Golden Boy by John Glatt

Golden Boy by John Glatt

In Golden Boy, New York Times bestselling author John Glatt tells the true story of Thomas Gilbert Jr., the handsome and charming New York socialite accused of murdering his father, a Manhattan millionaire and hedge fund founder.

By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. The son of a wealthy financier, he grew up surrounded by a loving family and all the luxury an Upper East Side childhood could provide: education at the elite Buckley School and Deerfield Academy, summers in a sprawling seaside mansion in the Hamptons. With his striking good looks, he moved with ease through glittering social circles and followed in his father's footsteps to Princeton.

But Tommy always felt different. The cracks in his façade began to show in warning signs of OCD, increasing paranoia, and--most troubling--an inexplicable hatred of his father. As his parents begged him to seek psychiatric help, Tommy pushed back by self-medicating with drugs and escalating violence. When a fire destroyed his former best friend's Hamptons home, Tommy was the prime suspect--but he was never charged. Just months later, he arrived at his parents' apartment, calmly asked his mother to leave, and shot his father point-blank in the head.

Journalist John Glatt takes an in-depth look at the devastating crime that rocked Manhattan's upper class. With exclusive access to sources close to Tommy, including his own mother, Glatt constructs the agonizing spiral of mental illness that led Thomas Gilbert Jr. to the ultimate unspeakable act.

John Glatt is the author of many bestselling true crime books, including Lost and Found, Secrets in the Basement, and others. He has worked as an investigative journalist in both England and America for more than 30 years. Glatt dropped out of school at the age of 16 and did a number of jobs, including tea boy and messenger, until landing a job as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper. He freelanced for numerous English newspapers before moving to New York in 1981, where he joined the News Limited staff and freelanced for Newsweek and the New York Post. In 1981, he wrote his first book, a biography of Billy Graham, and in 1998, he published For I Have Sinned, his first true crime novel.

He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Fox News, A Current Affair, BBC World News, and A&E Biography, among other programs, all around the world. His time is split between New York City, the Catskill Mountains, and London with his wife Gail.