Just days before her death, Harris finished what would be the last edition of her Tradition Party Newsletter. It was a fretful missive. In it she worried about the Union Carbide chemical plant explosion in Bhopal, India, and what would happen if there was an explosion at the Shoreham nuclear plant that was slated to be built on Long Island? She worried that overdevelopment would deplete the water table. She worried that Roy Wines would go undefeated, and that Barry Trupin would win out.
4
ON JUNE 18, 1984, after the longest, dirtiest campaign in village history, Bill Hattrick defeated Roy Wines by a vote of 834 to 601. Wines admitted that he was “sore a bit” about the charges made against him during the campaign concerning his fees for work on the Trupin house, but he continued to protest his innocence. Wines told the New York Times, “Barry Trupin was more a victim than a cause. Charlotte Harris and the Southampton Association did a lot to create an atmosphere outside of the legal problem within the community for Mr. Trupin.”
Six years after losing the election, Wines—still in public service, then chairman of the town planning board—filed for personal bankruptcy, listing $1.2 million in debt. In 1992, after he admitted that he took $10,000 in personal loans from a developer and a town engineer, the Southampton Town Board called for Wines’s resignation. He had been a planning-board member for twenty-four years and its chairman for twenty. “I am not resigning for anything I’ve done or because of a question of ethics.… I happen to feel I have ethics equal to anyone in Town Hall.” Wines died of cancer in 1994 at the age of seventy-one.
Ethics was also very important to the new mayor, Bill Hattrick. Some thought maybe too important, if that was possible. Hattrick’s critics say he lost his distance and began dealing with the Trupin lawsuit not so much as a legal struggle but as a manifestation of the conflict between good and evil. Although Hattrick was a beloved mayor, the Trupin matter so obsessed him that he accomplished little in his two terms in office other than bringing summer concerts to Agawam Park or refurbishing the snack counter at Main Beach.
It was a great blow to Hattrick when in April 1986 Trupin won the first legal decision; a state supreme court justice ordered the village to allow Trupin to finish all of Dragon’s Head below the disputed roofline. Hattrick was heartened three months later when Trupin lost his second lawsuit to have the height of the turrets legalized. At that point, in a strained effort to bring about peace and perhaps put an end to the mounting legal fees for the village, the mayor agreed to a bizarre compromise with Trupin: it was concluded that Trupin’s turrets wouldn’t be too high if the ground wasn’t so low. In remedy, tons of sand and dirt were trucked out to Meadow Lane, and a twelve-foot hill was built along the road side of the house. The new hill was pushed in against a poured-concrete slab, blocking out the windows, turning the first floor into the basement. The house looked worse than ever. The village then agreed to give Trupin a building permit for all but the highest turret, clearing the way for him to resume construction.
But by then Trupin had no intention of continuing construction. “I don’t know if I ever want to live there,” he said of Dragon’s Head the summer of 1986, wandering around the half-finished château wistfully. “I won’t go into the pool,” Trupin said. “I won’t ever go into the pool until I know it’s mine. Until there’s peace. I’ve been crying about this house ever since it happened. This was my dream house. I don’t have dreams anymore.…” Later that year Trupin moved to California and put Dragon’s Head up for sale, listing it with Allan Schneider, who had the idea to advertise the house at $20 million for the completed renovation, or $12 million “as is.” As the years passed, the price steadily dropped.
Trupin put Ocean Castle on the market as well, selling it in 1988 to Manhattan developers Jason and Julia Carter, a young couple with two young children, for $2.75 million. The day the Carters took title to the house, they were upset to discover that everything that wasn’t nailed down—and even some things that were—was missing, like a $3,000 Sherle Wagner porcelain sink in the master-bedroom bath and a gazebo from the yard. Even the flower boxes had been ripped out. The Carters sued Trupin for the missing items and settled with him out of court.
On February 21, 1988, nearly five years after it all started, the civil rights lawsuit of Barry H. Trupin v. the Village of Southampton, et al. went to trial—not in Riverhead, as expected, but, because of a motion made by Trupin’s attorneys, in Brooklyn, before Judge Charles P. Sifton in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District. This meant that every morning before the crack of dawn, all the defendants and their various lawyers had to make the two-and-a-half-hour trek from Southampton to downtown Brooklyn by 9 A.M. Trupin’s suave attorney, Jacob Fuchsberg, a former New York Court of Appeals judge, presented his side of the case to a jury of six citizens from various middle-class neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island. For the five women and one man—a carpenter who wore white sneakers to court every day and lived at home with his parents—Southampton might as well have been Bali. “I took one look at the jury,” Hattrick said, “and I knew we were in trouble.”
Whatever fascination the jury might have found at first in the descriptions of Trupin’s rags-to-riches story and of his lavish lifestyle, of his jade fireplaces and elaborate bathrooms, their attention soon dulled as much of the testimony turned to technical definitions, such as the description of a cupola being a “cylindrical transition to a point.” The building and zoning laws and application process were not much more interesting, and at one point the young carpenter actually stretched out, put his head back, and dozed.
Judge Sifton ruled from the start that none of the sixteen town officials could be held personally liable for damages, but several were subpoenaed for the jury to see, including the chairman of the architectural review board, the town attorney, and the building inspector. Even Charlotte Harris threatened to make an appearance. Trupin’s attorney tried to enter into evidence her videotaped deposition as an example of how anti-Semitism may have motivated the village’s actions. After viewing the tape, Judge Sifton called Harris’s comments “off the wall” and forbade it from being shown. Barry Trupin himself appeared in court each day in a conservative suit and tie, nodding his head at the testimony in his favor. The day of his testimony he was given lunchtime advice by his attorney to “act Anglo-Saxon on the stand.” Trupin testified that he was “driven out of town” by the village and denied an assertion by one of the village’s attorneys that he stopped construction on Dragon’s Head because he had run out of money.
Twice during the trial Judge Sifton implored the village and its insurance company, the Hartford Insurance Group, to settle the suit out of court. Sifton even suggested a settlement scheme whereby in return for some payment, Trupin donated the mansion to the village, perhaps to be renamed the Barry Trupin Memorial. Bill Hattrick was angry enough to spit at that particular suggestion. There was no chance of settlement. “Trupin broke the laws with evil intent,” Hattrick repeated. “I’m not going to say otherwise. I will not pay him a nickel.” But as the days passed and a procession of witnesses testified, it began to look bad for the village of Southampton. In the hard light of a federal courthouse, they appeared an unsavory cast of characters—a slippery mayor who lined his pockets while his building inspector looked the other way and a Greek chorus of anti-Semitic blue bloods trying to tell a man how to build his dream house. “We sounded like a bunch of bigots who had put the wood to a boy from Brooklyn,” Hattrick realized.
That’s what the jury thought too. On March 4, 1988, after three days’ deliberation, the jury awarded Trupin $1.9 million in damages, plus his attorneys’ fees of $762,000. That, plus the $1.1 million the village owed for its own attorneys’ fees, brought the village of Southampton’s liability to a grand total of $3.8 million. Since the Hartford Insurance Group was claiming the village’s insurance policy was capped at $1 million, the remaining $2.8 million liability would be borne by the village. Southampton had a few options. It could d
eclare bankruptcy, but then Trupin would have a lien against the municipality, thereby owning a piece of it, a bitter irony; the village could increase property taxes by 60 percent in one year to pay off the bill; or it could fight on in court, with an expensive appeal. At that moment an appeal was about the last thing the village wanted. Bill Hattrick immediately asked Judge Sifton to set aside the verdict pending an appeal.
Just a few nights after the jury’s decision, Hattrick spoke at a standing-room-only meeting of the Southampton Rotary Club. He looked grim and ashen as he stood at a podium in the front of the hushed room. “It’s a crushing and humiliating defeat,” he admitted. His eyes filled with tears. “The battlefield is strewn with carcasses. This is Armageddon—the final battle between good and evil. It’s not money at stake, but our precious, hard-earned reputation.” Hattrick’s voice began to crack. “I pray you will join me in fighting this to the death. I’d rather die than lose this.”
One year later, in March 1989, in a stunning reversal, a panel of three judges in the Second District U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the jury verdict and vacated the $2.7 million judgment, saying that Southampton officials had not violated Trupin’s civil rights when they stopped construction of Dragon’s Head because of noncompliance with the zoning laws. Trupin was outraged when he heard of the reversal and vowed to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the case was turned down, and the verdict remained overturned.
That week Bill Hattrick’s picture appeared on the front page of the Southampton Press, standing on the beach in front of Dragon’s Head, as proud as a big-game hunter and his felled prey. “These are great tidings,” Hattrick beamed. “Lazarus has arisen. We won! It’s wonderful, really wonderful!” He was almost as happy to announce that he would not be running for mayor again that June, but would be returning full-time to being a stockbroker. He said about Barry Trupin, “History will show that this man has plowed a lot of people under. To me he is a filthy bastard.”
6
EIGHT MONTHS LATER, in November 1989, Barry Trupin was holding a lavish, black-tie wedding for 200 guests at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan to celebrate the marriage of his oldest daughter. Shortly after the Orthodox ceremony in the Terrace Room, one of the many photographers who had been taking pictures of Trupin and his guests reached into his camera bag and produced a stack of subpoenas five inches thick. The photographer casually walked over to where Trupin was standing with his family and handed him the papers. As soon as Trupin realized what he was holding, he dropped the bundle to the floor as though it had burned him. The photographer headed for the door, and Trupin herded his guests toward the grand ballroom; moments later two more men dressed in tuxedos handed Trupin several boxes, gaily wrapped like wedding gifts, filled to the brim with summonses.
Until that night, when a crack team of private investigators had been hired to infiltrate the Plaza Hotel, Trupin had for many months successfully evaded being served with over fifty pounds of summonses. The web of lawsuits and charges that followed Trupin for the next ten years was as dizzying and layered as his many corporate veils. Among the lawsuits, thirty-nine investors in Trupin’s various companies were suing him in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleging that he lost $45 million among 600 investors in his various tax shelters and real estate deals, most of which had failed. Simultaneous to the private lawsuit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation into Trupin’s interest in a Tustin, California, bank in which he had bought a 62 percent controlling interest and had introduced a number of loans that had to be written off as bad. The following year, in April 1990, federal regulators seized Constitution Federal Savings & Loan Association, a Monterey Park thrift in which Trupin had also bought partial ownership in 1986 for $2.6 million. It was alleged that Trupin bought into the thrift as a means of giving bad loans to his own ailing companies.
The next time Trupin made an appearance in New York was in May 1996, when he was convicted in federal district court of receiving, possessing, and selling a stolen painting. It turned out that Le Petit Concert, the Chagall that hung in his boat, had been stolen from the home of a Baltimore art collector. Trupin knew that the painting was stolen when he had one of his minions pay $100,000 for it in the backseat of a car on a deserted road near Kennedy Airport. He is appealing the conviction.
On February 11, 1997, Barry Trupin was indicted by the U.S. government as a tax cheat for the avoidance of $6.6 million in taxes. A grand jury indictment charged that he funneled the proceeds through various accounts until it wound up in his private stash in a bank in the British Virgin Islands. The indictment also charged Trupin with concealing the sale of his Hever Castle suit of armor for $1.5 million.
Barry Trupin currently travels a great deal and is often said to be on his yacht. He is understandably difficult to reach on the phone.
Visitors to Southampton sometimes drive off the road when they unexpectedly come upon Dragon’s Head, it is still such a shock. In May 1992 Trupin sold the half-finished monstrosity to real estate developer Francesco Galesi, for the bargain price of $2.3 million. Galesi, a handsome silver-haired man, said he bought Dragon’s Head to “take the curse out of it.” He toned down the exterior, landscaped it, and tried to lower the towers to make the village happy, but they were fortified with cement and steel and couldn’t be ripped out without destroying the walls of the original house. Eventually, the village granted Galesi the height variances he needed for the infamous southwest cupola that Trupin sought so long to have declared legal. Dragon’s Head remains an eyesore and a wonder, a remnant of an ugly time.
The Pumpkin Prosecution
IN THE SMALL HOURS of December 3, 1993, advertising luminary Jerry Della Femina, fifty-seven, and his wife, Judy Licht, forty-seven, a reporter for WABC-TV in New York, were lying in bed in their ten-room, Fifth Avenue apartment, unable to sleep, waiting in silence for the sky to lighten. Later that morning, Jerry was scheduled to drive out to East Hampton and turn himself in to the police. A warrant had been sworn out for his arrest for the unlawful display of pumpkins in front of Jerry and David’s Red Horse Market, a gourmet food store he co-owned on Montauk Highway. After a scare the day before about a carload of policemen coming into Manhattan to arrest him at his Madison Avenue offices, Della Femina’s lawyer called the chief of police and promised that his client would cooperate and turn himself in the next day.
About five in the morning there was a timid knock at the bedroom door, and J.T., the couple’s six-year-old son, appeared and asked if he could climb into bed with his mommy and daddy. “What’s the matter, honey?” Judy asked, letting him snuggle under the covers with her.
“Are we going to lose everything when they put Daddy in jail?” J.T. asked. Jerry and Judy exchanged glances in the dark. J.T. had recently seen a live version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge’s father is put in jail and the family is forced to live in a poorhouse.
“Of course not, J.T.,” Judy said. “They’re not going to put Daddy in jail, they’re just going to arrest him and let him go. They don’t keep you in jail for displaying pumpkins, honey.” But the distinction was lost on the little boy, and he fell into a fitful sleep in his mother’s arms.
Over the past few months Judy had watched in disbelief as the Pumpkin Prosecution had spun out of control. After twenty years in television journalism—and more than ten years being married to Jerry Della Femina—she had seen lots of kooky things, but nothing quite like this. It never for a moment occurred to either of them that the village would be stupid enough to actually arrest Jerry. But things had turned so nasty, no one knew what to expect anymore. “It got ridiculous,” Judy said, “and frankly, I wanted out.”
A lot of people were saying that Jerry brought it on himself, that when Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, told him to take away the pumpkins, claiming the design review board determined that, under the law, the pumpkins constituted an illegal sign because they were for sale (among the evidence they seized was a handw
ritten slate board that said, “29 cents a pound”), Jerry could have simply removed them.
After all, contrary to what Jerry claimed, the village officials insisted that he wasn’t being singled out. The crackdown began months before, when they fined Espo’s Surf and Sport $2,000 for displaying surfboards and beach chairs in front of the store on Main Street. Nine other stores had been warned to remove their outdoor displays of merchandise, including the A & P—and they all complied. If you didn’t stop people from putting merchandise outside their shops, if the “signage” wasn’t uniform, before you knew it, “East Hampton would look like Coney Island,” said the architect and design review board chairman, Clayton Morey.
It was the very same Clayton Morey who had been Evan Frankel’s bête noire on the town planning board. Frankel was long gone, but now Morey had Jerry Della Femina after him. After all these years, Morey had consolidated power as one of the most influential men in the village, in terms of how it looked. He had served almost forty-five years of cumulative time as chairman or member of the myriad different appeals, zoning, and design boards. Jerry described him as “the guy who’s in charge of beauty. He tells people what’s beautiful and what’s not. If he doesn’t think it’s beautiful, they can’t have it. This is a powerful post. He can make people squirm. He can keep them from opening a store and making a living. He can hold up their lives for months.”
What pissed off Jerry most was the “Coney Island” remark. “Coney Island” is a code word among the Old East Hampton crowd. It meant the outsider, the ethnic, the newly rich. The “Coney Island” remark especially burned Jerry because part of the well-known, Jerry Della Femina Horatio Alger legend was that he grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn, in the shadow of Coney Island; he took Morey’s comment as a personal slur. Born Gennaro Tomas Della Femina, the son of Italian immigrants, he didn’t even speak English until he was enrolled in school, where he was thought to be retarded and put in special classes. He went on to invent some of the most durable icons of American advertising. He created Fingerman, the talking finger that closed Ziploc bags for Dowproducts. He made the cats sing “meow, meow, meow” for Purina Cat Chow, an idea that came to him when he noticed one of the cats choking during an outtake. It was Jerry who turned Anne Meara into the Blue Nun, and it was Jerry’s triumph to create Joe Isuzu, the smarmy auto salesman who turned Madison Avenue on its ear by lying about his client’s cars and trucks while the truth was flashed in subtitles across the bottom of the TV screen.
Philistines at the Hedgerow Page 27