Rising on one of the last big fields in the Hamptons is a 100,000-square-foot limestone villa complex that may be the largest new home in America. Just who is the man building it—Ira Rennert—and why does he want a compound that’s more than twice the size of Bill Gates’s?
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When Hamilton Somerville Jr., owner of the 345-acre hilltop estate known as Mt. Athos, died suspiciously in late 2001, the eyes of Orange County, Virginia, turned to his pretty second wife, Donna, once the hospice nurse for his late first wife. Was she guilty of killing the man she'd comforted?
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In October, Long Island’s East End was shocked by the murder of one of its wealthiest residents: 52-year-old Ted Ammon, who’d built much of his $80 million fortune as one of the top LBO players at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in the 1980s, was discovered naked and bludgeoned in the master bedroom of his house on Middle Lane. Ammon was popular with business colleagues, police found, but his private life, once seemingly idyllic—the adored young twins, the five homes, the luxury cars—held several ominous signs, not least the vicious divorce battle with his second wife, Generosa.
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In January 2002, Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Shnayerson investigated the shocking murder of Ted Ammon, one of East Hampton’s wealthiest residents, who had been brutally killed months before (“Murder in East Hampton”). As Shnayerson reported, the aftermath of the 52-year-old’s death was like a game of Clue: if detectives had tips, they weren’t acknowledging them; if they had a suspect, they weren’t saying who.
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