Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite

This book was very well researched and I enjoyed it immensely. I am going to read more of Glatt”s work.

So sad when there’s mental health involved. Really great book.

This book will sell a million copies just for the face on the cover! Tommy Gilbert, Jr. is one handsome guy. He was a good time who was had by all. Or many.John Glatt owes Graydon Carter of AIR MAIL a huge thank you for publishing excerpts of this book in a recent issue. I would never have known about it had I not read it on Carter's site.Yes, living in Manhattan, I knew about this story. Who didn't? His super handsome face was front page on all the local NYC papers and TV news. We couldn't get enough of the senseless murder of a father by a son. Sadly, much of what we have already read is covered in this book.This book is for readers outside NY State where children aren't as entitled, spoiled & enabled by their parents.Golden Boy reads like an episode of The Dr. Phil Show where he spotlights kids who are driving their parents up the wall and turning them into drug addicts and alcoholics trying to understand why the once adorable tots are now raging teens.Tom's parents, Shelley and Tom, Sr. come off as clueless and talk a lot about getting Tommy real help with his mental health issues but, in reality, only throw money at the problem. Then, it's way too late when Tommy puts a Glock to his father's head and pulls the trigger while mom is out getting her son a sandwich and a Coke. She returns to her expensive apartment to find her son gone and her husband lying on the floor dead. During the 9-1-1 call she mentions to the Dispatcher that her son just killed her husband. And, when the NYPD take her to the church where her daughter is for Sunday services, she rushes to the front of the church screaming, "Tommy just shot and killed your dad!" Needless to say, chaos ensues and the fragile daughter becomes hysterical and has to be taken from the church by the Cops. There is nothing subtle about this family, it appears.While I never heard of the Gilbert family, certain Upper East Side (The rich section of NYC) certainly have. The Wall Street crowd know who they are. To my knowledge, they don't appear to be PAGE SIX material. If son Tom did not have such a crippling mental illness, perhaps he would be quite the catch. Over six feet tall, muscular, grad of Princeton and other posh schools, he had a super bright future ahead of him. His grandfather & father were greatly respected and very successful in their fields of finance. High hopes for son, Tommy. Only one problem: Tommy didn't want to get a job and work for a living. Why should he when his parents paid his rent, shrink bills, traffic tickets, lawyers, trips to the Caribbean, fun in the Hamptons. When his dad cut his allowance (Tom was 30 at the time of the murder) a 100 dollars or so, it was the match to the fuse. His friends and girlfriends watched him come unglued but could not stop this runaway train. No one was surprised when Tommy offed his dad. Sadly.The book skims his life at the end with as much personal detail as Glatt could muster from trial transcripts and interviews with various people in Tom's life at the time. When he had a falling out with a previous friend and burned down his family's 200 year old home, that should have been sufficient to have Tommy bundled off to a private mental asylum. The former friend and his family could not prove it was Tommy who burned the home to the ground. Really?! If they had pressed charges and had him arrested his father would not be dead and this book would not be necessary.Twenty years ago this book would be a must-read. That said, there are so many men and women who are murdering their wives and children, wiping out entire families, that this murder doesn't really cause much more than a ripple on the pond. Of course if this son was a household name and part of a distinguished old family it would have been a tsunami of gossip.The trial is covered extensively as Tom plays mind games with the judge and jury. One day he attends the trial, other days he refuses to leave his cell. In the end, who cares? I certainly don't. This story is going to end with a guilty verdict. Period. And it does. Tommy will be in his 60's when he is released. I will be long gone.What the book does NOT tell you is what, exactly, caused Thomas Gilbert, Jr.'s severe mental illness. Drugs? Heredity? A football injury to his head? We are left dangling looking for closure but we don't get it. Mr. Glatt was unable to access Tommy's charts in prison.His mother and sister can't visit him because the prison is in upstate NY and too far to travel to at his mother's age. She did make the trip but Tom refused to see her. He has no visitors although one of his former girlfriends keeps in touch.As I read the Epilogue, I felt no emotion for any of the main characters. His mother and father were weak and unable to cope with their child's deterioration. Tommy does not elicit one iota of sympathy. This is a story about shallow, typical Ivy League parents who can't seem to cope with adversity. I would have liked more photos of the family. It isn't slap-dash quality, but it could have been much stronger in many ways. I am sure Mr. Glatt will make a fortune off the book and surely a movie can't be far behind.

What a wasted life for one so smart born into a family of wealth and privilege. Drug’s definitely were his undoing. So sad that mental health care was unavailable even though the family knew he needed it. The laws present today do not allow forced care even when desperately needed and most people suffering mental problems will not attend on their own. Closing of the Mental Hospitals was one of the the worst ideas that governments came up with and we are now paying the price. People who need structure and care are now roaming the streets of large cities, unable to cope and being abused and preyed on by drug dealers.

This book was well-written but was disturbing on a number of levels. Thomas Gilbert Jr. came from some a privileged background. When he was a minor his parents received information, from their friends, about troubling behavior their son was exhibiting. The family had tons of money and could have helped their son but living amongst the monied they chose to ignore this information. As he got older the problems got more serious and he was now an adult and his parents could not step in and aggressively seek help for their son. When he was tried for killing his father, his mother was quite verbal at faulting the judicial system which was trying her son. It is so sad that she did not feel this urge when he was younger and he could have gotten all the help their money could have bought. So sad that they turned a blind eye to their son’s problems and kept his sister in the dark by telling her, over the years, that he was getting better.