DANNEMORA, N.Y. (Court TV) — A man convicted of killing his father because he was angry over his reduced weekly allowance is speaking out for the first time behind bars.
Thomas Gilbert Jr. (Interview With A Killer)
Thomas Gilbert Jr., 41, was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in the death of his father, Thomas Gilbert Sr.
Gilbert Jr. was a 30-year-old Princeton graduate living in New York City in 2015, enjoying a life bankrolled by his father, who worked on Wall Street. Gilbert Jr. was unemployed, so his parents paid his bills, which included an apartment, cars, memberships to country clubs and a generous weekly allowance.
Investigators said at Gilbert Jr.’s trial that tensions were rising in the family because Gilbert Sr. was cutting back on his son’s allowance. Over the previous two years, the younger Gilbert had received a $100,000 allowance; since then, his parents had begun cutting back on his weekly stipend. On Jan. 4, 2015, Gilbert Sr. told his son that they would be further cutting his allowance to $300 a week, down from $500.
Gilbert Jr. took the subway to his parents’ that day and surprised them at their apartment. Upon arriving, he told his mother he wanted to talk to his father alone about business and asked her to go get him a sandwich and a drink from a corner deli. She left, but had a bad feeling and turned around a few minutes later. Upon returning to the apartment, her son was gone and her husband was dead.
“He was shot while sitting in a chair,” Joseph Cirigliano, who served as the lead detective on the case, told Court TV’s David Scott. “He had a TV next to him. The NFL game was on. Blood spatter on the ceiling and on the back of the wall.”
Gilbert Jr.’s mother called 911 and said her husband had been shot. When a dispatcher asked who she thought may have done it, she replied, “My son, who is nuts, but I didn’t know he was this nuts.”
Gilbert Jr. suffered from mental illness and had received multiple diagnoses as a young adult, but failed to follow through with any meaningful treatment. When a psychiatrist recommended he be hospitalized while he was studying at Princeton, Gilbert Jr.’s parents instead sent him on a scuba and surfing vacation.
Thomas Gilbert Jr. sent a handwritten note agreeing to an interview. (Interview With A Killer)
At trial, Gilbert Jr. pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; his behavior in court suggested he was unwell during the trial. “There was one point where the judge cleared the jury out, ordered him to leave the courtroom,” said John Glatt, who wrote the book “Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite” and sat in on the trial each day. “He refused, and he was dragged out of the courtroom.”
Those close to Gilbert Jr. offer new insight into his behaviors and the red flags that may have been missed. Gilbert Jr.’s ex-girlfriend, Anna Rothschild, told David Scott that her friend once warned her about the defendant. “We’re going to find you cut up into little pieces one morning,” he warned her.
“The narrative misses a lot of the facts of the case, especially pertaining to my innocence,” Gilbert Jr. told David Scott in Sunday’s new episode of “Interview With A Killer,” airing on Sunday, May 23 at 8 p.m. ET. “I just want to present my case, my basic defense.”
