. Babe died in nineteen sixty six, leaving ten year old Generosa to face the world alone. Around this time, Generosa learned the truth about her biological father, a secret that had been kept from her. The resentment she already felt towards her mother deepened. She made herself a series of promises. She would be different. She would be strong, she would have money.

16:02 If she ever had children, she would protect them, never lie to them, and never abandon them. She would be everything her mother wasn't, she would later tell people, without a trace of sentimentality, that her mother's death was the best thing that ever happened to her. Iikes. After Babe's death, Generosa was passed from family to family. She lived with her uncle Ale and his wife for a while, then to a wealthy family friend in the Laguna Beach area, where she rode horses and one ribbons and had her teeth straightened. For a brief time, she felt like a wealthy girl living on an estate, but by her teen years she became moody and rebellious, and the family decided they couldn't handle her anymore. So she moved in with her half sister Terry, her husband and kids, but they struggled with her as well, worrying that she was a bad influence on their younger children. Then, at thirteen, having now been turned away from four different families, she landed with a woman named Frank and Thomas in Los Angeles.

17:02 So there was no intervention by like the state or no. You know, I think I think it was not uncommon in families at this time for people to just be like, you know, kids to be shuffled around from place to place. And I know in my own extended family there are situations like that, And yeah, there was no she wasn't in the foster care system or anything like that. Fran and her husband actually wanted to make Generosa a permanent part of their family, but Generosa was difficult. She'd disappeared for hours, sometimes turning up alone in the dark, in the car, in the garage. She was threatened with expulsion from the Catholic school where she was enrolled. It took a direct ultimatum from fran shape up or she'd be calling the foster care system, and gen Rosa finally turned things around. She started doing better in school, she joined the tennis team and poured herself into her art.

17:53 But then in nineteen seventy one, her sister Dolly was killed in a car crash, another devastating blow. Generosa stayed with Franz family until nineteen seventy five, when she started college at the University of California, Irvine. She took sculpture, painting, and photography, and it became clear that she had a genuine talent for art and design. She graduated in nineteen eighty one and decided New York was where she needed to be to make it in the art world. She packed up and moved east and once she got there, she began quietly cutting herself off from everyone who had known her before. So, regardless of what you will think about Generosa, once we've told this whole story, you have to feel a lot of sympathy for her childhood. I mean, it just sounds like a horrible upbringing, being continuously molested by a relative, shuffled around from family to family, a mom who was an alcoholic and really kind of neglectful, and then having her sister die in a car crash. A really a lot, a lot to deal with.

18:52 Yeah, and we try in all our cases to get as much background information as we can about That's a common theme, right, you don't have a good childhood, it's really hard to have a good adulthood. Yeah. And it's an interesting contrast with Ted's childhood. So if you look back at, you know, what he went through as a child, it seemed like he had it pretty easy. For lack of a better word, I mean, he was a hard worker, he was driven, but it just seems like things came pretty easily to him. It seemed like, you know, I didn't read anything about any kind of trauma or any thing that happened in his childhood. So very two, very different upbringings. We'll be back after a break.

19:34 While Ted Ammon was a lawyer, he appreciated art and architecture, and in Generosa he found someone who was immersed in that world. They had more than that in common. They were both ambitious and they loved the finer things in life. Within a month of that first coffee, they were living together. Ted's family met Generosa and liked her immediately. They thought she was perfect for him. Fun loving, witty, bright, with an artistic sensibility that balanced out Ted's more analytical side. After a string of relationships that hadn't worked out, it seemed like he had finally found his person. In college, Generosa studied art and she seemed to really enjoy that. But now she's working as a real estate agent.

20:14 She was still pursuing her art, But I think anyone who is going into something. Like that, especially in New York YA, something got. To pay the bills. They were serious quickly, but Ted wasn't ready to walk down the aisle again. He had been through a failed marriage and wasn't ready to jump back in just yet. Generosa felt differently, though. In February nineteen eighty four, she gave him an ultimatum either they were getting married or it was over. Ted told her he wasn't ready, and just like that they broke up. How long were they dating? I think it was just a few months at that point. And one more question, what is their age difference? Ted was about seven years older than her. Okay. After they broke up, Ted made a move that he had been thinking about for a while. He left his law firm and went to work for KKR Bulberg Cravis Roberts, the firm that he had been watching from a distance for years. He threw himself into the world of leveraged buyouts and corporate takeovers with everything that he had. He also started dating again a series of women. Then, in October nineteen eighty four, fate intervened. Ted and Generosa almost literally bumped into each other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. Both of them were surprised, and both of them were happy, and Generosa made it clear almost immediately that her position hadn't changed. She wanted to get married this time. Ted didn't hesitate. He was ready.

21:37 Before the wedding, set for February second, nineteen eighty six, Generosa and Ted took a trip out to California. By that time, she had already cut off contact with most of her relations, but there was still her Uncle Al and his wife. She introduced Ted, but then before the wedding, Generosa cut off all contact with Uncle Al as well, and never spoke to him again. Uncle Al's told the family he had absolutely no idea why he was blindsided, no fight, no falling out that he knew of. She simply disappeared from his life, the same way she had disappeared from so many others. At the wedding, there were only a handful of people from Generosa's life in California.

22:17 One of them was supposed to be her cousin Al Junior, whose wife Sally, had been Generosa's best friend before moving to New York, but Sally was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy and couldn't travel. Generosa was not at all understanding. In fact, she was furious. During the wedding rehearsal, she lit into Al Junior, telling him it was unforgivable how much they had disrespected her. Al Junior was stunned. He stormed out and flew back to California, feeling a pang of sympathy for Ted Ammon. The man had no idea what he was getting into. Ted and Generosa Ammon were, by any measure, a power couple. Tad was now making serious money at KKR, and they lived like it. They threw lavish parties at their Manhattan townhouse. Ted had a limousine and a driver named Milton. Generosa hired a housekeeper, a personal assistant, a butler, and a cook. Ted was very particular about what went into his body. He insisted on healthy, organic meals and banned junk food from the house entirely. I know, shocking. Generosa ran the household and the staff. With the domestic side of their lives handled, she was free to pursue her art and photography, but she discovered that what she really loved was renovating, furnishing, and decorating their home. It turned out this was her true calling. She also became deeply involved in their neighborhood.

23:38 If a store left its garbage out and attracted rats, Generosa was on it. If anyone did anything that, in her view, detracted from the area, she organized, protested, and pushed back. People appreciated her passion and her drive, but they also noticed that if you challenged her or got in her way, she was quick to lose her cool. When the townhouse was finally finished, to her satisfaction, Generosa needed a new project. She found one north of the city, in the colonial town of Bedford, New York, a historic home that she bought and proceeded to gut completely. She hired contractors and directed every step of the renovation herself, then decorated the finished product from scratch. The result was impressive by anyone's standards. The Bedford House became her summer retreat, a place to entertain, to breathe, to ride. Generosa kept her own horses there and competed as an amateur jumper in shows up and down the East Coast. The nineteen eighties were, depending on who you ask, either the golden age of American capitalism or a decade of greed, and Ted Ammon was right in the middle of it. At KKR, he worked tirelessly. The firm was at the forefront of a financial phenomenon that was reshaping corporate America. The leveraged buyout LBOs as they were known, became the defining financial instrument of the decade, and and understanding them helps explain how men like ted Amin built the kind of wealth that they did. Here's how it worked. A group of financial raiders would identify a target, a corporation whose stock

25:11 and assets were for whatever reason undervalued. Ideally, they'd win over the company's board members in advance, securing a cooperative, uncontested buyout and avoiding a messy bidding war. Then they would secure massive financing from banks to fund and offer to the company's stockholders, sweetening the deal with what were known as junk bonds, high risk, high yield instruments that made these enormous transactions possible in the first place. Once they controlled the company, the raiders would go to work selling off assets, divesting divisions, consolidating operations, and slashing costs. That last part usually meant one thing in practice, mass layoffs.

25:53 Loyal employees who had spent their careers at these companies found themselves out of work so the balance sheet could look better. At the end of the process, stockholders made a nice profit, bankers made a bigger one, and the raiders made an enormous amount of money from the liquidated assets. Everyone won except the workers. The ethics of leveraged buyouts became a national debate. Hollywood weighed in. The movie Wall Street came out in nineteen eighty seven with Michael Douglas playing Gordon Gecko, whose philosophy could be boiled down to three words, greed is Good. Another film, Other People's Money, explored similar territory. The culture was wrestling in real time with what exactly these corporate raiders were doing and whether it was something to celebrate or condemn. Then, on October nineteenth, nineteen eighty seven, Black Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped five hundred and eight points, or twenty two percent, in a single day. It was the largest single day percentage crash in history. For some of the big players.

26:56 It was a wake up call. For others. It made LBOs look even more attractive, a way to make serious money. Even when the broader market was in free fall. KKR kept moving. The deal that defined the era and cemented tad Amman's place in the history of American finance was KKR's nineteen eighty nine takeover of RJR Nabisco, the conglomerate that included the Reynolds Tobacco Company. The price tag was thirty one billion, dollars, making it the largest leveraged buyout in history at that time. It was later chronicled in a best selling book called Barbarians at the Gate. Tad Amman was mentioned in it multiple times. The book was subsequently made into an HBO movie starring James Garner.

27:40 James Garner loved James Garner, my dad. Yeah. At some point during their years in the Manhattan townhouse, Generosa was home alone after the staff had left for the day. When the doorbell rang. Two men stood at the door, presenting themselves as delivery men. When she opened the door, they forced their way in. They grabbed her, tied her up, blindfolded her, and locked her in the utility room in the basement while they ransacked the house. She was trapped there, terrified and alone in the dark, until Ted came home and found her. The robbery left Generosa deeply traumatized. Ted responded by turning the townhouse into a fortress, multiple locks, surveillance cameras, a state of the art alarm system, and armed security guards. For months afterward, Generosa was afraid to be alone. The perpetrators of the robbery were never found.

28:31 That sounds like every woman's worst nightmare absolutely. Ted bought Generosa a huge loft in Soho where she could work on her art without distraction. He loved what she created and was one of her most enthusiastic supporters. She held several shows, but the art world took little notice. Ted, meanwhile, was burning energy in every direction. When he wasn't working, he was jogging, cycling, sailing, or skiing. He approached his hobbies with the same drive and determination he brought to everything else. The one thing had wanted that he didn't yet have was children. Generosa was more ambivalent, but she was willing. She stopped birth control, but they had no luck.

29:13 They consulted a fertility specialist and tried artificial insemination, but that didn't work either. Eventually, they turned to adoption, working with a firm that specialized in international placements. In nineteen ninety two, they adopted twins from Ukraine, a boy named Gregory who everyone called Grego, and a girl they named Alexa. The children were two years old when they came home and spoke only Russian, but they learned English quickly. The children became Generosa's new project. She hired a nanny, bringing the household staff to five Grego and Alexa were beautiful, well behaved, impeccably dressed, and enrolled in the finest private schools in Manhattan. Whatever Generosa had lacked as a child's stability, money attention belonging her children would have abundance. She had made herself that promise a long time ago, and she intended to keep it. Generosa believed that KKR was holding Ted back, that his talents weren't being properly recognized, and she pushed him to strike out on his own. Ted had his doubts KKR had made him wealthy after all, but Generosa was persistent. She also took matters into her own hands and ways that made Ted uncomfortable. She began spreading rumors about the firm's co founder, Henry Cravis and his wife, airing their private business to anyone in town who would listen. That kind of gossip travels fast in Manhattan social circles. It embarrassed Ted and strained his relationship with one of the most powerful men in finance. Eventually,

30:44 Ted decided to leave KKR. When he told Cravis and the others, they were not pleased. What happened next surprised almost everyone. With no prior experience in the industry. He moved into the printing business, specifically the business of printing newspaper circulars. It seemed like an unlikely pivot for a man who had been operating at the highest levels of Wall Street, but it was a smart move. His company, Big Flower Press, grew fast. Before long it was generating one point nine billion dollars a year in revenues. Schools to show you sometimes the most unglamorous sounding businesses, oh for sure, So it can be so profitable. Ted also had the foresight to get in early on the Internet and telecommunications boom, investing aggressively as those industries were just finding their footing. The returns were enormous. At his peak, Ted Ammon was worth an estimated four hundred million dollars. Seven years after founding it, he sold Big Flower Press for a substantial profit. He then launched a boutique finance firm called Chancery Lane Capital, through which he planned to do his own takeover deals, competing directly with KKR.

31:55 So enough time has probably passed that it's not yeah noncompete clause, Yeah, I think so. Now that he was a father, Ted turned his attention to making sure his family would be taken care of no matter what happened to him. He drew up a will that established trust funds for Grego and Alexa. Generosa was named co executor of the estate along with the bank. If Ted were to die, she would inherit virtually everything. While Ted was making his way in business, Generosa established a business of her own. She sold the house that she had refurnished in Bedford and bought another in the Hamptons, a house that needed serious work. She gutted it, rebuilt it to her exacting standards, decorated it, and then sold it for a tidy five hundred thousand dollars profit. Ted was impressed.

32:41 Generosa had a genuine talent for this. She took the profits and rolled them into her next acquisition, a former car dealership in East Hampton that she bought for one point seventy five million dollars. Her plan was to tear it down and develop it into a large commercial property, with the village of East Hampton had other ideas. She ended up at war with a village and her plans were delayed indefinitely. So did she level the car dealership? I think so? Yeah? Okay, that would be really hard to right. Her next undertaking, the one that would consume her completely, was a house she purchased in East Hampton for two point seven million dollars.

33:21 It was a fixer upper, two blocks from the ocean and one block from Jerry Seinfeld's sixteen million dollar estate. Jennerosa's goal was to create a home so beautiful, so perfect and impressive that it would be written about in magazines. Imagine buying a fixer upper for two point seven million dollars, Well. East Hampton's a different, whole, different world. The six thousand square foot house would be essentially rebuilt from the ground up. Some of the key features included a dining room with a beamed ceiling, a state of the art kitchen, a sun room with two walls of glass, a master suite with an adjoining study for tad, a playroom for the children, a wine cellar in the basement to how is Ted's collection of world class wines, an eight thousand square foot pond with a bridge over the middle, an in ground pool with a cabana, five sets of washers and dryers so the household staff could turn over all the laundry quickly and be gone, and there was one more feature that reflected Generos's fears since the earlier home invasion, a secret save room equipped with a telephone and a panic alarm wired directly to the Easthampton Police. She threw herself into the project with an intensity that began to alarm the people working for her. She was up before dawn every morning, writing notes for her architect and contractors about every detail, no matter how small. When something went wrong or when she simply decided that she didn't like what had been done, her fury was immediate. One day, she summoned her architect to inspect a single light switch plate.

34:51 The screws, she insisted, were a failure of discipline. They needed to be aligned either perfectly vertical or perfectly horizontal without exception. As he looked at the microscopic tilt of the metal, the architect wondered whether Generosa herself might have had a screw loose. When the architect's mother became terminally ill and he told Generosa he needed to go be with her, she had no sympathy. She demanded phone numbers where she could reach him at all times, and she called repeatedly, wanting to know when he'd be back. When he finally returned, a mutual friend told him what Generosa had sunned while he was gone. Hasn't anyone in this family ever died before? Oh it's really.

35:34 A landscaper working on the property had a similar experience when she had to postpone an appointment because her own mother was seriously ill. Generosa was enraged. She told her, no, you have to come. I don't understand what's wrong with you. People are born and people die. My mother abandoned us, and I grew up in an orphanage. I struggled to make it to where I am today. But I am all alone and I made it. Oh boy. The landscaper eventually quit after one unreasonable demand too many. Generosa went berserk. She contacted a law firm and threatened to sue her, intent on putting her out of business entirely. One weekend, a contractor planted six hundred tulips at the Hampton property. They agreed upon color exactly as specified. The following weekend, gen Rosa was out in the garden ripping up every single one of the tulips. They were the wrong color, she said. The house was finally finished by Memorial Day weekend of nineteen ninety five. It was, by any objective measure, stunning, the kind of home that looked like it belonged on the cover of Architectural Digest. Gener Rosa refused to pay her architect's final invoices. She was angry because she heard that he was telling people that he had designed the house, which she did. She demanded he stop wanting the credit for herself. Yike, So it sounds like this project really literally made her crazy.

36:56 Well, I think maybe she was already a little crazy beforehand, but it certainly this is like. An intensity that you hadn't really told us about. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, we'll be back after a break. Ted had always taken Generosa's side when she went to war with architects, contractors, landscapers, designers or friends. He was always there supporting her, but at the same time doing damage control and trying to smooth things over. He knew about the abuse that she had suffered as a child, and it made him sympathetic. But by the mid nineties, his patience was beginning to fray. Money he felt was changing her. The wealth that was supposed to make their lives easier seemed instead to be making Generosa more bitter.

37:43 Their friends were growing tired of her volatility, and Ted was growing tired of being the one left to pick up the pieces after she blew something up. There were other tensions too. Ted was a committed health nut, organic food, no junk, no exceptions. Generosa secretly indulged in cigarettes and sweets, but in Ted's absence, she enforced his dietary laws in a terrifying way. One afternoon, while Ted was traveling, Generosa had some friends over for lunch. When Alexa reached for a cookie. After being told no, Generosa snapped. She seized her daughter and began shoving cookies into her mouth, screaming, is this what you wanted? Do you want more? The guests sat paralyzed in horror. Ted had seen the East Hampton project coming to an end and dreaded what would follow.

38:30 He knew that Generosa needed a project. Without one, he feared she would sink into a deep depression. He gently suggested she see a psychiatrist, but she wasn't interested. In Generosa's mind, she had dealt with her past a long time ago by cutting everyone from that time out of her life. She didn't have problems other people had problems with the East Hampton House finished, she began inserting herself into Ted's professional life. She set up her own voicemail within his company without telling him. He found out and was fuming. She told people in their social circle that she was the one making Ted's important decisions. Every morning, she handed him a note listing who he should call, who he should meet, and what he should do that day.

39:15 Ted already had a highly capable executive assistant. He didn't need another one. He would either ignore the notes or try to placate her. He called his sister Sandy and told her he was miserable. He was thinking about leaving Generosa, he said. Generosa also called Ted's sister, complaining that Ted had become cold and distant. They tried marriage counseling, went to a few sessions, and then stopped. Ted started flirting with other women and found himself wondering what it would feel like to be single again. At a parent teacher event at the children's school one evening, Ted was chatting with another mother about the kids and the school. Generosa watched from across the room. Then she walked over and, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, ordered the woman to stop flirting with her husband. The room went quiet. Some people assumed it had to be a joke.

40:07 It was so out of place that it didn't seem real, But it. Was so ted. Knew that her major project was over. She had a lot of skills and talents. Why didn't he want her to work with him? I know the answer, but I want you to answer it anyway. Well, I think her talents and skills were in the area of remodeling homes and refurnishing homes. So I don't know, if. You know, well her organization skills would carry over to a lot of other jobs. Yeah, maybe, But. I'm not defending her. But if you started out on your you know, your own business journey, I would definitely want to be a part of it, would you you know? I would just like business podcast. This podcast originally was going to be just you, and then I always no, I was do you know what I'm saying though, Like, if you're married, you know your partner should be a part of your.

40:55 Yeah, I agree, but I think everyone, I don't know, everyone's different, and maybe you know, by that point, maybe he felt like they wouldn't really work well together, And it sounds like he was getting frustrated by a lot of things with her. So there was an investment banker at Ted's firm named Lorie Finkel, five years younger than Generosa. Ted couldn't quite hide the way he looked at her in social situations. Generosa noticed immediately, and the jealousy that had always been there became more acute. By the summer of nineteen ninety eight, the marriage was strained to the breaking point. Generosa became convinced that Ted was having an affair. She consulted a psychic, who confirmed her suspicions. Ted denied it, but he was lying. During one fight over the phone, Generosa told him, I'll have you killed. She sounded like she meant it. Ted told an associate about the threat afterwards, shaking his head. Generosa, he said, was out of her mind.

41:50 It's hard to argue with the psychic. I know she confirmed it well. The psychic said, you're having an affair. It must be true, and it turned out it was true. In the midst of all this, the Internet bubble that had made so many people wealthy was beginning to deflate. Ted's net worth was shrinking, not catastrophically, but the trajectory was clear. He knew a divorce from Generosa would be devastating financially. He needed time and he needed a plan. Jeffally, he had plenty of money, I know. So you know when you read about people that are this wealthy, it is mind boggling in some ways. It's like, yeah, you could get by with you know, ten percent of what you had, But they think about things differently. Generosa helped inspire his plan. When she began talking about moving to London, Ted decided to lean into it. He would set her up there, a luxury flat in the city and a beautiful home in the English countryside. She would have new staff, new homes to gut and rebuild, and new projects to consume her and Ted would commute using his New York business as cover, spending time there with Lori.

42:55 What Generosa didn't know was that his girlfriend was pregnant. Generosa jumped at the idea of London. Ted found a manor home in Surrey called Coverwood, on six million dollars worth of English countryside. It was a huge estate, costing one hundred thousand dollars a year just to maintain. The children took to their new life immediately. They settled into an exclusive private school in London, made friends and thrived. Grego and Alexa took up tennis and cricket. Alexa, following in her mother's footsteps, took up horse riding. Sounds like the kids were very adaptable, you know, coming from they came from the Ukraine. Obviously they were only two years old, but they were in an orphanage in the Ukraine. Then they you know, became wealthy essentially coming to the US.

43:40 Now they're going to England and they're taking up cricket and tennis and things like that. Yeah, yeah, totally. Generosa, with two new homes to remake from the ground up, seemed happy again, and Ted seemed relieved. Back in New York, Ted quietly built his parallel life. He joined the board of Jazz at Lincoln Center, later becoming its chairman, working closely with the center's artistic director, the celebrated trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. It gave him another legitimate reason to be in New York, but Generosa grew increasingly frustrated with how much time Ted spent across the Atlantic. She pushed for him to retire to come and be present with her and the kids in England. But Ted was fifty years old and had no intention of retiring. Ted's girlfriend, Laurie, gave birth to a son. It was a secret, but word began to seep out in New York about Ted's mistress and a child that may have been his. I should say at this point that I have no confirmation that this child was actually Ted's. It's possible that it wasn't. I don't think anyone has confirmed it either way. In two thousand, Ted had lunched several times with his ex Wifrandy Day, who was going through a difficult divorce from her second husband.

44:53 Ted gave her a million dollar loan to help her get back on her feet. When Generosa found out, she was seething, con vince that Ted was rekindling something with Randy, but he denied it. Generosa started making calls back to New York asking around. Nobody had anything damaging to say about Randy, but a few people mentioned something else. There was this woman, Laurie, who had recently had a baby. Nobody seemed to know who the father was. Could it be Ted? Her suspicion growing, Jena Rosa Pride opened Ted's locked desk in their London home inside, she found a bill from a London attorney. She looked up the firm and realized that they specialized in divorce. She confronted him and he acknowledged that yes, he had consulted a divorce lawyer at one point, but he didn't want a divorce. He did admit to the other woman, though there was no denying it anymore. He said he was confused and asked Gena Rosa for time to sort through it. Gena Rosa was stunned for a few days. The hurt was overwhelming, but then she decided to go on offense. She consulted a divorce lawyer of her own and hired a private detective.

46:01 From the lawyer, Generosa learned that financially speaking, she was in a far worse position living in London than she would be in New York. She concluded that Ted had set up things this way deliberately. He had dangled London in front of her, knowing it would benefit him in a divorce. Generosa made immediate arrangements to move herself and the children back to New York, and she made herself a promise Ted would pay for this. She would destroy him. Gen Rosa filed for divorce. In August of two thousand, a wealthy friend of Gena Rosa's, who had been through a divorce of her own, offered some strategic advice established the highest possible standard of living immediately, because a judge would eventually look at what she was accustomed to and rule accordingly. Gena Rosa took the advice and ran with it to an extreme. As an opening move, she informed Ted she needed a new residence in New York and obtained a mortgage and an eight story townhouse, and she told him she needed a million dollars for renovations. Her vision for the space was a Jetson's themed residence, futuristic and extravagantly.

47:13 That just strikes me as so funny that she wanted she had this vision of a Jetsons themed building. Yeah, do you know what that means? I don't know exactly what that means that I don't think it ever came to fruition, so sadly I don't have any pictures of her description. You would think in twenty twenty six we would be much closer to the Jetsons than I guess we are, other than flying cars. And remember how I think George's spaceship, like it would fold into like. A freaking Yeah, I forgot that, but yeah, she. Had an armed bodyguard on retainer for fifty thousand dollars a year. Her housekeeper made fifty thousand dollars, so did the chef. Her personal assistant earned one hundred thousand dollars.

47:53 She had a driver for another fifty thousand dollars, a gardener for thirty thousand dollars, and maintenance workers for sixty thousand dollars. In court, she demanded one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a month for basic living expenses. She wanted all of the real estate, the two English properties, the East Hampton House and the new Townhouse. She said the townhouse is eight stories and that's all theirs, Like they own all eight stories. I think she owned the whole thing, or they owned the whole thing. Yeah, but it was all one residence, is what I'm asking. I think it was. But she may have had designs to turn it into a multi residence type building. Okay, gotcha. Well, she had so many people on staff, and if they resided with them, I guess they would need a lot of extra rooms.

48:37 Well, she wasn't actually living in the townhouse. So she bought it, and then she was going to gut it. And we'll talk about where she was living in just a minute. Here, Jennerosa informed their friends that there was no middle ground. They were either with her or with Ted, and if they chose Ted, they were done. Most of them chose Ted. To anyone who would listen, she told the same story. Ted was a philanderer, a cheat, a man who had fathered a son outside their marriage, who cheated on his taxes, and who had dark and kinky appetites. She spread these rumors through their social world like a brushfire. She also began working on the children. Slowly and deliberately. She turned Grego and Alexa against their father. She encouraged them to read the divorce filings, which contained explicit details of Ted's infidelity.

49:24 She told them that their father wanted to have her killed, and not just her, he wanted to kill their dog Buddy and their beloved butler too. One of Grego's teachers reported that the boy was so consumed by fear of being kidnapped by his own father that he could barely pay attention in class. So the kids are. Like ten at this point. Yet Generosa was also convinced Ted was hiding money. He had lost nearly half of his fortune in the market and internet crashes, but Generosa didn't believe it. She was certain he had assets tucked away somewhere with friends, with his ex wife, or in Swiss bank account. Every time Ted and his lawyers thought they were approaching a settlement, Generosa raised her demands. Her own lawyers knew that a faster settlement would serve her better as Ted's fortune was shrinking, but Generosa wasn't just fighting for money, she was out for blood. One morning that fall, in the shower, Generosa felt a lump in her left breast. Her family doctor examined her and told her she needed a mammogram and possibly a sonogram as soon as possible. Later, she called Ted and told him about the lump. Ted wasn't sure what to believe. Things between them had become so poisonous that he didn't know what was real anymore, so he called her doctor himself. The doctor told him that, yes, the lump was real, that he was fairly certain it would prove to be cancer. He wanted Ted to know because he was worried Generosa might not follow through. On treatment on her own. Ted called Generosa and said that

50:54 he'd spoken to her doctor. She exploded. She screamed that he had no right to contact her physician, that it was unethical and illegal. Then she hung up. Generosa didn't realize how closely her situation mirrored her mother's. She didn't know that Babe had also found a lump, but roughly the same age. She didn't know that her mother's refusal to face it had contributed directly to her death. Generosa had spent her whole life vowing to be nothing like her mother, yet here she was making the same choice. She stopped returning her family doctor's calls. In her mind, he had betrayed her by speaking with Ted. When he finally sent her a registered letter employing her to seek treatment immediately, she saw his name on the envelope and tore it up without reading it. It was around this time that a contractor she worked with brought an electrician named Danny Pelosi into Jenner Rosa's orbit. The three of them met at a bar in Manhattan to discuss some work she needed done at the townhouse. As they talked, Danny realized that gene Rosa knew her stuff. She understood building design and renovation. He turned on the charm and she gave him the job. Danny rounded up some guys for his crew. When they got to work, he thought Generosa was a pain in the ass, demanding, volatile, and frankly a little crazy. She was paying him well, and he needed the money badly, so he smiled through it all.

52:20 One morning, Generosa arrived at the townhouse and found Danny asleep in his truck. She asked him what he was doing. He explained that the drive back and forth from Suffolk County was exhausting. It was easier to sleep at the job site. Some of the other guys did it too. Generosa wouldn't hear of it. No worker of hers would be sleeping in a truck. She booked rooms for them at the Stanhope Hotel, one of the most elegant hotels in the Upper East Side, for three hundred dollars a night. As the weeks went on, Danny and Generosa grew friendlier, then flirtatious. Danny could see that she was attracted to him, but he held back for fear of complicating the working relationship. Eventually, Generosa made her intentions explicit She told Danny that she hadn't had sex in two years. Danny looked at her and said, promise you won't fire me if we have sex.

53:12 She promised, well, be back after a break. Let's talk about Danny Pelosi, the third player in our drama. Danny Pelosi grew up in Queen's the fourth of six kids. His father, Bob, was a former US Marine, a decorated Korean War veteran, and a banker who had worked his way up from blue collar roots to become a vice president at his firm. Bob Pelosi was the kind of man who believed in discipline, hard work, and doing things the right way. His son, Danny was going to test every one of those beliefs. Danny was high strung from the start and small, which meant that he got bullied.

53:53 Bob taught him self defense techniques that he had learned in the Marines that backfired almost immediately when Dan, when he didn't use his new skills to defend himself, used them aggressively looking for trouble rather than avoiding it. Bob signed him up for boxing lessons, hoping to channel some of that energy somewhere useful, and Danny took to it naturally. When Danny was eleven, the family scraped together enough money to leave the city and move to the suburbs of Long Island, believing it would be a better environment to raise six kids. It didn't quite work out that way, at least not for Danny. He drifted toward a bad crowd in high school, cultivated a tough guy reputation, and got into trouble regularly. When Danny was seventeen, his parents' marriage began to fall apart, ending in divorce. Danny responded by coming apart at the seams himself. In nineteen eighty he got kicked out of high school. That same summer, at a graduation party, he met a girl named Tammy, and they started dating. A few months later, Danny was arrested for assault and served twenty days in jail. By the time he got out, Tammy had learned that she was pregnant, and they got married in March of nineteen eighty two. The next several years were not good to Danny.

55:05 A workplace accident doing masonry left him laid up for three months with a concussion, a herniated disk, and a prescription for valuum that quickly turned into an addiction. He drank on top of that to dull the pain. Their first child was born in September nineteen eighty two, and Danny and Tammy went on welfare to get by. The following summer, he was arrested for drunk driving and had his license suspended. Then he was caught leaving the scene of an accident and later arrested again for drunk driving, this time with valium and marijuana in his system. Two months after that, he was involved in a four car pile up on the Long Island Expressway. His family confronted him.

55:46 He quit the valuum, but his drinking got worse. In February nineteen eighty four, his father Bob, drove him to a rehab clinic, but it didn't take. When Danny got out, he went back to his old habits. In January of nineteen eighty five, he went to jail for forty days on a previous DWI charge. Over the next couple of years, he was arrested multiple times for infractions, including assault and drunk driving. Each time his father bailed him out. Danny and Tammy's second child was born in nineteen eighty six, and their third in nineteen ninety. In nineteen eighty nine, Danny finally got clean after another stint in rehab. He started going to AA meetings and stayed sober for nine years.

56:27 He worked steadily, came home at night, and became something closer to a real father. In nineteen ninety Tammy's grandfather gave them ten thousand dollars to put toward a house in Manorville, and Danny was holding out hope for the civil lawsuit he and Tammy had filed against his former employer over the masonry accident. His lawyers believed he could win a million dollar settlement. The civil trial finally took place in March nineteen ninety four. One day during the trial, Danny needed to get to the courthouse and couldn't find a ride, so he drove himself despite the fact that his license was suspended. He was caught by the police in the parking lot of the courthouse, and that was witnessed by several jurors in his civil case. On the stand that day, Danny was cross examined about his three DWI arrests, his speeding citations, his unreported accident, his license suspensions, and for good measure, the fact that he had driven to court that very morning on a suspended license. It all looked pretty bad to the jury. They ultimately found that his employer had been negligent, but they also found that Danny's own negligence had contributed to the accident. They awarded him nothing. Danny and Tammy filed for bankruptcy in nineteen ninety five. He fell off the wagon in nineteen ninety eight when he was arrested for drunk driving once again.

57:48 He spent another six months in jail with five years probation after By the time Danny Pelosi walked into that Manhattan bar and met Generosa Ammon, he was broke, he was in debt, his house was about to be auctioned off, and he was running out of options. Danny has been through a lot. He has certainly been through a lot, most of it by his own right or the ed musicians. But it just stresses me out when people are going through so much hardship and you know they're broke and they don't have any way to support their family. And Generosa wanted to show Danny off. She took him to the opera, to expensive nightclubs, taking him out in chauffeurd limousines to the kind of places he had never been and didn't particularly want to go. Danny felt out of place, and he said so. He took her to sports bars, his kind of places, and told her she needed to let him be who he was. When she suggested he introduce himself at social events without his heavy, working class New York accent, he told her that's just who I am. I speak Brooklyn Eese. It was an unlikely match, but they had chemistry. They also had addictions, Danny to alcohol and sex, Generosa to money. Their relationship didn't neutralize those tendencies, however, instead it multiplied them.

59:03 Danny is still married. Correct, he is still married. Generosa started drinking heavily, getting loaded with Danny on a daily basis. With Ted no longer around to disapprove, she started smoking like a chimney. Danny meanwhile, discovered what it felt like to have money, and he became intoxicated by it. He felt like a rich man for the first time in his life. They were all staying at the Stanhope Hotel, Generosa, Danny, the kids, and the work crew while the townhouse was being renovated. Breakfast ran five hundred dollars every morning. They partied at the hotel bar most nights. Until late Danny started bringing his friends and family around, people who didn't fit comfortably into the Stanhope's upper crossed atmosphere, but he didn't care.

59:47 One night, drunk and holding court, Danny regaled the bar with stories about his supposed connections to the mafia. Generosa giggled beside him she couldn't wait to tell Ted gleefully exclaiming he'll shit pants. Generosa and Danny shared the Stanhope's presidential suite at fifteen hundred dollars a night. Danny also kept his own room just for appearances. The kids had their own rooms, and the crew had two more. Add in meals, tips, incidentals, and the private school tuition for Grego and Alexa and Ted. Ammon was paying upwards of one hundred thousand dollars a month for Generosa and her friends to live it up. Wow. In two thousand and one, Ted had the twins for spring break. They were eleven years old at this time. Spending a week with them, he could see clearly what Generosa had been.

1:00:36 Doing with They were eleven and they had their own hotel room. Yeah, nice to live in the life, Ted could tell that they were different, guarded, distant, repeating things that were clearly scripted by their mom. When the week ended and they went back to their mother, Generosa grilled them about every detail. They denied having had a good time, but she refused to believe them and accused them of being disloyal. She gave them the silent treatment for three days. When the children came to her in tears, begging her to stop being angry with them, she exploded, go live with your father if you like him so much. Ted began telling people he was afraid of Generosa. His sister urged him to hire a bodyguard, but Ted said no.

1:01:17 Danny turned to a friend, John Kundall, an expert in state of the art surveillance. Without Ted's knowledge, Kundall surreptitiously installed a rapid eye system throughout the Easthampton Beach house. The setup was extensive, eight cameras hidden within the interior and one monitoring the grounds, only one outside in. Yah It was not about the outside so much. To ensure the operation remained undetective. The system's hard drive was concealed behind a wall panel inside the safe room. The objective was leverage. Generosa hoped the cameras would capture Ted in compromising positions with other women or with men, which was her secret hope, or catch them illegally valuables to hide from the divorce settlement. From his laptop, Danny kept watch, monitoring the live feed whenever Ted was at the residence. At times, Danny even set up his laptop at the construction site so the work crew could watch.

1:02:14 They thought it was better than cable. Mostly boring until one afternoon when the cameras caught Ted in the kitchen getting romantic with a new girlfriend. Work on the construction site ground to a halt as the crew gathered around the laptop. Later, Danny played a recording of it for Generosa. This whole thing of him installing these cameras in the house bothers me so much, such an invasion of privacy, and Ted had no idea it was there. So he's living his life in this house having no idea that he's being watched all the time. That's a secret fear of mine. I think it's for everyone, especially when we're seeing at like hoteler in Airbnb. It's like you just have no idea. Yeah, Danny, wasn't the only one digging for dirt. Ted had hired one of New York's most formidable private investigators. Her first order of business was a deep dive into Danny Pelosi. She easily unearthed Danny's history, the string of arrests, bankruptcy, and foreclosure, all leading up to the moment he stepped into Generosa's world.

1:03:10 Buried in the file was a psychiatric evaluation from a prior court case. It diagnosed Danny with a personality disorder marked by antisocial traits, a revelation that left Ted sickened by the thought of this man sharing a home with his children. Ted authorized his investigator to conduct surveillance on the East Hampton house while Generosa and Danny were there. Her operatives set up one Friday in June two thousand and one, as Danny arrived with Generosa and the kids. Over the following days, Ted's investigators, watching through binoculars walking past, captured what they could on video. They documented several things that Judge and the divorce case had explicitly forbidden. They caught Generosa and Danny having sex in the backyard by the pool. They confirmed that Danny was spending nights at the house with the children present, which the court had prohibited, and they documented Danny's driving Ted's children around despite having no valid license and a record that included multiple DWY arrests.

1:04:10 Before Ted had the chance to use any of this in court, a judge issued a blanket order banning any video and audio surveillance connected to the case. Ted pulled his investigators off of surveillance duty. Danny and Generosa, however, left their cameras running still without Ted's knowledge. Ted's lawyers had been watching Generosa's Jetson's themed townhouse renovation with growing suspicion. They demanded a detailed accounting of the project, but Generosa refused. Ted responded by cutting off the cash flow entirely and canceling her credit cards. Nothing would probably hurt her more than thou, absolutely, His attorney made clear that he wouldn't pay another cent until he saw proof of where the money was going. He continued paying to support the children, but everything else stopped. A NonStop party at the Stanhope Hotel ended almost overnight. Work on the townhouse slowed to a crawl. As gener Rosa fell behind on her renovation loans.

1:05:09 Danny had to sell the SUV that gener Rosa had given to him. She told anyone who had listen that Ted had cut her off for no reason, that he was vindictive and cruel. Ted also fought back on another front. He sat the children down and told them the truth. The man they were living with wasn't a hero. He was a thief, a drug addict, and a violent drunk with a rap sheet that stretched back years. He was also Ted Noted still a married man. It might be a lot for two, definitely. I think he was feeling a little desperate by this time. And I should have mentioned that the kids loved Danny. They thought he was like this great guy. Super fun. When the children corner Danny with this new information, he admitted to some scrapes with the law, but claimed everything else that Ted had told them was a lie.

1:05:57 He was livid in Danny's world, Ted that had broken an unwritten rule by dragging the children into the line of fire. One afternoon, when Ted was dropping the kids off at the beach house, Danny decided to confront him about what he viewed as a violation of his boundaries. Ted was already pulling away when Danny came out and called after him. Ted ignored him. Danny yelled, Yo, I ain't done with you yet. Ted kept moving. I have nothing to say to you, he said, and rolled up his window. Danny walked over and punched the closed window with his fist. We done talking, Ted put the car in park and rolled the window down. Danny unloaded on Ted, saying he had no right to tell the kids those things about him. Ted listened calmly. When Danny was done, Ted said, look, I'm glad Generos is happy. But honestly, Dan, good luck and tea chrove away.

1:06:48 And that is where we're going to end Part one. Okay, Well, before we do, I have a few things I wanted to discuss with you. We talked about Generosa's childhood, very insecure, very traumatic. Her mom died when she was young, she was turned away from multiple families. I just want to talk a little bit about how that might have affected her. Well. Outwardly, she seemed pretty confident, but I would think that it made her you know, insecure and you know, probably lacking in confidence. But sounds like she did have a good education. But I think even just one of those things that she suffered through sexual abuse by someone, that she should have trusted, and the loss of her mother and you know, not having a stable home and being any one of those would have greatly affected her into it.

1:07:34 Out, I think, And actually, you know, I think she would have made something of herself even even if she hadn't met Ted. It seemed like she was on a path, you know, moving to New York, working as a realtor getting involved in the art world. It seems like she was determined to overcome a lot of those things in her past. So you do have to give her credit for, you know, coming a long way from all that damage that she went through. I think a lot of people, most people have something in their child so that they have to overcome. Sure, right, Yeah, Generosa obviously had more than most, but we all overcome certain things and we live our lives with this resolve that I'm going to do better than you know, maybe what was done on to me, Like I'm going to be a better parent or you know, whatever it is. Yeah, I think a lot of us, most of people I know, have overcome something really hard from their younger years.

1:08:20 Oh, that's very true. In the beginning of their relationship, it seems like Tad was attracted to Generosa's fiery nature. Like the thing that first attracted him was that, you know, she called him out when he didn't show up for their appointment. It was like, that's rude, you waste my time. And I think he really liked that. Obviously, over time he became exhausted by it, or maybe it got worse as well. But I'm wondering it. Do you think that Ted It seems like he was the kind of guy who felt like he could fix things, and I wonder if he thought like he could fix Generosa. Well, I don't know if there was anything to fix. Until they got deeper into the marriage and they had kids and they started accumulating wealth. It seems like that's when she changed the most. Yeah. True. I have a question for you, though, do you think that they were ever really in love?

1:09:03 I get the sense that they were in their early days. You know, I didn't talk much about it, but it seemed like they had a strong bond and they really had a lot in common, and it seemed like they balanced each other out really well. I think it just got to a point where, you know, she just got more and more angry. It seems like more volatile. Well, when we first started dating. Not that I'm volatile or temperamental, but I could be described as fire. Yeah. Were you attracted to that? And has it worn you down over the years? I think I was attracted to that because my nature is like maybe a little more calm, and I think we do balance each other out in a lot of ways. Yeah. So I think if you were at the extreme that like Generosa seems to have been, that would have been a different story.

1:09:49 But I have calmed down over the years, see a little bit. But I never felt like you were, you know, really extreme in terms of you know, being that fiery. But yeah, we talked a little bit about this earlier. But Danny seems like the opposite of Ted Ammon in a lot of ways. Do you think that that's what attracted Generosa to him? Like she was looking for something completely different from the marriage that she had been in. So this case reminds me a little bit of one that we did like six months ago. It was the Kissel case. And do you remember that Nancy was attracted to like a rougher guy too, And I think, yeah, I think you just want something different, yea, And those like the guy in this case really would be indebted to her, like he really needed money, and I think that made him more loyal and probably made trying to maybe do some illegal activities. Yeah, but everyone likes all women like a bad boy. That's what attracted me to you.

1:10:46 So true, so true. We also talked about this a little bit, but the installing of the cameras inside the house is such an incredible violation of Ted's privacy and I wonder how someone could justify that to themselves, Like I'm sure that gen Rosa and Danny felt like, yeah, we're perfectly justified in doing this, But I just have a hard time. Oh yeah, I don't think they felt bad about that at all. I think that was just what they felt like they needed to do and they wanted to get ted and get ted as much money as they could. So no, I feel like, of what I'm guessing is about to happen is probably the cameras are really not the worst thing that they're going to do. Yeah, maybe not. It also bothers me that he was he had the camera. That's like, he had his laptop and he was like all of his working crew was watching this video too, Like nobody was like Danny, this is really not cool.

1:11:35 Like, I mean, we all do things in private that we would not do in front of someone else, and for that to be violated is yeah. You know, I'm not saying that I do anything weird or gross, but you know, I. Mean, yeah, it's really that bothers me so much. Just that thought of being on. Campus on the camera that I have in your office. Okay, no to sell that is not good. I would never ever ever violate your private course. We are so spectful of each other's privacy. I have never once, I don't think ever once looked in your phone. I would never do that. I don't look in your wallet. I've never looked at your computer search history. Just and you've given me no reason. I mean, this comes again from like this privileged place where you've never given me a reason Yeah, to you know, to doubt your loyalty. But gosh, it's just it's really Yeah, it was always shocking to me.

1:12:22 How many people you know do that to their. Maybe yeah, I'll come back next time for part two. Wait, I have one more question. Oh did I forgot her name? Tenosa? Ever meet her? She never met her birth father. As far as I know, she's never met Generosa. No, this case got me thinking a lot about being really, really wealthy. Think I was thinking whether Ted Ammon was the wealthiest person we've talked about on our podcast, because probably I've done quite a few cases of wealthy people. You've done a few as well, but for some reason I've gratated toward a lot. He actually was the second wealthiest person we've talked.

1:13:03 About, Okay, honey, and yes, honey and Barry Sherman. He was worth approximately three point two billion dollars money. Yes, that's like four point eight billion today. So Ted was worth at the time of his death about ninety seven million dollars one hundred and eighty million today. So it's just the scale of that, Like the enormous scale of Barry Sherman's wealth was just like out of this world. I do have some hypothetical questions for you about being wealthy. Okay, This is not the question of like, what would you do if you were really wealthy, because I know your answer to that. Okay, what is my answer to that? You would give a lot of the charity, you would help people, and we'd buy a nice house on Lake Michigan. Okay, yeah, because we already have a nice life, and the thought of having like a billion dollars is really inconceivable to me because I think probably kind of simple people, and I mean, I don't know, we have everything we kind of want already, not really, but you know kind of. Okay, so that made that want maybe like another car, I don't.

1:14:03 Know, well, that maybe will guide me to what you're going how you're going to answer these questions. I wanted to give you some trade off questions. So the first one, you can get fifty million dollars tomorrow, but for the rest of your life, a private investigator hired by your enemies, let's say maybe a rival podcast, is allowed to follow you around and spy on you all the time, so you never know when you're being watched. I think it's you take the money, the fifty millions. You mean like like like a private camera. No, no, just somebody following you around. I'm really boring. They'd be like, why does she go to Costco so much? Really, Tina another trip to home goods? Like sure, follow me, I don't care. Yeah, okay, that's fair. That's about you. Same same, I think I'm pretty not that the most exciting in the world. They picked me up going to McDonald's on Sunday.

1:14:51 Morning, become friends, and I'd be like, hey, do you want to go with me? Let's go, Let's go to Crumble Cookie. To hang up by the pool. Right yeah, yeah, all right, So similar question if you could have fifty million dollars tomorrow. But the catch is that you're famous, and well everywhere you go, you go to Costco, you go to a store, you go to a restaurant, everyone knows who you are and they're always approaching you. They're asking for favors or offering you investment opportunities. Do you take the money in that situation? I mean, I think everyone knows. We don't post pictures, not that we're famous, We're not famous by any stretch of the imagination. But I would like my privacy, I like my anonimity. So you would turn down million fifty million? Well?

1:15:31 Am I living in my current amount of you know, I still have my current amount of wealth though. Yeah, yeah, you're not going to lose your money. You're just not going to get the extra fifty million. Okay, fair enough, all right, one more of these so you can become super wealthy. But to get that wealth, you have to sign a generosa clause, which is meaning you cut off all your current friends and acquaintances. You can make new friends, but you never know if those new friends are just your friends because you're. Wealthy, including my my husband. No, no, oh, because then I would if I don't ever have to talk to him again. I'm in Wow, I did not a million dollars that I never have to talk to about. Are you kidding me? Wide, No, I'm kidding. I mean I am not that again. I feel sometimes these questions are like, we're we're good to find it. We're not like rich, but we're fine. We're comfortable. So it comes from me answering from a place of privilege.

1:16:29 Where comfortable or comfortable comfortable. I'm comfortable, So you know, we're you know, we're also old. That's what I want to say. We're old and not that old, but you know we're older, so we're established and you know, so. It might be a different answer now than. Twenty years ago. Might have been different. Yeah. Right, Although I went to the groceres. Every time I go to the grocery store, go get gas. These days, it's like holy cow, like everything is more expensive. Yeah, it really is. I have one more question for you. This is really important question. Okay, So Generosa was designing a Jetson's themed town. I was hoping you were going to ask a question like this. So if you were going to renovate a house and it had to be based on a sixties or seventies TV show, what would you.

1:17:13 Oh, you know the answer to this, Brady Bunch. Yeah, probably Brady Bunge. I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but I am a huge Brady Bunch fan. I always have been, always will be. I haven't watched it in a million years, but you know, when I was a kid growing up, I just always thought, oh, I just wanted to be a Brady Yeah. Yeah, I thought you were going to ask what I would put in my house. And the thing that I really want is a laundry room that's upstairs. Yeah, Like, why is that not a thing? Because right now we have like a two story house and then we have a basement, but our laundry room is on the main floor. Like you know a lot of houses today, you walking through the garage and then you have your mudroom and that's for the laundry room. And it's fine because at our previous house, the lunder room was actually in the basement, and you know, I had to go down two floors.

1:17:59 So I just that we could design a house where the laundry room is on the well. What do you think of Generosa's project where she had she put five washing machines and five dryers in the house. I do know some people who have like you know who do have like one one up and down went down. Yeah, and I feel like five. I don't need that many. I don't think she needed that many, but I guess she was. She did it so that the people who did the laundry could like all the living No. No, that this was at the beach House, so I don't think they had living help at the beach House. Well, all of these questions, honestly are irrelevant because we're never going to have four hundred million dollars. I think you could design a Brady Bunch themed house for you know, a super expensive amount of money.

1:18:43 Yeah. No, yeah, I think that I wouldn't want a huge house. Yeah, I was really torn. I'm sorry, I'm so boring everyone. I really truly am. When I was thinking about my answer to the question, I was I'm really halfway between designing a get Smart I know you're gonna get smart, I mean all the gadgets and everything, or a Batman themed house. I mean that would be that would be pretty cool too. Yeah. Yeah, the Batman Show was so cool. I would love decorating underground dwelling. We're watching Paradise right now on Hulu with sterlie K Brown and James Marsden. Sorry, I'm time every time you say James Barston. Like they're both beautiful men, Like there's nothing objective about that. Well, but I don't think it's giving anything which say they kind of like live underground. So yeah, it's a good show.

1:19:32 Check it out. It is a very good show. Well, once again, you've wasted a perfectly good hour and twenty minutes listening to Love Mary Kill. But we appreciate it. If you would like to listen to the conclusion of this episode, you only have one more part, right, please consider joining us on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash Love Mary Kill. We have only one tier. For the bargain basement price of five dollars a month, you get early ad free access, a bonus monthly episode. Our undying gratitude. Well, we have undying gratitude to all of our listeners because I know it doesn't fit into everyone's budget. So we never want to make anyone feel bad about not joining Patreon, because if you're listening to this podcast, you're helping us. But hey, if you want to join Patreon too.

1:20:14 Until next time, don't kill your wife and don't kill your husband.