the sprawling manor house, even more than the picture-perfect family inside of it, stood out as a testament to Hamptons high-society success. Manicured gardens, a pond and a pool stretched across the 2.2 acres of 59 Middle Lane in tony East Hampton, the property’s centerpiece a gabled six-bedroom pile modeled after an English country estate.
The address was emblematic not only of New York wealth but also seemingly domestic bliss; millionaire R. Theodore Ammon and his wife, Generosa, planned to watch their twins enjoy their childhoods on Middle Lane. Eight years after purchasing the home, however, it took on a new and more sinister identity: crime scene.
It was here that Ammon was found bludgeoned to death in October 2001 – and the idyllic setting would soon prove an irresistible contradictory backdrop for tabloids dissecting his life and his family. Images of the East Hampton home were splashed across front pages and news programs for years as the story took seemingly limitless tragic and sensational twists, from Ammon’s murder to the trial of his wife’s handyman new husband to Generosa’s own premature death from breast cancer.
More than a decade after his father’s murder, Ammon’s son Greg used the address for the title of his 2012 documentary – 59 Middle Lane – in an effort to make sense of the trauma and confusion that he and his twin had endured as children.
Because, as socialites and city vacationers were enjoying the Hamptons summer 20 years ago, the swanky spot was also abuzz with gossip in the run-up to the murder trial of the man Greg’s mother had married three months after Ammon was found naked and fatally beaten in the master bedroom.
Daniel Pelosi – the Long Island contractor/electrician who’d overseen the installation of the 59 Middle Lane security system and one of the few to know about its existence – had finally been arrested in March 2004, charged with second-degree murder in the death of his lover’s financier husband. And the revelations and allegations that emerged throughout the trial would be even more salacious – outlining love affairs, secret espionage, wild overspending, conspiracies and even mystical spells.
It remains one of the most infamous Hamptons scandals to this day.
Ammon originally hailed from New York, but almost 500 miles away from Long Island’s sweeping beaches; he was raised with one sister, Sandi, outside of Buffalo, then majored in economics at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
“He entered Bank of America’s executive-training program straight out of Bucknell,” New York reported in 2003. He married another member of the program but parted amicably from her about a decade later, she told the magazine.
Ammon passed the bar without ever attending law school and forged a blazing path through law and private equity before becoming a multimillionaire, thanks to his role in the highly publicized RJR Nabisco takeover in the late 1980s. By the time of his death, he’d donated $15m to his alma mater and become chair of Jazz at Lincoln Center.The couple’s son, Greg, filmed a 2012 documentary about the life, his murder and the aftermath for himself and his twin sister
He was also going through a nasty divorce from his second wife, Generosa, an artist from California who met Ammon in 1983 through her day job as a rental agent. He’d been looking for a new apartment on the Upper East SIde but failed to appear for an evening appointment with the seven-years-younger blonde; she called the next day to admonish him, and he asked her out.
They married three years later, and Generosa – who said she’d been raised after her mother’s death in the California foster system, losing her only sister to a hit-and-run when she was a teenager – threw herself into the role of high-society wife. The couple tried to have their own children and pursued in vitro procedures but eventually turned to international adoption.
“You know how your mom found out about you guys, right?” Generosa’s best friend – and her children’s godfather – tells her son in his 2012 documentary. “She was at her doctor’s office, and behind his desk was a picture of these two babies, and it was you guys.
“And she said, ‘Who are those kids?’ And he said, ‘Those are kids that are orphaned in the Ukraine. And that started the process.”
The Ammons adopted the toddler twins they named Gregory and Alexa in 1992, the same year the couple purchased 59 Middle Lane. They told an oft-repeated story about how, on a drive to East Hampton, one of the children spotted a sunflower and exclaimed “Big flower;” Ammon subsequently named a new business venture Big Flower Press.
By 1999, the gamble had paid off to the tune of $2billion – but Ammon’s marriage was following the opposite trajectory. His relationship with Generosa was souring; she accused him of affairs and other betrayals, while her behaviour became increasingly sharp and unhinged, friends and colleagues reported. The couple moved the family to England for what was widely seen in their circles as a last-ditch attempt to make the marriage work, but they returned to America and began living separately in 2000, initiating divorce proceedings.
Ammon bought and moved into a tenth-floor apartment on Fifth Avenue in addition to purchasing a nearby townhouse for Generosa and the children; she moved into the Stanhope Hotel with personal staff and the twins as $1million renovations were being completed on the new digs.
And those renovations would bring a smooth-talking electrician with a rap sheet into the Ammons’ lives – culminating in the extinguishing of one of them just over a year after his whirlwind entrance.
Daniel Pelosi was married with three children – and had a long history of battles with substance abuse and the law – when he began his affair with Generosa. He began spending huge amounts of time around his new lover and the twins in the Stanhope Hotel, eventually winning over both Alexa and Greg, they explain in his 2012 film.
Generosa began not only pursuing sole custody but also poisoning the children against Ammon. Her estranged husband, meanwhile, took a huge financial hit in dot-com stocks around 2000; much of the fortune she insisted was there was, in fact, vanishing.
He was still a wealthy man, however, and still included the East Hampton home in his property portfolio. He was also dating, though no relationships had been serious enough to introduce a new woman to his son and daughter.
