Feuding ex-Playmate kills self & son, 7, in leap
A FORMER Playboy centerfold and her 7-year-old son plunged to their deaths Friday from a 25th-floor window of a Midtown hotel penthouse suite where they’d spent the final night of their lives.
The fatal falls of former Miss November Stephanie Adams and her little boy, Vincent, were the last act in a festering family feud between the model and estranged husband Dr. Charles Nicolai, sources told the Daily News.
“She loved that child,” said attorney Sanford Rubenstein, who represented Adams in a 2012 lawsuit against the NYPD. “It’s a horrible, horrible tragedy.”
Police said there was no suicide note left in the $489-a-night room, where mother and child checked in at 5:56 p.m. Thursday. The two spent the night in the penthouse by themselves.
Speculation among hotel employees was that Adams dropped her son from the window before leaping from the 500-square-foot suite at about 8:30 a.m.
“From what (the guests) told me, they heard a light drop and then a heavier drop,” said one employee. “I’m still shook up about it.”
Adams was in the middle of a contentious divorce from Nicolai, the owner of Wall Street Chiropractic & Wellness, according to court documents.
“Things started to go sour between them about two, three years ago,” said a close friend of Nicolai (inset, with Adams and their son). “He was always incredibly proud of his son.”
Adams recently asked a judge to allow her to take Vincent to Spain but was denied, said William Beslow, Nicolai’s lawyer.
“Apparently this was a trip for which there wasn’t going to be a return to the United States,” Beslow said. “The court believed that wouldn’t be appropriate given his (the child’s) relationship with Dr. Nicolai.”
The Manhattan chiropractor has been inconsolable since finding out about his son’s death, the attorney said.
“He’s been totally devastated. The centerpiece of his life was his son,” Beslow said.
The NYPD responded to five domestic disputes involving the couple between July 2017 and March 2018, sources said. There was an order of protection in their case, although it was unclear which spouse asked for it.
Last September, Adams charged her husband knowingly fed Vincent food that would produce an allergic reaction, sources said.
Adams, 46, had also tweeted about domestic violence.
“The only person who should ever be ashamed in a domestic abuse incident is the abuser,” she tweeted on March 20. “Stand tall and stay strong ... #NoExcuseForAbuse.”
Four days after that tweet, cops responded to a domestic violence call.
The two bodies were spotted by a guest at the E. 46th St. hotel off Fifth Ave.
“One of the guests of the hotel, they called the lobby,” said Ilir Krsniqi, 27, a waiter at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse in the hotel.
“They said, ‘We saw a dead body,’” he said. “They said one but then they realized there (were) two.”
Scores of pedestrians gathered near the front of the hotel.
“It’s horrible. I’m a grandfather myself,” said James Davis, 56. “It’s mental illness. You kill yourself and you kill a child, it’s horrible.”
Adams, a model at 16 and a centerfold six years later, claimed she was a direct descendant of U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
Her official online biography said Adams hoped to “enjoy as much of a private life as she can possibly have with her son.”