CEO Dead in Apparent SuicideJames McDonald, the head of New York–based investment-advisory firm Rockefeller & Co, committed suicide this weekend.
ByJessica Pressler
sad things
Freddie Mac CFO Found Dead, Suspected SuicideDavid Kellermann, who was appointed in late 2008 after the government takeover of the lending powerhouse, appears to have taken his own life.
ESB Suicide Discovered When Leg Found on 33rd StreetThis just in from the Associated Press, and more than a bit disconcerting:
NEW YORK (AP) — A man jumped to his death Friday out the window of a 69th-floor law office in the Empire State Building.
Police responded to the New York City landmark shortly before 3 p.m. after a 911 caller reported seeing a severed leg — covered in a gray sock — on the street below. The rest of the body was recovered from a setback on the 30th floor.
Apparently more than 30 people have jumped to their deaths from the 76-year-old tower. The AP does not report how many dismembered themselves in the process.
Man Jumps to Death From Empire State Building [AP via NYT]
the morning line
Remembering 587
• A new memorial to American 587’s crash, the second-deadliest air disaster in U.S. history, was dedicated Sunday in Belle Harbor. It’s a curved granite wall with the victims’ names and a line from a poem in Spanish (most of the 265 victims were Dominicans heading to Santo Domingo). On the crash site itself, residential construction is in full swing. [NYT]
• If you lived through the transit strike last year, you kind of hated union boss Roger Toussaint. And that was before you knew he had a secret deal with the MTA while the strike was still going on, as the Daily News reveals today. What a guy. [NYDN]
• A high-powered Manhattan lawyer was found dead near his abandoned BMW in an upstate bird sanctuary — an apparent suicide; the man was out on $225,000 bail on a rape charge he vehemently denied. [NYP]
• The flap over Charlie Rangel’s already-infamous “Who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?” continues, with local newspapers there alternately asking the feisty congressman to come visit their fair state and heaving invective on New York. [Gotham Gazette]
• And what’s the Post’s headline of the day? There are plenty of contenders, from “Mick Jagger Rocks On in Grief” to “Bearied!” but we’ll go with Egg Foo Gun, about a handgun smuggled into a hospital in a Chinese-food carton. Well done, Post. [NYP]
in other news
This Week, It’s Jim Jones Versus Jim Jones
There’s a new documentary out on the Jonestown massacre called Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple, and it’s at the Quad on West 13th Street this week. At the same time, there’s also a new album, released yesterday, from the unfortunately monikered Harlem rapper Jim Jones. One Jim Jones led the biggest mass suicide in history. The other Jim Jones has his track “We Fly High” — with its ubiquitous call to arms, “Ballin’!” — blasting out of nearly every car stereo in the city. Is the new Jones overtaking the old one? We consider …
intel
New York Lawyer, Charged With Rape, Found Dead“It’s bizarre, unfortunate,” Steve Coleman, an Atlanta police officer, was saying about New York attorney Andrew Gardner.
Gardner, 39, was a litigation partner at Fried Frank. He had been an undergrad at Harvard and had gone to NYU for law school. He lived in Armonk with his wife and three kids. And he was found dead, a presumed suicide, on Monday.
the morning line
Suicide, Fire, Not a Hero
• Indie actress, director, and screenwriter Adrienne Shelly, just seen with Matt Dillon in Factotum, was found hanged in her Village apartment. There’s no suicide note, and cops are checking up on unidentified sneaker prints in the apartment, but suicide is cited as the likeliest scenario. [NYP]
• A blaze broke out in a Bronx apartment in the wee hours of the morning, killing a 5-year-old girl and sending three other people to Jacobi Medical Center. The survivors can thank the girl’s 13-year-old brother, who woke everyone up. The cause of the fire is being investigated. [WNBC]
• Major karmic points are apparently not enough for Robert G. Seckers, the mate of a tugboat that aided the Staten Island ferry during the infamous 2003 crash. Seckers wants more tangible compensation for his good deed ($2 million to be exact) under an ancient unwritten law called “pure marine salvage.” “I don’t need to be a hero,” said Seckers in an interview. It appears you just took care of that part, sir. [NYT]
• Hitler Kid, post-collegiate edition: A 23-year-old Greenpoint city employee (probably a hipster who applied for the job ironically) penned an essay in the Haverford alumni mag calling the Polish “vermin” and the nabe “even uglier than the morons who work there.” The piece is clearly Borat-style satire (the author dreams of a Greenpoint of “lawyers and investment bankers”), but — shock — subtleties of dry sarcasm are not a Parks Department specialty. [NYDN]
• Three, two, one, stop. The city is testing out streetlight timers at intersections, visibly counting down fifteen seconds until the light turns red. Now, finally, the pedestrians will have something other than the road to look at! [amNY]
