MADOFF DUPE’S DEATH DIVE
Hedge fund exec who lost billions to Ponzi king jumps off luxury Times Sq. hotel
A HEDGE FUND exec who lost billions to Bernard Madoff a decade ago plunged 20 stories to his death Monday after jumping from a luxury Midtown hotel.
Police said the death appeared to be a suicide and a source identified the man as Upper East Side resident Charles Murphy.
Witnesses told officials a man wearing what appeared to be a dark business suit leaped from the 24th floor of the Sofitel New York Hotel on W. 44th St. between Fifth and Sixth Aves. just before 5 p.m., according to reports.
He landed on a fourth-floor terrace, the reports said.
Murphy was an investor working with Paulson & Co, which issued a statement to the Financial Times.
“We are extremely saddened by this news. Charles was an extremely gifted and brilliant man, a great partner and a true friend,” founder John Paulson said. “Our deepest prayers are with his family.”
Murphy, 55, and his second wife, Annabella Murphy, are believed to have two young sons.
He was previously married to Heather Kerzner, with whom he had two children. The couple split in 1999.
A woman answering a cell phone registered to Annabella Murphy on Monday night and said “No comment, thank you” before hanging up.
At the couple’s sprawling 25-foot wide limestone townhouse on E. 67th St. a man standing behind an opaque glass front door also declined to comment.
“Go away, leave the family to grieve,” the man said.
Murphy, who had a law degree from Harvard, an master’s degree in business administration from MIT’s Sloan School and a bachelor’s degree from Columbia, spent nearly 20 years in Europe as an investor for Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
He made a triumphant arrival in the city in 2007, paying $33 million for the Upper East Side mansion. He bought it from Seagram heir Matthew Bronfman, who had gutted it after buying it in 1994, for $3 million, from the Foundation for Depression and Manic Depression.
Murphy began work at Fairfield Greenwich Group, a highstakes hedge fund that did heavy business with Madoff.
When Madoff’s Ponzi scheme imploded a year later, Fairfield Greenwich was out some $7 billion of its clients’ money — and Murphy was out of a job. He and other Fairfield Greenwich partners were listed as defendants an $80 million lawsuit brought by distraught investors.
Murphy immediately tried to unload his ritzy property, which has eight bedrooms and 11 fireplaces, for $37 million.
He eventually found work with Paulson & Co., but listed his mega-mansion again last year, this time asking $49.5 million for the 11,000-square-foot abode.
In 2010, Mark Madoff, the 46-year-old son of the disgraced financier, committed suicide in his SoHo apartment.
Two years earlier, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, founder of a firm that lost $1.4 billion to Madoff’s scheme, killed himself in his Manhattan office.