Son Arrested in Father's N.Y.C. Death

The son of a New York hedge fund leader with a house in the Georgica Association was charged with murder Monday in the shooting death of his father at the elder man's apartment in Manhattan Sunday afternoon.

The police said Thomas Gilbert, 70, was killed by a single shot to the head in a bedroom in his apartment on Beekman Place. According to the New York Police Department, a 911 call was received at 3:31 p.m. on Sunday. Emergency medical personnel pronounced Mr. Gilbert dead at the apartment.

His son, Thomas Gilbert Jr., 30, of New York and Wainscott faces life imprisonment without the possibility of parole if convicted as charged.

Detectives of the 17th Precinct immediately sought out the son in connection with the death. According to Officer George Tsourovakas of the N.Y.P.D.'s public information bureau, when officers arrived at the younger Mr. Gilbert's Chelsea apartment late Sunday night, he quickly surrendered.

He was taken into custody by police as a person of interest, and was held at the 17th Precinct, which covers the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and questioned by detectives. The official arrest was made early Monday afternoon, Officer Tsourovakas said.

Mr. Gilbert was charged with three felonies, murder in the second degree and two charges of possession of a loaded weapon. He has had several mostly minor brushes with the law the past few months, in both Southampton and East Hampton Towns. He also has an outstanding criminal contempt charge in Southampton.

When he was arrested in East Hampton recently on unlicensed driving charges, the younger Mr. Gilbert gave police his father's Georgica Association Road address as his home address.

East Hampton Town police were called to the Association Road residence last March after the elder Mr. Gilbert arrived from the city to discover that someone had been staying in the house. Nothing was reported stolen, and no arrests were made.

Thomas Gilbert Sr. is the founder of Wainscott Capital Partners, which he described on his Linkedin page as "a long-short hedge fund that I have formed based on a 25-year track record of investing in public equities as well private equity transactions." The fund's value varies widely, depending on the source, from a high value of $200 million to a low of $5 million. He was in the news locally in 2012 when he fought a losing legal battle over the positioning of a barn on a neighboring property in Wainscott owned by William Babinski.

His wife, Shelly Gilbert, survives him.