"Golden Boy" by John Glatt

Above:  Golden Boy - John Glatt - 320 Pages.

In January of 2015, Thomas Gilbert Jr., age thirty, arrived unannounced at his parents' Upper East Side home.  Tommy sent his mom out for a sandwich and shot his father, a hedge-fund owner,  point-blank in the head.  He then staged the murder as a suicide.  The proximate motivation for the shooting is that Dad cut Tommy's allowance.

How could Tommy murder his Dad?  Blond, blue-eyed, and six-feet-three inches tall, Tommy grew up in extreme privilege.  He had an elite education at the ritzy Buckley and Deerfield schools before following his father and grandfather to Princeton, where he majored in economics.

The murder made tabloid headlines.  The Gilbert family was part of the New York City/Hamptons social elite.    Consensus of the tabloids was that Tommy was a spoiled rich kid, born with a silver spoon in his mouth.    It soon emerged that Tommy was also being investigated by the Southampton police for burning his former friend's historic 17th - century family house, in Sagaponack, to the ground several months earlier.

During the build up to the trial, during scores of hearings over four years, it became known that Tommy's Mom's father was bipolar and committed suicide. Mom Shelly Gilbert, claimed to have watched Tommy's descent into schizophrenia, starting from his early teens.

Two court-ordered psychiatrists examined Tommy and declared him to be mentally incompetent.  But, the prosecution appealed and a reexamination declared Tommy fit for trial.

To be legally competent a defendant must be able to understand the courtroom procedure and the charges against him, and have the capacity to effectively participate in his own defense.  It is possible for someone suffering from serious mental illness to be declared fit for trial.

Tommy had spent four years in Rikers Island prison prior to trial.  He showed up at trial pale, with a scraggly beard, messy hair... almost unrecognizable from his arrest photos.  He was disruptive at trial to the point of hurting his own defense.  The judge believed (as do I, but, not the author) that Tommy was putting on an act.

In June 2019, a jury found Tommy guilty of second-degree murder and two weapons charges, rejecting an insanity defense.  Tommy was sentenced to a maximum of thirty years to life in prison.  He will be eligible for parole when he is sixty five.

Author Glatt goes to great lengths to chronical Tommy's life and relationships for the four or five years prior to him killing his dad.  Because of his high social standing, Tommy had access to socially prominent peers.  He was socially active... bars, tony clubs... drugs.   He wore trendy clothes. He surfed.

Tommy's Dad was always urging him to get on with his life (and rightly so!)... suggesting avenues for him to follow and contacts for him to leverage.  The father, Tom, Sr., didn't seem to me to be doing anything inappropriate in encouraging his son to get into his post Princeton life as a functioning adult.  But, Tommy couldn't get going.  He ducked professional obligations.  Rather, he surfed, partied and did drugs.  He was paranoid.  He claimed his clothes were contaminated;  he developed abnormal jealousies  in love relationships... spying on would be suitors of his girl friends and spying on his own girl friends.  

Many of Tommy's Hamptons peers went on to do quite well, fulfilling expectations made for those who live a charmed life.  

Tommy had girl friends.  Some found him out and got away fast.  Others took pity on him and tried to stay close, even after break ups.

Tommy's Mom, Shelley, like many Mom's of n'ere do wells, continued to coddle him.  She resisted Dad's desire to cut back Tommy's allowance to wean him off of parental dependency.  She attended all his hearings... visited him at prison.  What a hurt that must have been for her to succor the child that killed her husband.

Why read this book?  I'm not sure.  Tommy, as the tabloids had it, seems to have been a hapless jerk who squandered the many opportunities given to him.  But, the book does raise the question of what is mental illness and where is the boundary between willful criminal action and mental incompetence.... and where and how intervention should take place and who enforces that.  Tommy saw several shrinks over the course of the build up to killing his Dad.  They prescribed medication, which he didn't take.  

The book reads fast and offers some interesting vistas into the NYC financial elite/Hamptons culture.   Recommendation?  There are probably better stories to read than this one.   I'm reminded of Jon Krakauer's 1996 book, which I read, "Into the Wild," about another loser, Chris McCandless, who abandoned his family and adult responsibilities to become a rubber tramp.  At least he didn't kill his Dad.