Horror In The Hamptons… 2020 Coronavirus Crisis Ransackings v 2022 Cost-Of-Living Crisis Riots in This Ritzy Resort
Matthew Steeples
Whilst the Hamptons was the scene of “bidding wars” and “supermarket spats” over £275 bottles of Chablis during the 2020 coronavirus crisis, it’s become the scene of socialites being arrested in “wife beaters” for assaulting “glampin’ workers” in the 2022 cost-of-living-crisis
There’s always been something about the Hamptons that attracts big spenders and badly-behaved berks.
Here is a set of tony townships rife with money, mystery, mayhem and murder and further proof of the madness of this privileged place came this week when Libbie Mugrabi – a soppy “socialite” resident best known for bizarrely once comparing herself to the late Diana, Princess of Wales – opened up to accuse her workers of “glampin’ in the Hamptons” when she got arrested for allegedly violently attacking them.
Setting the scene, during the summer of 2020 coronavirus lockdowns, “überwealthy” residents of this southern fork of Long Island hired nightclub bouncers to “prevent others from using their roads.” To “protect [their] health,” they “compounded” – “buying [up] two and even three seven-and eight-figure homes on the same street, grabbing up surrounding acres for family members” – in order to avoid others.
At the time, Vanity Fair’s Stephanie Krikorian mused of “bidding wars” and “tears,” whilst, to the New York Post’s Jennifer Gould, founder of “upscale supermarket chain” Citraella Joe Guerra lamented: “I had one customer spend $8,000. You know when you see someone with a full shopping cart? Now they have five… [They buy] pretty much everything they can… Instead of asking for one or two steaks on a tray, a customer will buy the whole tray. Then they’ll move on to shrimp, and buy all the shrimp, and then they’ll buy all the salmon steaks. Instead of asking for a slice of lasagna, they’ll buy all of it. Then they’ll buy all of our root vegetables… Business is insane.”
When not “ransacking grocery stores in epic shopping sprees,” these very wealthy folk were to be found at what they themselves termed “quarantine mansions” and many of them did exactly the opposite to what was deemed sensible.
These irresponsible brats threw “Covidiot super-spreader parties” and even worse, in one instance – which has become one of The Steeple Times’ most popular ever stories – a self-declared “power broker” and “well-regarded [estate] agent” named Jonathan Davis got into a serious spat. His crime? This “privileged, preppy prat” and Nest Seekers employed realtor became a “pesky squatter” in a Sag Harbor “dream home” that he supposedly utterly trashed. Here was not a property agent helping a landlord, but instead one seemingly robbing them and wrecking their residence instead.
Confronted by Inside Edition’s cameras in June 2020, Mr Davis raged: “I’ve got no comments except: GET ORF THE GROUNDS!” whilst the landlady to whom he owed thousands, Paula Rosado, responded: “It’s horrific. It really is just horrific… This has been a complete nightmare for us, for our family emotionally and financially…. [His German Shepherd dogs] tear apart [everything] and urinate all over rugs and couches [sic].”
Of him, one fellow agent, Zachary Belil, later commented to The Steeple Times: “The kid is a little freak. He tried suing Compass for no reason” whilst social butterfly Lynn Wyatt added: “I dealt with him once. He has no manners and is an arrogant little f**k. Zachary Belil is a realtor I’ve heard good things about and though I have never dealt with him, I back him up – Jonnie Boy is a FREAK.”
Whilst Jonathan Davis is astoundingly still employed by Nest Seekers at their Bridgehampton office, Libbie Mugrabi has taken up his mantle and featured late last week in a New York Post article by Michael Kaplan as an “arrested socialite” after the Southampton Police Department had “charged [her] with menacing, criminal mischief and criminal possession of a weapon” last Tuesday.
Ms Mugrabi – the ex-wife of “billionaire art collector” David Mugrabi and a woman known for having described her marriage as a “gilded cage” during “New York’s nastiest divorce” in 2020 – Kaplan reported, got cuffed after attacking an “unnamed housekeeper” on 31st July “with a mop handle and a knife, and broke her cellphone” at her 10,000 square foot house in Water Mill.
Ordered now to appear in court on 6th December, Mugrabi showed no sign of remorse and raged to the paper:
“They should have been doing work on my house, but not living in my house. The night I came home, a lady was in my guest room – she was supposed to have been let go. I went to use the bathroom, saw her, and I got scared to death.”
“She started throwing stuff at me. She threw a cellphone and the bottom of a stringy mop at me. She was screaming like a crazy person and threw a bible at me.”
Turning to the “attack allegation leveled against her,” she conceded: “I’m not aggressive physically. I’m aggressive with my voice.”
Her mother, Jane Scher, who claims to have met the staff in question on another occasion, added: “These people had taken over Libbie’s house… They were in the pool and the hot tub and wouldn’t even give me a cup of coffee. I thought they had a better life than I do… Libbie told them to feed me. They gave me some kind of soup with ginger. It tasted OK. I was starving.”
Of the conduct of the police who arrested her, Mugrabi raged:
“[They] were aggressive for no reason. They attacked me and handcuffed me. I said they were twisting my wrist. They said: ‘It’s OK.’ I asked to read me my rights. They said: ‘We don’t read rights for this.’ … I don’t know what I did in Southampton except pay my taxes.”
Her friend, fashion consultant Marko Matysik, who was present during the 22nd November arrest and “watching from the terrace at the time,” whined:
“Next thing I knew, Libbie was in handcuffs. She was wearing a wife-beater and hot pants. I grabbed as many of her handbags and hand luggage as I could [in case she needed anything inside them] and got into the chauffeured Suburban and followed the police car…. They were very happy to have her in the jailhouse.”
Concluding, Libbie Mugrabi ignored the cost-of-living crisis that so many around the world are currently enduring. Instead, she moaned that after the “commotion” of the arrest she’d been forced to “postpone” a trip to Miami and had instead spent “some town in her Upper East Side townhouse.” The somewhat shamed but clearly not ashamed socialite finally bleated: “I had Thanksgiving in New York. I definitely would not have had it in the Hamptons. Right now, I’m scared to go there.” Now, get those damned violins a-playing.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
Pictured Top – The ritzy residential resort of the Hamptons attracts billionaires with bulging bank balances because of its idyllic charm (top), but it also appeals to brash Botoxed braggarts like Libbie Mugrabi (bottom right) and her mother Jane Scher (bottom left).
Libbie Mugrabi (pictured with her billionaire ex-husband) showed her clear belief that she’s always the victim when she told ‘Page Six’ in June 2021: “I had the same thing as [the late Diana, Princess of Wales] – I got married young. She was told what to do and wear. And so was I. You’re under control and under a rein. It doesn’t matter what’s fair or what you deserve… After divorce, you can breathe, free of the gilded cage. I married someone who thought he was better than me.” She got her ‘plastic-not-fantastic look’ in spite of having had a father who was a plastic surgeon and a mother who was a nurse.After her divorce, ‘Lovely Libbie’ briefly hooked up with Brock Pierce (pictured with her left and right in his acting days) – a former child actor who had appeared in Disney’s ‘The Mighty Ducks’ and who ran as an independent candidate in the 2020 United States of America presidential election. That didn’t last. “I didn’t know anyone at my wedding” at one point further admitted mother-of-two turned “trucker hat-seller” Ms Mugrabi before she arrogantly added in another of many self-grandiose interviews: “My artist friends compare me to Peggy Gugenheim… She was fast and furious and drove in her own lane and no one could keep up with her.” Of subsequent relationships, she’s first to admit they’ve been equally disastrous. “I got robbed by so many people since I got divorced. I’ve been robbed like 10 times… I’m open and I’m free, and I’ve had some really creepy people around me. Now I’m being much more careful. I’ve never been 41 before with money and all this stuff. It’s like a rebirth. You have to relearn everything,” she added. There’s maybe hope for this ridiculous woman yet.During their multi-million divorce in December 2018, things got very “nasty” between Mr and Mrs Mugrabi. Of the pair, unnamed ‘sources’ close to the couple tellingly remarked: “I didn’t know people like us did this… [Libbie and David] met in Aspen and six months later they got engaged… In those days, she was the sweetest, so nice… [David’s family] tried to take her in… They were living the highest life you can imagine: A lot of staff. A lot of nannies, a lot of cleaning people and chefs. Two homes, a lot of drivers and the [Mugrabi] family airplane… Libbie is a big fashionista. [David] didn’t like paying for that.” Of her having employed a personal secretary, “family friends” were supposedly “flabbergasted” and observed: “What? ‘Little Libbie’ who doesn’t even know her way around Bergdorf’s? I think [David] created a monster.” He most definitely did.
In an undated video about her “brand” (whatever that might actually be), Libbie Mugrabi bragged: “The brand is since the pandemic and life change [sic]. It’s just happy, kind and cool, funny, spread love brand [sic]. For girls, for dogs, for women, for men, but it’s geared all towards growth; female empowerment but it can be used by blokes too.” She then banged on about ‘Tatler’ magazine having called her a “glamorous divorcee” – which she termed “nice, erm, kind” – and added: “I came up with the French version: ‘Divorcée glam’” – but failed to mention her alleged penchant for attacking her staff with mop handles and knives and breaking their mobile phones.Jonathan Davis of realty firm Nest Seekers developed notoriety during the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns not for helping his clients in the Hamptons get places to live. Instead, this rotten realtor became known as a “pesky squatter” who allowed his dogs to urinate and destroy a house he supposedly owed many thousands of dollars in rent on.Former editor of ‘The Sun’ David Yelland delighted in the story of the arrested socialite yesterday. On Twitter, the veteran newsman observed: “Here’s a splendid out of season Hamptons socialite story to cheer us all up… Libbie Mugrabi claims she is victim of housekeeper and Hamptons cops.” He clearly wasn’t out to show this birdbrained Botox advertisement any sympathy.One of the “gilded cages” in the Hamptons that a woman who believes herself like the late Diana, Princess of Wales calls home and the scene where Libbie Mugrabi allegedly assaulted one of her staff with a mop handle and knife in July this year.In a similar show of out-of-touch behaviour, in March 2020, another self-appointed Hamptons “philanthropist and socialite,” Jean Shafiroff, told the ‘New York Post’ that she was normally “accustomed to dining out on a nightly basis” whilst at her home in the ritzy enclave. The paper continued: “In the face of the coronavirus, she has taken the unfamiliar step of cooking for her husband, daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. And it’s not been cheap. ‘I’m spending $300 to $1,000 a day on food and supplies,’ she said. The money goes toward chicken and salmon steaks, some of which she freezes, as well as for cleaning supplies and food for her dogs. ‘I even bought the drugstore out of all its dental floss. I wanted to make sure I had enough, along with extra toothbrushes, soap, toothpaste and body lotions,’ she said. ‘If I have to be quarantined, I better look nice.’ Shafiroff also is buying canned goods like the rest of America, but only out of an abundance of caution. ‘I can donate them later,’ she said of the items like Progresso chicken noodle soup and Del Monte peas and carrots – brands ‘I had never heard of before.’ How the other half live; previously, in September 2017, Mrs Shafiroff wailed to ‘Page Six’ about how she’d been attacked by bees at the Hampton Classic horse show. In spite of not actually being stung, the attention seeker told the paper: “I tried to stand still and let them fly off but they wouldn’t get off my face. I was terrified. They must have liked my perfume (which was Nanban).” ‘Page Six’ concluded: “Bystanders tried to help the swarmed socialite by swinging at the bees who eventually buzzed off.”“Gym-bodied and catalogue-model-handsome” Thomas Gilbert Jr. personifies “the Hamptons gone bad.” In 2013, this Princeton graduate and son of hedge fund manager Thomas Gilbert Sr., founder of Wainscott Capital became the primes suspect of throwing a Molotov cocktail into his former roommate Peter Smith’s 300-year-old Sagaponack family home and burning it to the ground; in January 2015, he sent his mother out to get a sandwich and then shot his dad dead with a .40-caliber Glock pistol. Imprisoned to life with an earliest release date of April 2044, prisoner 19A3615 is now said to be dating Lila Chase, the niece of the actor Chevy Chase. An extra also in the 2013 short film ‘And After All,’ Gilbert Jr. was described as “delusional,” is said to have “avoided New York’s JFK airport at all costs” as he viewed it to be “severely contaminated and faked suicide during his trial by claiming he’d swallowed a battery. On being taken for an X-ray, he was found to be holding a battery over his stomach. It’s lucky that this lunatic and the definitely delusional Libbie Mugrabi didn’t meet; the pair might have gotten on like a house-on-fire.What’ll little miss ‘Divorcée Glam’ do next? Apologise? Unlikely… This motormouthed menace will more likely be found ranting and raving to yet another media title than mopping up her own mess. This Marie-Antoinette like woman might be an aspiring “extravagance knows no bounds” Barbara Amiel type figure, but she’s clearly not got the brains, brawn or beauty to pull off even that look. Next!
