Full Transcript for Middle Lane

on a water color he was painting of the pond behind Ammon's home when he heard two cars crunching down the long gravel driveway of fifty nine Middle Lane. He didn't think much of it. At night, the lights in Ammon's bedroom remained on, but the neighbor wasn't alarmed by that either. Whose rock the Hampton's In a town where trimmed hedgerows offered the only protection, especially when home security systems could be so easily disabled, every millionaire on Middle Lane began to wonder if their home was next here's Michael Schneerson. Again. 00:04:15 Speaker 2: There had not been a murder, I think in three hundred and fifty years something crazy like that, and that was maybe the only one. You know, It's a very peaceful, idyllic neighborhood of grand homes where everybody feels very safe. So it was really a shock, especially considering the brutality of the circumstances. 00:04:34 Speaker 1: Ted's business partner had found him. He had grown concerned when Ted missed his morning meeting in Manhattan, and he flew out to East Tampton by helicopter. When he entered the home, he was immediately greeted by Ammon's agitated dogs. He made his way from room to room, calling Ted's name as he climbed up to the second floor. It was there he discovered Ammon's naked body in the master bedroom. Police arrived minutes later. In the home was sealed off. The medical examiner would later determine that he had been sadistically tortured with a stun gun before he suffered thirty blows to his head with a blunt object. As news spread, rumors started to swirl a naked man had been seen running down Middle Lane. Gossip centered on a gay cruising area at two mile Hollow Beach just a short drive away. There were whispers about ted Emmon being a closet homosexual. Maybe he'd engage in some rough sex with a stranger and things a gun out of hand, but this rumor was quickly dispelled when police confirmed that the naked man had been seen around eleven am on Friday, October eighteenth, when ted Ammon was still in Manhattan. Soon suspicion fell on anyone who knew the pass code to the home security system. The home's high tech nine camera security system had been turned off before the crime. When police arrived on the scene, they found no evidence of a burglary or break in, just a trail of blood leading up the stairs to the bedroom, so whoever had killed ted Ammon had known him. The only two people without alibis were as soon to be ex wife Generosa, who stood to gain a lot financially from his sudden death, and thirty eight year old electrician Daniel Pelosi, who she had hired to work for her at her town home in Manhattan, will learn all about them and what the detectives discovered. After a short break were back with murder homes with six homes, five cars, and millions in assets. You'd think Ted Ammon would be a happy man, but his wife, Generosa was making him miserable. And yet in the early years, Generosa and Ted's marriage was described as adyllic despite their very different

backgrounds. While Ted had modest beginnings, he grew up in a stable home in New York, did well in college, and then had a meteoric rise at Wall Street running the successful firm KKR. He married, but then divorced his wife after nine years after they were unable to have children. Meanwhile, Generosa was raised by a single mother who had died of brain cancer when she was ten. Both she and her sister were sent to live in abusive foster homes. A few years later, leafing through her mother's old photos in an album, she came across a snapshot of a blond Italian sailor on the back was ridden Generosa. Putting two and two together, she realized she was the love child of that sailor and that she'd been named after him. The sole protector left in her life was her sister, who was killed in a hidden run accident when Generosa was seventeen. When Generosa met Ted in nineteen eighty six, she had made her way to New York and was working as an apartment real estate broker. After Ted had blown off in appointment with her, she called him to give him a piece of her mind, and instead of being turned off by that flash of temper, he was intrigued. Just a few short weeks afterwards, they began dating. We spoke to Joe Farges, Generosa's riding teacher, about those early years. Joe became good friends with Generosa in the early nineties, and it was occasionally invited to dine with them. So how did you meet her? 00:08:13 Speaker 3: Generosa came to ride at the farm. I was out in Southampton in the eighties, and she had a horse, and she knocked on the door and said could I keep my horse with you? And sure that was my business. Anyway, Generosa came out and ride for a sum. 00:08:28 Speaker 1: Or two with us. Can you tell me a little bit about your impressions of her. 00:08:32 Speaker 3: My impressions of her was she was a totally normal human being. And then I'm quite aware that life exploded on her after she left us. But she and her husband had meet a dinner a lot, and it was before she adopted some children, and after the children were adopted, I would say she stopped riding. But I can't tell you there's anything abnormal about anything normal lady coming out to ride her horse. 00:08:58 Speaker 1: Tell me a few things about just the dinner, anything that stands out. 00:09:01 Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you. If anything abnormal happened to them, it happened after I met her, when things went off the rails. But I really can't. I can't help you out here. She was quite quite nice. I never saw her explode. I never saw anything happened crazy. 00:09:17 Speaker 1: What did you think of Ted Emmon? 00:09:19 Speaker 3: Businessman? Nice young fit and they seemed to get along well at that time. Okay, hey, but we all had dinner together. Was normal time. 00:09:30 Speaker 1: It wasn't one of those dinners you walk out of and you think that something. 00:09:33 Speaker 3: Was no, not at all, you think something was a ride, not at all, not at all. 00:09:39 Speaker 1: But according to her staff, and friends. The marriage started to collapse after they adopted their beloved children. In nineteen ninety two, Generosa became convinced that Ted had a new girlfriend. She had heard a baseless rumor that filled her with rage. Ted's new love interest had had its child. Here's Michael again. 00:09:58 Speaker 2: There was some relationship with a woman who is correctly described in the piece as being almost like an antithesis to Generosa, a very well bred, proper businesswoman, quite a successful and also close to people sort of around Ted. I just remember from my reporting feeling pretty sure that Ted had a relationship with this woman, but as I recall, friends of the mystery woman strongly denied that there could have been a child in the. 00:10:31 Speaker 1: Picture, despite the rumor of the child having no merit. With the idea of planted in her head, Generosi's paranoia and erratic behavior only grew more intense. 00:10:41 Speaker 2: It's sort of hard to imagine this woman not being a little crazy. Is a point at which she starts telling her children that across the street on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum is a whole sort of disc broadcast set up to keep an eye on them, and Ted had to literally take them across the street and have a museum staffer take them upstairs to convince them that they weren't being spied on by their mother. I remember talking to the woman who had done the landscaping, and she was just really shocked that she first explained to Generosa that these tulips changed color shade over twenty four hours or whatever it was. And nevertheless, Generosa chose a particular shade and was shocked when it looked a little different to her discerning eye late that day. And then and she, you know, demanded they all get pulled out because it wasn't the shade she wanted. 00:11:38 Speaker 1: And the pool bubbles blowing, Yes, the bubbles. 00:11:40 Speaker 2: I think she called someone at four in the morning to say that she'd been looking out at the pool and yes, the bubbles were going in the wrong direction. Well, I think she was pretty paranoid. I think it was inevitable that that would induce outbreaks of temper that were really kind of shocking. 00:12:00 Speaker 1: And then there was the gaunt, good looking Pelosi who Generosa was paying to oversee the one million dollar renovation of the outrageously expensive town home that Ted had let Generosa stay in during the divorce proceedings. Pelosi had a checkered history. He had been pulled over a month before the murders for drunken driving, but had quickly changed seats with a friend, hoping not to be arrested. Generosa was not only paying Pelosi handsomely, she had also become his lover, and the two had become a fixture at the Stanhope hotel's bar, where Generosa and Pelosi were staying, and a fifteen hundred dollars per day's suite. Her two children, Alexa and greg were staying in an adjoining room, all of it paid for by Ted Ammon. As the divorce

negotiations and renovations wore on, Generosa's alimony demands were staggering to fifty thousand dollars annually for a bodyguard, fifty thousand dollars for a housekeeper, fifty thousand dollars for a chef, fifty thousand dollars for a driver, thirty thousand dollars for a gardener, one hundred thousand dollars for an assistant, and then there were Pelosi's expenses. They'd wake up next to each other in the king sized bed at the Stanhope and order a five hundred dollar breakfast for them and the servants then pay a dog walker fifty dollars to walk the dog around the block so that they could linger over the freshly squeezed orange juice an assortment of danishes. Pelosi was getting used to the high living and Generosa's cash handouts. He was leaving one hundred dollars tips at the Stanhope's bar. He was not only enjoying the lifestyle, he now felt he deserved it, and Ted Ammon grudgingly covered it all. But finally, by the fall, Ted was feeling a little reprieve. Generosa seemed to be taking her lawyer's advice to demand less. They were close to a settlement, and very soon a judge would decree exactly how much she would be getting, and he'd finally be able to move on. The question is was the reprieve real or was Generosa actually plotting something else. We'll learn more after a short break. We're back with Murder Holmes and the story of the murder of Ted Ammon Generosa. Ammon could be personable and creative and a loving mother to their two adopted children, but she also had a hair trigger temper when she felt that she was being crossed, she would protect the life she had built from scratch at all costs. Could she have been so angry at her husband near the end of the divorce proceedings that she would mastermind his murder or was it all Pelosi's idea. Michael got a look at Daniel Pelosi up close when he was arigned in court. 00:14:51 Speaker 2: You know, I mean, the evidence is the evidence, and Ted was budgeted to death, and Danny Pelosi was more than the obvious suspect. He was really so clearly murderer, you know, with a sort of swaggering, macho guy with a tool kid on his waist. I saw him a couple of times. He was in his own sort of gaunt way, a kind of handsome fellow. 00:15:13 Speaker 1: Where did you see him? 00:15:14 Speaker 2: I saw him in a courtroom, actually very soon after the murderer, because he was hauled in just to a local court for a drinking charge. And I sat about three feet from him. Then tried to imagine how this man could have killed somebody, And of course we didn't know at that time that he very likely had, but you know, it was kind of weird. 00:15:32 Speaker 1: He was right there, seem in the courtroom. Could you picture did it seem like he was capable of that kind of level of brutality. 00:15:43 Speaker 2: No, but anyone who saw that the body would certainly know he was. I wanted to just go back to something though, that is that if several years later, these detectives who kept on the case got a couple local young hoods to acknowledge something really extraordinary, which was that on the night of Ted's murder, they were recruited by Danny, their buddy, to go to the site and not necessary to kill Ted Ammon, but to you know, sort of terrorize him into giving Generosa a better deal with the divorce. And according to this story, these guys, these two guys sat in the car while well Danny alone went into fifty nine Middle Lane, and not too long after Danny emerged covered with blood and sat down in the in the car and got blood over the other guys, and they all kept the secret of what they'd seen and experienced that night. 00:16:44 Speaker 1: That's incredible because I always picture him going in alone. 00:16:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he did go on alone, but at the same time he had it was it was quite quite a story that occurred. 00:16:57 Speaker 1: Just like Generosa, Daniel Peloussi had two sides to him. He could be disconcertingly violent or charming. At a work site, an employee remembers the sadistic pleasure that Pelosi took and using a stun gun on him as a prank. But the two adopted children of Ted in Genero so remember him as an affectionate father figure. It wasn't until he was charged that they began to see things differently. How could the fun loving father figure they loved be capable of torturing and killing their father. A friend of Pelosi's name, Chris Pirino, would ultimately confess to driving Pelosi to fifty nine Middle Lane on the night of the murder. Pirino watched him leave the car stun gun in hand, and thought Pelosi was going to just rough up Ammen. Would Perino have been involved at all if he had thought Pelosi would murder ted Ammon, It seems unlikely. One scenario is that Pelosi disables the security system as soon as he enters the front door of fifty nine Middle Lane. Ted Ammon is sleeping naked in bed and is awakened. He stands, but it is confronted by Pelosi as he enters the bedroom. Pelosi raises the stun gun and presses it against Ted's back, where he delivers the first crackling shock. Pelosi tells Ammon he's going to give Generosa whatever she wants, and as Pelosi delivers another shock to the back of Ted's neck, he agrees to everything. So why doesn't Pelosi stop right there? Ted was not known to have a temper. The last thing on earth he would do is take a swing at someone. Most likely, he would have caved into all of Pelosi's demands. So what is it about Ted Ammon in this pathetic state of vulnerability that would incite Pelosi to go further, to begin bludgeoning him again and again as he begs for his life. A former salmate of pelosi as would later say that Pelosi told him he enjoyed beating Ted as he quote cried out like a bitch. So was it about the money? Money was already being divided? Was it jealousy Generosa was no longer in love with Ted? Or was it simply violence? And how rage always blows away the best laid plans. Add to that the fact that Pelosi walked into that home with a half baked plan. Anyway, Surely

Generosa wouldn't have been on board with her lover disabling the home security system that only he and a handful of hired help had access to, and then beating ted to death. He might as well have bludgeoned ted Ammon to death outside the Ralph Lorenz store on Main Street. In the end, it seems like Daniel Pelosi couldn't help himself even in prison. He's reported to have problems controlling his anger. He spent a year in solitary for intimidating a witness. He always goes too far. On the night of the murder, Chris Pirino nervously waited for Pelosi in the car, listening to the dogs barking inside. They could easily have intimidated ted Amman simply by sitting in his driveway at night, but instead of Pelosi exited the home hunched over, quickly climbing into the driver's seat, his clothes spattered with ted blood. He left a trail of it all the way down the stairs. But despite the evidence, it took months for investigators to charge him, and Generosa would refuse to testify against him and later die of breast cancer in two thousand and three. Here's Michael Schneer saying again. 00:20:18 Speaker 2: It's such a fascinating, almost biblical situation, right, She essentially has her husband killed and then dies of cancer herself. Of course, it's sort of hard to escape the words in your head saying, well, she deserved it. I don't think anybody deserves to die prematurely. You know, as we said earlier, one can sympathize to some extent with her. She did have a tough childhood, She did seem to have real behavioral problems. So her fears, her paranoia that she was being cheated by her husband. All the money he'd made was being sickened off into his private accounts, and she wasn't getting what she needed. And then she had her lawyer tick off these many many expenses, and she was doing it the sense of revenge for what she felt was her poor treatment by the whole ted Ammin circle of friends and professionals. I think she felt in a way completely alone. It must have been haunting for her to stay in that house for a while. I mean, we know she stayed for a while, and I think in the end she spent a lot of time in England at that place in Surrey, but wherever she was, she was pretty much alone except for the kids. And ironically Danny Pelosi. 00:21:27 Speaker 1: Right the famous photograph of them in London in the. 00:21:30 Speaker 2: Car, Yes, that's right, that amazing photograph, and the reports of how after Generosa died there was Danny staying at the Stanhop hotel where the two of them had stayed many many nights, and he would pull up this box of ashes, which were Generosa's ashes, and put them on the bar and go into a weepy stayed about how terrible it was unfair that the Generosa had died. 00:21:55 Speaker 1: He was still leaving one hundred dollars tips, and Ted Ammon, even from beyond his gray, was still picking up the tad. A couple of years later, in March two thousand and four, Pelosi would be arrested for the murder of Ted Ammon, and after Pelosi's friend Christopher Perino admitted that he was waiting in the car for Pelosi at Ammon's house when he saw him covered with blood, Pelosi was convicted in December two thousand and four. Pirino served four months in jail for helping Pelosi cover up the crime. As for the other men with them that Michael Schneerson alluded to. It doesn't appear that the authorities followed up on it. Meanwhile, to this day, Pelosi remains in prison and maintains his innocence. I have this image of Ted Ammon, good looking, leaning back in a chair at his office at KKR, when a call is put through. It's Generosa, the real estate agent. He blew off, and at first she's giving him a piece of her mind. He smiles as he listens to her. All he has to do is hang up and two lives continue in different directions. But instead he asked her on a date. I can imagine them sitting at a swanky Upper east Side restaurant, just beginning to share a few secrets, charming each other. Part of the charm is her mystery, the way she glosses over certain details of her past, but there are no red flags that make him think twice. Besides, isn't the joy of falling in love with the act of gradually getting to know someone? 00:23:24 Speaker 3: I'd have to say, I was shocked. I was shocked. It wasn't the person I knew. All this intrigue in boyfriends and murder, it wasn't the person I knew not even slightly, not even close, And. 00:23:35 Speaker 1: What became of the Middle l Aine House, a place where all this murder and anguish took place. In twenty seventeen, the home was listed for twelve point seven million with Town and Country real Estate. According to reports, Brown Harris Stevens represented the buyer. After just a couple of months on the market, the home went down to eleven point seven million, and that was cut a few months later to ten point nine million. The stigmatized home finally sold for eight million, at a steep discount. The question is, in today's hot real estate market would still hold true? This is Murder Holmes. I'm at Marinovitch. Thanks for listening. 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