The Princeton graduate accused of killing his own dad refused to look Wednesday as jurors were shown distressing crime scene pictures of the hedge fund boss lying dead in the family’s Manhattan apartment.
Thomas ‘Tommy’ Gilbert Jr, 34, is accused of shooting dead his investment banker father Thomas Gilbert Sr in January 2015 by pressing the muzzle of the gun ‘tightly’ on the victim’s head and pulling the trigger.
Disturbing images of a lifeless Gilbert Sr, 70, dead on the floor were shown on a screen at Manhattan Supreme Court, The New York Post reports.
But his once strapping and handsome son, who studied economics at the Ivy League university, refused to view the pictures, instead lowering his head and staring at the defense table during the testimony.
An image of the gun used to shoot Gilbert Sr was shown to jurors as well as distressing crime scene pictures of the hedge fund boss lying dead in the family’s Manhattan apartment
Thomas ‘Tommy’ Gilbert Jr, 34, left is accused of shooting dead his investment banker father Thomas Gilbert Sr in January 2015, right
An image of the .40-caliber Glock used to shoot Gilbert Sr was also shown to the jury having been placed on top of a white comforter on a bed.
‘When he murdered his father, the defendant was fully aware of what he was doing, and he certainly knew that it was wrong,’ prosecutor Craig Ortner said in his opening statements, adding that the son planned the crime by driving to Ohio to illegally purchase the gun and visiting websites hireakiller.com and hitman.com.
In response, Gilbert Jr’s lawyer Arnold Levine said he suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
His mother Shelley Gilbert, 72, has already spoken about how her son’s mental health deteriorated when he was in the 11th grade and how one symptom of his OCD was that he became obsessed with ‘contamination’.
She explained how he became upset when he brushed up against his family members’ clothes because he thought this contaminated him.
Shelley said that he even refused to fly out of JFK because he believed that someone ‘contaminated’ had flown in or out of the airport.
The court room had previously heard the 911 call she made when she found her husband lying in a pool of blood. When the operator asks who shot him, Shelley replies: ‘My son who is nuts, but I didn’t know he was this nuts.’
His mother Shelley Gilbert (pictured leaving court Tuesday) testified against her son Tuesday and Wednesday as the court heard her 911 call after finding her dead husband and pointed to her son as the murderer
This is the upscale Manhattan apartment where the alleged murder took pace
Thomas Gilbert Jr’s mother said her son is suffering from a mental illness, has delusions claiming he is being poisoned by radioactive fallout in prison and even ate a battery. He’s pictured in 2015
To Shelley ‘it was obvious he had done it.’ Tasked with telling her daughter Clare, now 29, of Gilbert’s death, Shelley said, ‘Dad’s dead and Tommy shot him.’
Prosecutors said Tuesday that when Gilbert Jr’s mother returned to the family’s apartment, she found her husband of 33 years ‘lying dead on the floor, blood and pieces of brain matter oozing out into a puddle next to his head.’
Gilbert Jr. had asked his mother to go and buy him a sandwich while he talked to his father.
Speaking to DailyMail.com shortly after Gilbert Jr’s arrest, former girlfriend, socialite Anna Rothschild, 51, who dated him in 2014 told of a strained and fractured relationship between Gilbert Jr. and his father.
The man she knew was a loner with few friends who resented his father because he was ‘never good enough’ for the older man.
According to prosecutors the process of mental unraveling was accelerated by Gilbert Jr’s fear that his father was going to cut him off financially.
He had reportedly decided to stop paying the $2,400 rent on his son’s Chelsea apartment and to reduce his weekly allowance from $600 to $400.
Financial records aired in court suggest that Gilbert Sr. was not as financially flush as some believed.
He was thought to be worth $200million at the time of his death. In fact he had just $10,000 in stocks and bonds, less than $20,000 in cash and retirement funds and some $500,000 in ‘miscellaneous assets.’