True Crime Campfire - Payback: The Murder of Ted Ammon, Pt 2

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

In Part One, we met high-powered millionaire Ted Ammon and his…let’s say “eccentric” soon-to-be-ex-wife Generosa. When we left off, the Ammons were embroiled in a vicious divorce and a struggle over Ted’s wealth and custody of their twin children. Generosa, staying at the ritzy Stanhope Hotel, was renovating a townhouse and had just met a young electrician by the name of Danny Pelosi. Join us for part 2 of this wild true story.Sources:Almost Paradise by Kieran CrowleyFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In part one, we met high-powered millionaire Ted Ammon and his, let's say, eccentric, soon-to-be ex-wife Generosa. When we left off, the Ammons were embroiled in a vicious divorce and a struggle over Ted's wealth and custody of their twin children. Generosa, staying at the Ritzie Stanhope Hotel, was renovating a townhouse and had just met a young electrician by the name of Danny Pelosi. This is part two of Payback, the murder of Ted Ammon.

Danny Pelosi was born in 1963 in Flushing Queens, and for the first 10 years of his life, he was a normal blue-collar New York kid. He and his little brother Jim would play stickball in the street, and also a less wholesome game they called Flaming Sack of Dog Shit, which you can probably figure out for yourself. He was a cute, skinny kid with long, blonde hair, a sharp, nervous little guy. his dad Bob was a banker and worked hard to lift his family up. By the time Danny was 11, Bob was vice president of a bank and moved his family out to Center Mauritius, an old town on the south coast of Long Island, where they lived right down the street from the beach. Later in life, Danny would go to great pains to portray himself as somebody from a tough, hard-scrabble

background, but really, he came from a well-off family, and no one was going to describe Center Marishes as the mean streets. In what would be a lifelong pattern, young Danny's problems were almost entirely his own fault. Danny was an angry, mouthy kid. His first day at his new school, he got in a fight and smart-mouthed a teacher, so his dad spanked him. He got into what I think we can only describe as shenanigans, sneaking out on his dad's boat with the buddies,

raiding the liquor cabinet and getting hammered. He always got caught and punished, but seemed utterly unable to learn. When another scheme rolled around, he had ironclad certainty that he'd get away with it. When Danny was 15, one of his older sisters was assaulted. So Bob, a former Marine, taught all of his kids how to fight so they could defend themselves. One of the things he taught Danny was where to punch someone in the nose so that it would break. Monday morning, Danny walked up to the biggest kid in school who he didn't have any beef with and broke his nose, Like, he just wanted to practice, I guess.

Bob administered another spanking, which honestly is a little weird for a 15-year-old kid. Like, I don't think you should ever spank your kid, but 15, really, Bob? And he signed Danny up for boxing lessons, hoping his weird, angry kid would work out his aggression that way. I'm just wondering what the logic is in teaching your violent kid who already punches people to punch harder and more accurately. And not only punch, like, he went up and broke the kids. I want to see if this works and went up and just broke the dude's nose. Danny, who had still been a skinny little kid, turned out to be real good at boxing and put on some muscle mass.

But the boxing lessons didn't do anything for Danny's hair-trigger temper. He didn't get into any fewer fights, but now he won most of them. Danny wanted to be a tough guy. He started hanging out with that famous bad crowd, TM, that all high schools apparently have and even started imitating the way they talked. All damn and doze and all that. And if that's your natural way of talking, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're putting it on to impress dudes smoking behind the gym, that's really just kind of sad. He and his buddies were arrested for stealing a case of beer,

something that really shook up his parents. Sorry, guys, that's something you're going to have to get used to. At a graduation party, Danny met a girl named Tammy, and they were soon dating. Not like long after, Danny got 20 days in jail for assault after he punched out Tammy's ex. When he got out, Tammy's father and grandfather were waiting for him by the front gate. She was pregnant. You're going to do the right thing by my granddaughter, right? Her granddad said. Tammy was a bright girl, much smarter than Danny, and the right thing would probably have been to let her find somebody better, but that was easier said than done for teenagers in the early

80s. After another arrest for joyriding in a stranger's car, Danny and Tammy got married in March of 1982 and lived in her parents' basement. He got a job working alongside her dad in construction, but not for long. In July, while Danny was working upstairs on a property, a ceiling beam gave way and he fell nine feet down to the floor, getting a concussion and a herniated disc. Ouch. Danny was laid up for three months and in a lot of pain, for which he was prescribed diazepam. Now, more recent research shows that diazepam doesn't do any better than a placebo for back pain, but in the 80s, it was widely thought that the drug's muscle relaxing qualities helped. Danny very much had an addictive personality and was already well on the way to getting himself

a little drinking problem. And now he had a diazepam problem, too. Little more than a year after his shotgun marriage to Tammy, Danny was rare. sober. He racked up a few DWIs and started getting into screaming fights with Tammy. He was ashamed of himself and resolved to get clean. Because he thought of himself as a tough guy and because he was a dumbass, Danny's method of detox was to handcuff himself to a pillar in a friend's basement for the better part of a week. Holy shit. It's possible this kid had a few too many spankings. Yeah, a little bit too much self-flagellation like I get it you get some medical management you lunatic well especially it's making making the damage he did to his family about him you know what I mean it's not about

like atoning it's oh I'm I'm a martyr that's exactly yeah well yeah I mean I guess or maybe he just thought like I'm going to tough this out and be a badass and tell everybody I kicked the withdrawals just by sheer force of will. After torturing himself like this, Danny successfully kicked diazepam and just replaced it by radically increasing the amount he drank. Nearly every day, he'd drink till he passed out. He tried to go to professional rehab but got booted out from the program because he kept sneaking out.

For years, Danny struggled to find low-paying jobs while he kept drinking and getting into trouble with the law. sometimes for fights, most often for DWI. He seems absolutely unable to stay out of trouble, and he clearly didn't like being told what to do in any capacity. If you told him the sky was blue, he'd try and argue that it was Chartreuse. In 1989, a judge sentenced him to six months in a county alcoholic rehabilitation program, the kind of place that has bars on the windows.

There was no sneaking out of this one. When he got out, Danny was fully clean and sober for the first time since high school. and he'd stay that way for the next nine years. Finally, his life seemed to be coming together. He got semi-steady work as a decent but unlicensed electrician, and thanks to a $10,000 gift from Tammy's grandfather, she and Danny were able to make a down payment on their home. Their third kid was born the same year they moved in.

And there was potentially even more sunshine on the horizon. Danny was suing his former employers for $2.5 million, over the fall where he'd hurt his back. The sum included a valuation of half a million dollars for Danny's inability to please Tammy sexually. What the fuck? Wow. If he was incapacitated in that area,

he was certainly working hard to overcome the problem. He cheated on Tammy constantly. He might have been sober, but he was still an asshole. But the suit went nowhere, with the jury deciding Danny was a. full of bullshit as the world's worst pinata. I think the number that he asked for was the problem. Like, I think if he would have asked for like, I don't know, $100,000, they would have

been like, here you go. 2.5 million? Yeah. Danny really was kind of a fuck up. Over the next few years, he racked up a ton of debt as his marriage slowly crumbled. And then he started drinking again. When he got arrested for yet another DWI, his dad, had, like always, had to bail him out.

Bob Pelosi figured that over the years he'd spent about $40,000 on getting a son out of jail. By 1998, with his life circling the drain, Danny started fantasizing about making some money from the part of his life he devoted most of his time and effort to, cheating on Tammy. When he and some other contractors were working on a gig in Manhattan, he looked out at the skyscrapers and said to the other guys, there's a woman here who's paying those big rents who's single and she's going to be gorgeous and I'm going to find her to dream the impossible dream he aims high you got to give him that you know shoot for the stars because even if you miss you'll land among stars and you know miss

he did oh yeah in late 2000 a friend brought danny into manhattan to meet a client who was renovating a pricey townhouse. This, of course, was Generosa Ammon. Danny was desperate for work. He just declared bankruptcy, and his and Tammy's house was in foreclosure. They were still married, but definitely estranged. Danny's only method of trying to get out of his financial hole was to gamble and hope for a big win, which went about as well as you might expect. His new debts had the threat of broken kneecaps looming behind them. So he turned on all his charm, and Generosa hired him. Like everyone who'd worked for her, Danny found out Generosa was moody and temperamental, a nightmare to be around but good to work for because she kept changing her mind about what she

wanted. That, of course, meant the contractors made more money. Aware of the thin ice his life was skating on, Danny was on his best behavior. Whenever Generosa threw a fit, he'd just smile and do whatever she wanted. When she changed her mind and made him redo something he'd already done three times, he'd just smile and do whatever she wanted. One morning, Generosa arrived early at the townhouse and found Danny asleep in his truck. He told her he did this to avoid the exhausting rush hour drive from Long Island, and some of the other guys did the same thing. None of my workmen have to sleep in trucks, Generosa told him, and she got her crew rooms at the Ritzie Stanhope Hotel, the same place she was staying. Given his shit about the comforts of other people was not really Generosa's thing,

but bleeding every dollar she could from Ted most definitely was. It was her own personal blood sport, and it was Ted who was picking up the bill for all expenses tied to the renovation. As usual, Generosa had to be involved with every aspect of the renovation. She was at the townhouse, and with the contractors constantly. With a bunch of the guys staying at the Stanhope, Generosa often joined them for drinks after work. She and Danny got friendly and then started getting flirty. Nobody ever accused Generosa of being subtle, and it was perfectly clear what she wanted. One night over drinks, she looked Danny straight in the eye and told him she hadn't had sex in two years. Danny wasn't usually one to hesitate over an obvious invitation like that, but this time he did pause.

Not because of his wife and kids or anything silly like that. It's just he really needed this game. and screwing around with the boss was definitely something that could end with him getting fired, especially with somebody as high-strung as Generosa. He made her promise she wouldn't fire him afterward. And then they went upstairs and, well, uglies were bumped. What Danny wanted out of their new intimacy is a little more opaque. Later on, he'd tell everybody he fell in love with Generosa, but a year before, he'd been openly fantasizing about meeting somebody just like her

so he could take advantage of her wealth. And at the time, that was still what he was telling his buddies. He'd get as much out of Generosa as he could and then go back to Tammy. Whatever his motives, Generosa's new boyfriend played the part she wanted him to play. She made him cut his hair, then bought him at tucks and took him to the opera to show him off. And, you know, people have all kinds of different types. But if Generosa wanted to make her current and former friends jealous of her new boy toy, Danny Pelosi was kind of a weird choice. He's not hideous or anything, but as far as arm candy went,

he was a plain Hershey's bar, like not even the kind with almonds. He was just a dude. Kind of funny looking. Generosa wanted Ted to get word through the snob grapevine that she was doing great and had a new young boyfriend, which in itself was kind of a stretch. Doing a lot of rough living meant that Danny at 37 didn't look much different than Ted at 51. The phone lines of the rich and fabulous were certainly burning, but mainly about Generosa losing her damn mind. But she thought the night at the opera was a great success, and afterward, back at the Stanhope, she had Danny go into the bathroom and put on his tool belt and nothing else before they got busy. My tool belt guy, she called him.

Jesus, take the wheel. Genarosa and Danny were a weird match. In some ways, they were good together because they had a lot of fun, but in other ways they were just awful together because they fed each other's worst impulses. Ted had always been kind of a health nut. Generosa had to sneak outside to have her cigarettes, and she limited herself to one bottle of beer and maybe a little white wine at dinner.

Danny had fallen off the wagon a few years ago when a contractor said he'd only give Danny work if Danny had a beer with him. Which, wow, man, congrats on being an absolute toxic waste dump of a human. You've got a recovering alcoholic who's been sober for nine years, and you'll only hire him if he'll drink with you. Jesus, that is horrific. So, of course, one beer had turned into many beers and a fresh DWI, and since then, Danny had been back to drinking like it was his job. Soon after she and Danny got together, Generosa was smoking like a check. chimney and sipping whiskey all day, as well as discovering the many joys of junk food.

And Danny, who'd been terrible with money his whole life, started spending like a lunatic. Soon, a large chunk of his friends and family were regularly joining the renovation crew for rowdy drinks and dinners at the Stanhope. Generosa mostly enjoyed getting hammered with the guys, but the booze also tweaked up her paranoia. Several times, some poor guest turned around to find her suddenly in his face screeching, I know you're a spy for my husband. Genarosa. Gena Rosa had mostly been abandoned by her friends, I wonder why. But she wasn't going to let that make her give up her favorite hobby of bitching about Ted.

Pretty much every waitress in Bellhop who went into her suite heard the whole deal from Ted's terrible cruelty to her new sex life with Danny. They listened sympathetically because Generosa was. a big tipper. Ten minutes of nods and commiseration would usually earn them a hundred bucks. Should I listen to anything she wanted to tell me? Oh yeah. Almost every interaction Generosa had with hotel staff ended with a $100 tip because she knew she was spending Ted's money and she wanted to spend as much of it as she could. The renovation crew had $500 breakfasts every morning. All in all, Ted was paying the Stanhope $60,000 a month.

On top of that, Generosa wanted $150,000 a month tax-free as non-specific spending money. Oh, I cannot even think about it. You could fund so many people's college with that. Oh, it just makes me sick. Yeah, it's the disgust. I can't think of how to spend $500 on breakfast. That's the thing that's, like, getting me. And like, especially in like, what was it, like 2000, 1990.

Like, what are they doing? Solid gold freaking omelets, I don't know. Snorting beluga caviar. Like, what do you mean? Off of a, like, a naked girl's boobs? Yeah. Like, I can't even think of it. Danny was even wilder with his tips.

He gave bartenders and waitresses hundreds of dollars at the end of a night of drinking. He tipped a mechanic, a thousand dollars were changing his tires. He bought his teenage son. A $20,000 boat. Oh, come on. Most of this was from cash gifted to him by Generosa, but he was also skimming off the renovation project.

Now that he was sleeping with the boss, Danny was in charge. If a contractor wanted to be given a job worth $65,000, they better charge for $85,000 instead and make sure that extra $20,000 went straight to Danny. Oh, my God. Everyone in Danny's family knew what was going on, including his wife, Tammy. I don't know what she thought about Danny's new relationship, but their marriage was already on its last legs, and at least he was paying for renovations on their house. Yeah, I mean, if I'm Tammy, like, he's cheated on me a million times before. At least this time,

I'm benefiting somewhat from it, at least financially, right? And, like, his drunk, angry ass is out of the house. You know, like, he's not, he's not doing all that here. One afternoon, Danny brought Generosa down for a disastrous, a delicious, a delicious disastrous meeting with his dad and stepmom. When he heard Generosa's name, Bob Pelosi's ears perked up. Are you Italian? He said. No. Generosa's not back as if he'd just asked if she liked to drink out of the toilet. She was, of course, half Italian, but those were thoughts that took her back to her mom and her childhood. She didn't want to think about that. And she definitely didn't want to share it with Danny's family. Danny and his dad had a difficult relationship, always poking at each

other. Danny, take off your jacket, Generosa ordered him. Bob raised an eyebrow at that. She says to take off your jacket and you take off your jacket, he said. Then, Generosa casually laid into all the problems Danny's siblings and their kids supposedly had and how they could be fixed. I assume nobody asked her opinion about any of this. No, no, of course not. Of course not. Danny's sister Barbara got the most sneering attention from Generosa. Italian women have no self-esteem, she said. Which, you know, can't help but think is, is that a little projection, Generosa? Because, like, every Italian woman I have ever met has enough self-esteem to power the space station for months.

The only Italian woman with low self-esteem is you, Generosa. Bob told her off, and then Generosa and Danny left. It's been short and sweet, she said on her way out. Well, it's been short. short, Bob said. Ted and Generosa both still shared ownership of the beach house out in East Hampton, much to Generosa's disgust. She had built that place. It was her dream home. It should be hers alone, but Ted still stayed there some nights. Divorces among the very rich can get very weird, moving into spy thriller territory. One night, when Generosa knew Ted was staying at the house, she went out there

with her psychic hench Butler, Stephen, remember him, and snuck in. Stephen had a camera, and they planned to burst into the bedroom and snap incriminating photos of Ted with one of his girlfriends. They threw the doors open, and there was Ted in bed with Sophie. Sophie was his new chocolate lab puppy, and she was never going to be a guard dog. As Ted reacted furiously, Sophie hopped down and started making friends with Generosa's dog buddy. Genarosa kicked her, the nasty bitch. She hated anyone who was on Ted's side, even a little puppy. So this attempt was a bust, but Generosa didn't give up trying to get dirt on Ted.

Because she and Danny were at the house for extended periods, they were able to install a second security system that Ted knew nothing about. How freaking creepy is that? There were secret cameras all through the house, and if you had the password and an internet connection, you could access a live image feed from anywhere in the world. Whenever Ted was at the house, Generosa or Danny spied on him constantly through a laptop, and I mean during some intimate moments.

Ted had broken up with his girlfriend, Lori, but was dating someone new, and Generosa or Danny, or both of them, watched them in bed together a bunch of times. Oh, so awful. Generosa enjoyed spying on Ted, but him seeing another woman was useless to her in the divorce. It seems clear she was hoping to catch him doing something embarrassing enough that she could blackmail him. Ted would definitely have been embarrassed if he knew he had an audience. One morning, he and his lady friend were enjoying a little morning delight in the kitchen. Danny had the laptop with him at the renovation site, and he called the whole crew over to watch

Ted and his girlfriend in action. Can you freaking imagine? Danny was a lot more streetwise than Generosa, but in some ways was just as oblivious to how normal people work as she was. He saw nothing wrong in this behavior. One night, he came over to Tammy's house real late at night, and she almost blew his head off with a shotgun, so he bought a taser for her to use on intruders instead. At least, that was his story. Truth was, he wanted a taser, and he wanted to try it out. He offered a hundred bucks to anyone in his crew who would let him press the barrel on their

arm without a dark cartridge loaded and pull the trigger so the charge released. One guy volunteered, and as he yelped and twitched, Danny laughed his ass off. This was the kind of thing he found funny. Whenever he went to the beach house, the first thing Danny did was unplugged the secret security system. It was funny spying on people, but less funny to be spied on. Genarosa, meanwhile, had gotten sick, just a draining cold, she thought. Then one morning in the shower, she found a lump in her breast. She was scared, of course.

She would have been even more scared if she'd ever gotten the full story of her mom Marie's death by cancer. Generosa just knew her mom had died of brain cancer. She had no idea the disease had started in Marie's breast and then spread because she ignored it. Her doctor told her to get a mammogram, but she didn't want to. A little later, she called Ted and asked for more money. I have pneumonia in a lump in my breast, she said. Ted thought this might just be a lie to get more cash out of him, but a call to the doctor confirmed it.

The doctor didn't know about the Ammon's current marital situation and thought it was important that Generosa's husband be in the loop because she was resisting further diagnosis and treatment. When Ted called and tried to get Generosa to go back to the doctor, she lost her shit, screaming that Ted was intruding on her private business. Then she called the doctor and screamed at him too, which I guess I can kind of understand. I don't know if this was pre-HIPAA or what.

The doctor called her again and again. in and sent letters, too, trying to plead with Generosa to seek treatment. But as far as she was concerned, the doctor had sided with Ted, and that meant he was dead to her. There was no greater sin to Generosa than siding with Ted. She hung up on him before he could tell her anything. She tore up and tossed out his letters without ever opening the envelopes. More than anything else, Generosa hated the idea of being anything like her mother. Now, faced with the possibility of the same terrible illness. She reacted exactly like Marie had in the same circumstances, just ignore it and hope it goes away. By late June, Ted was suspecting that the bills from the

Stanhope and the renovation in general were part of a long scam to drain him of as much cash as possible. He had a lawyer demand detailed accounting of all costs, as well as plans for the renovations. Ted's payments weren't mandated by any court order or settlement. He was just making them to make the divorce go more smoothly. Someone more tightly connected to reality than Generosa might have realized how vulnerable this made her, but she straight up refused to provide any paperwork. So Ted cut off the cash and her credit cards. And the party times at the Stanhope were over. Genarosa moved into the incomplete townhouse and started worrying that she might lose custody of the kids. She was probably right to worry, drinking all day, screwing around with a married felon, and telling

your kids that their dads an evil kingpin are not things judges usually find amusing. Having made a game out of wasting money for months, Generosa was now always obsessing about cash, although she was still only loosely connected to the real world. She met an old wealthy friend while walking Buddy in the park and asked if she might borrow a little something to tide her over. The friend, one of the few Generosa had left, was sympathetic, and she said she'd help however she could. How much did Generosa need? million dollars, Generosa said. She wanted to finish the renovations and still live like a queen.

Oh my God. Her friend's job must have hit the floor. Bitch, are you to Lulu or what? Like, you know, for rich people, I don't know what, like, a little... Because like, if a friend asked to borrow a couple hundred bucks from me, I'd be like, sure. Like, get me back when you can.

But, like, I can't imagine... Because if she would have said, like, $5,000, maybe the friend would be like, yeah, no problem. Here's the cash. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Ten million. Ten million. That's crazy. Like, literally, literally DeLulu. The friend said she'd have to talk to her husband. The amount was ridiculous, of course. Although she didn't say that. Genarosa didn't like that. Anyone who had to think for more than a second about giving her $10 million, obviously wasn't a real friend. The next time she saw the friend in the park, Generosa screamed at her. Another year's long relationship burned to ash. Danny was always patient with Generosa

Like more patient than anyone who knew him Would think he was capable of Because his violent temper was a fundamental part of his being And Generosa was one of the most difficult human beings on earth Yeah, this bitch would get kicked off the real housewives For being too dramatic One time, Danny's 17-year-old daughter Was having a party at the beach house

With some of her high school friends Danny was sitting on the couch And at one point his daughter started rubbing his shoulders His daughter, not some random girl. Gena Rosa flipped her shit. She screamed at Danny's daughter. Get your hands off him. He's mine.

That killed the party mood pretty quick, and later on, Genarosa accused Danny of having an incestuous affair with his own kid. Holy shit, man. There's paranoid, and then there's whatever the hell that was. From anyone else, that would have set Dan. Danny off like a stick of dynamite. But from Generosa, he just kept his mouth shut and took it. So either he'd encountered some kind of forest fairy who sprinkled him with magical pixie dust that made him a better, kinder person, or Danny was just willing to put up with any amount of shit

if the pay was good enough. After Ted's money spigot was turned off, he even started playing peacemaker between Ted and Generosa. Because the sooner everything was smooth again, the sooner the money would start flowing. Behind the blue collar facade, all of Danny's actions since meeting Generosa were devoted to scooping up as much cash as possible. So Ted's first settlement offer was that Generosa received $10 million and her $8 million townhouse and that Ted would take care of any and all expenses related to twins, Grego and Alexa. Generosa and Danny would be set for life and Danny urged her, please, accept it, take it, take it. This was more money than he'd ever dreamed of having in his life until recently. Generosa thought he was nuts. This was just the first offer, and in a lot of antagonistic

divorces, what people really care about isn't what they're actually getting. It's what they're not getting. Generosa was convinced that Ted's wealth was still measured in the hundreds of millions, despite his recent heavy losses when the dot-com bubble burst. Ted's lawyers provided a thorough accounting of his assets, which had shrunk to a mere $97 million. Man, he's practically out on the streets. She became convinced Ted had hidden tens of millions of dollars in cold, hard cash, inside a treasure chest on his new $4 million yacht. The fact that no such yacht existed didn't put her off, Generosa never having much enjoyed living in evidence-based reality. What really got to Generosa was the idea that Ted was cheating her. She knocked back shot after shot of Johnny Walker,

getting hammered and working herself up into a fury. She and Danny were out by the pool at the Hampton's Beach House, but soon Generosa stalked inside and started yelling and banging around in there. Danny stayed right where he was. It was smart to stay out of Generosa's way when she got like this. Soon, an upstairs window opened, and Ted's expensive suits and other clothes started floating down as Generosa tossed him out. Next, Danny saw Ted's desk appear on the windowsill. This was a $41,000 antique made of slate and mahogany, and had been a gift to Ted from his first wife,

who, of course, Generosa hated. It also weighed at least 80 pounds, but apparently Generosa got strong when she got mad, just like the Hulk. The desk tumbled out and smashed into a million pieces on the driveway. Next came a $100,000 grandfather clock, breaking into splinters on the driveway. When Generosa went back inside to find more of Ted's things to wreck, Danny darted in and tried to hide some of the clothes at the side of the garage.

They were really nice, and they would fit him. But Generosa caught him at it and screeched, put that back! Next came Little Grego's baseball mitt. The kid loved it, but it had been a gift from, Ted and the two of them had played catch together. Anything connected to Ted had to go on the pile including his $2,000

cappuccino machine. All of this was headed to an inevitable conclusion. Generosa got a can of lighter fluid and soon the pile of Ted's stuff was burning on the driveway. After it had burned out, Danny was able to recover some of the workings of the grandfather clock

which he sold for a couple hundred bucks. If it was possible, it seemed that Generosa was getting even crazier. Ted's sister urged him to hire a bodyguard. So did his friend Mark, his lawyer, and the private detective Ted had hired for the divorce, but Ted shrugged off their advice, sometimes with a laugh. He would sometimes say he knew Generosa could be dangerous, but Ted never got around to acting on that understanding. His new girlfriend broke things off because the divorce took all of Ted's time and attention,

and because he insisted on spending some nights at the beach house, and she hated it there. In October, Ted made what he intended to be a final settlement offer to Generosa. 24 million, the townhouse, and split custody of Grego and Alexa, one week with Generosa, and then one week with Ted. What Generosa really wanted, arguably even more than the kids, was the two homes she'd made, the Hampton's Beach House and the Coverwood Estate back in England. As part of the settlement, they'd both be sold off. Her lawyers told her this was the best offer she was likely to get. Generosa accepted a detailed agreement on October 11th.

She and Ted would meet in two weeks to sign everything and make their divorce final. Ted had decided to spend the weekend of October 20th at the Beach House. The divorce would be finalized in just a few days, and it might be his last chance to spend time there before it went on the market. He asked his niece Wendy and her husband to stay with him, but they were already going to a wedding. Besides, Wendy told him she'd never want to go to that house, which she found creepy and scary. The last time he picked his kids up, Alexa burst into tears. When Ted asked her what was wrong, she said,

I'm worried mom hates you so much that she's going to kill you. Oh, bless our heart. Ted reassured her, although inside he was angry that Jenna Rosa, who had zero self-control, had ranted about wanting him dead in front of the kids. Out on the beach house on Saturday, he called his old girlfriend, Lori, and she agreed to come out and see him. They had a nice little sexy afternoon,

and then she left. Ted went out to dinner, went for a walk on the beach, then went to bed, alone, except for his three dogs. At 2 a.m., someone logged into the secret security system from his laptop and watched Ted's sleep for about 20 minutes. Then they remotely turned off the whole system. system. East Hampton took its old world charm seriously. There were no streetlights on a lot of the roads, and once the houselights went out, there was only moonlight and starlight. A man snuck out of

the darkness and into 59 middle lane. Either he had a key or Ted had left the door unlocked. The intruder disabled the alarm system and laid out a plastic tarp at the bottom of the stairs. He was very likely wearing waterproof coveralls and carried a stun gun. in one hand and a metal bludgeon in the other, probably the fire poker. He slipped into the bedroom and jabbed the stun gun against the back of Ted's neck. As Ted twitched on the bed, his attacker brought the poker down on his head, but the bedclothes got in the way and didn't hit with full force. Ted woke up, confused, and in horrible pain, but he started fighting. Again and again, the attacker hit him with the poker, fracturing bones

on Ted's arms and hands as he defended himself. Another two blue bloods. blasts from the stun gun brought Ted to his knees, and his attacker hit him again and again with the poker, only breaking off to briefly stun all three dogs who fell limp and twitching. Then he went back to beating Ted to death. The dogs recovered, just so you know. Afterwards, the killer went into the shower and washed as much blood as he could off of the coveralls. Then he walked through Ted's study to the children's playroom. This was where the hard drive that recorded the data from the secret security system was kept.

hidden behind a concealed door and a mess of pink insulation. The killer knew exactly where it was. He tore out the hard drive and took it with him. He took his wet coveralls and weapons down onto the tarp at the bottom of the stairs and wrapped them up. Then he left. Ted's body wouldn't be found for two days. Generosa told their kids, Alexa and Grego, that Ted had been responsible for his own death. Your father took too much medication and drank too much.

she told them. The local police were not equipped to deal with a murder. Their last homicide had been 20 years ago, a bar fight where someone pulled a knife. They called in the Suffolk County Homicide Squad, who roped off the whole block and began what would be a long, slow investigation. Canvassing locals turned up one suspect, if an unlikely one, the Wyborg Wanker, a local sex criminal who liked to jump out in front of women around nearby Wyborg Beach. naked and masturbating and then run away. Ugh. His last appearance had been on Friday,

just around the corner from the beach house. It was already clear that Ted's murder had been carefully planned and executed, and it was a big stretch to think a random sex pest was responsible. Still, the cops had to chase it down. Yeah, they had to chase a lot of stuff down. I don't think it's possible to make as much money

as Ted had done without pissing people off. Not long ago, he'd fired an executive from his firm and the guy had taken it so badly that Ted had had the office locks changed. A bunch of people had grudges against Ted for stock advice he'd given that had gone south. Ted was involved in an acrimonious lawsuit with his condo board, headed by actor Kevin Klein. Had Otto bumped him off? You know, from Fish Called Wanda.

My name is Otto, it means eight. Randy Day, Ted's first wife, had been caught up in her own nasty divorce, which was ultimately resolved when her second husband apparently blew his own head off with a shotgun. Was it possible Randy had arranged that and done the same with Ted to avoid paying back the million dollars he'd loaned her? Now, most of these are obviously pretty silly, but like we said, they all had to be chased down. Along with everybody who cared about Ted, the police had two strong suspects right away, Generosa and Danny. And Strong changed to overwhelming when they found out about the same. secret security system and the removal of the hidden hard drive.

Other than the guys who'd installed it, the number of people who knew about that system and where the hard drive was kept was tiny. Just Generosa, Danny, and their lawyers. And for the investigators, overwhelming was itself soon upgraded to no doubt at all, a little later, when Ted's will came to light. Despite the nasty divorce, Ted had neglected to change his will. so Generosa was still his beneficiary. Instead of $24 million in the townhouse, she got everything, $97 million plus all the property,

including her beloved Beach House and the Coverwood Estate. That many millions of dollars, that's a hell of a lot of motive. Danny and Generosa both seemed totally astonished when their lawyers told them Ted hadn't changed his will, but, you know, fake surprise was really kind of their only option in that situation. Other evidence would eventually surface. Right after the murder, Danny had a nephew drive Ted's Audi, which Danny habitually used to a body shop for cleaning and detailing. Danny's younger brother Jim was a successful and respected cop over in Queens.

Danny called him up and played the idiot like, Hey, bro, seeing as I'm on probation, would I get in trouble if I have a taser in my house? Because I have a taser in my house. Jim called him a dumbass and agreed to drop the taser in one of the anonymous drop boxes police precincts had to dispose of illegal weapons.

Generosa and Danny didn't get to enjoy Ted's massive fortune for long. Ted had set up J.P. Morgan Chase as co-executor of his will and the bank successfully froze everything until the investigation into Ted's death was complete. Man, you know that pissed her off.

Ooh! Months earlier, despite them both still being married, Generosa and Danny had gotten engaged. In January of 2002, Danny quickly got divorced from Tammy, and he and Generosa got married the next day. They went to the Coverwood estate in England for their honeymoon. Once everything settled down, Generosa wanted to move back there permanently. On her first stay at Coverwood, with Ted, Genarosa had hired an English housekeeper named Kay Main, an older lady and kind of an odd duck, chilly, and and soft-spoken and strange, big Mrs. Danvers energy.

Generosa adored this woman and hired her to help look after Grego and Alexa as well as Keep House. Danny and Kay loathed each other on first sight, but for the most part they played nice to make things easy for Generosa. Unexpectedly, Danny now found that Kay was a rival for his new wife's attention. Generosa had never watched much TV, but now she was glued to it beside Kay. as her new nanny rented movie after movie after movie. Kay especially liked thrillers and murder mysteries, especially stories where wives murder their husbands. Danny had to fly back to Long Island in February

for a court date related to his most recent DWI, and he'd be staying there. Because Danny had a less than stellar record of showing up in court, the judge seized his passport. Generosa made plans to fly back with the kids in Kay, but first she went to a dental appointment in London. The dentist found a lesion on her jaw and told Generosa she should get it biopsied.

Generosa resisted. She'd get it looked at back in the States, but she never did. Also before she left, there was a very unfortunate fire in Ted's study at Coverwood, which very unfortunately destroyed a lot of his papers and prized possessions,

and also very unfortunately destroyed a laptop Genarosa and Danny had brought with them, the one they'd used to spy on Ted, and access the secret security system at the beach house. All very, very unfortunate. Yeah, pretty unlucky. Back on Long Island, Danny and Generosa bought a place in his hometown of Center Mauritius. This was a nice $700,000 place, but obviously a huge come down from how Generosa had lived for the last 20 years. Aw. For the first time in their lives, Alexa and Grego had kind of normal lives. They played in the canal out back. They walked to get the bus to public school. They made friends. They loved it. Not everyone was so happy. Jim Pelosi, Danny's cop brother,

was feeling the heat. Internal affairs had questioned him about Danny. Jim kept his mouth shut about the taser he'd disposed of for his brother, despite learning that burn marks on Ted's body exactly matched the model Danny had owned. If it turned out he'd unwittingly disposed of a murder weapon, that would be career ending at best. There was no way of knowing just what all this stress did to him, but on March 30th, at home in his bathroom, Jim Pelosi suffered a seizure. His wife found him dead on the bathroom floor. His death would be put down to idiopathic seizure disorder, meaning no one really knew what caused it. He was 36 years old. Generosa successfully sued to break the bank's freeze on Ted's wealth, and the money started flowing again.

Danny, true to form, spent it like water, flying out to casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City with his buddies and losing staggering amounts of money. Their new house was on the water and Generosa bought Danny a fancy new boat, which she'd named Generis. Danny and his buddy sailed it a couple miles along the coast where his dad's dock was. How do you like the new boat? Danny called to his dad. Bob asked if Danny had earned the money to buy. the boat and Danny didn't answer. They both knew the answer. What do you call it? Am and Joy, Bob yelled. And Danny quickly sailed away. That is a sick burn, Bob. Damn. That one's going to leave a mark. You know, despite myself, I'm kind of a big Bob fan. He's got the jokes. Yeah. Aside from all the

corporal punishment and like enabling his son. Like the corporal punishment was standard at the time, the enabling, I don't know. He's. Really? Yeah. He's really got Danny's number. He's got the jabs. He's just funny. In June, Generosa came down with what she thought was the flu. It got real bad. She had trouble breathing and collapsed. X-rays showed clear shadows in her breasts, lungs, and kidneys. Generosa had cancer, and it was so advanced that surgery was no longer an option. via her lymphatic system, the cancer was already in Generosa's brain. The disease had progressed through her body in an almost perfect copy of how it had attacked her mother 35 years before. The cancer had killed Marie and it was going to kill Generosa too.

Chemotherapy might give her a couple more years. Without it, she might be dead in as soon as six months. Not wanting to make the same mistakes Ted had, Generosa changed her will. A third would go to the kids, in addition to a trust that Ted had set up for them. A third would go straight to Danny, and the final third also to Danny via a trust. She went downhill fast, losing weight and having to sleep propped up in the living room couch because it was the only way she could breathe easy. She took whiskey and beer on top of her pain medications and smoked like a chimney. If she wanted to check out, she'd take muscle relaxers until she passed out.

Danny was busy with his lawyers a lot of the time, with everybody expecting a murder indictment to come down sooner or later. Kay the nanny took over most of Generosa's care, as well as looking after the kids. They did not like her, at all. She was strict and weird. She made them clean their own bathroom, and to check they'd done a good job,

she'd kneel over the toilet bowl and sniff, like... When she'd been younger, Generosa had been determined that her own kids, would have easy, pampered lives a million miles away from her own rough childhood. But now, she decided that Kay's firm hand was character-building. Generosa had always been weird, too, and the booze, medication, and damage to her brain made her even stranger. One night, she apparently saw a ghost and started flailing around with a steak knife. Ted, you fuck! she screamed and slashed Danny in the side.

She started talking a lot about ending her own life, something that's something that, not uncommon in terminal cancer patients. Danny always tried to talk her out of it. Kay, who increasingly had Generosa's ear, was a lot more casual about it. Maybe it's just her time, she'd say. With everyone expecting Danny to be indicted soon, the bank again put the squeeze on Generosis finances.

We won't have food for the winter, she told her scared kids. Kay told her Danny was screwing around with a local barmaid. Who knows whether he actually was, but I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if Kay just made it up, knowing that Generosa was insecure about the illness making her less attractive. Just how lucid Generosa was by this point

is impossible to know, but she made some big changes. She, Kay, and the kids would move back to East Hampton without Danny. She appointed Kay as the kid's legal guardian in the inevitable event of her own death. And she cut Danny, her tool belt guy, out of her.

her will. All he got was a $2 million post-nuptial agreement to cover his anticipated legal fees. In August 2003, Generosa was driven to Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, where she checked herself in under a false name to avoid the media. A few days later, she was dead. She'd certainly been close to death for a while, but there were lingering suspicions that this was an assisted suicide. There was no way to be sure because her body was quickly cremated according to her wishes. There was then a bizarre legal tussle over her ashes, with Danny claiming them and walking the five blocks from the funeral home to the Stanhope Bar. He got a bud light for himself and a Cosmo for Generosa, which he put on the table beside the box

holding her ashes. He thought the box looked a little tacky, so he put a lined napkin over the top. The New York Post got wind of what was going on and sent a photographer down to snap one of the most famous pictures from this case, Danny toasting his dead wife's remains with a bud light. Within a few months, the grieving widower was engaged to a pretty blonde half Generosa's age. He flew her and a bunch of his buddies out to Hawaii to party and managed to get himself arrested for punching the first mate of a cruise ship. It was the last fun Danny was going to have for a long time, because in February, he was finally arrested and charged with the murder of Ted Ammon. Because of Danny's long arrest record and newly pending assault charge in Hawaii,

the prosecutor argued that Danny be held without bail, and the judge agreed with her. The case against Danny was largely circumstantial, but as we've said many times before, that doesn't mean it was weak. Among the people who would profit from Ted's death, who else had access to the secret security system that had been disabled immediately before the murder? There was Generosa, but she had an unshakable alibi, and even, Even with a stun gun and a fire poker, it was a hard sell to imagine her overpowering Ted's athletic 6-foot-4 frame. And then there was Danny having Ted's car cleaned right after the murder and getting his brother to dispose of the taser. And there was also Kay Main, who testified that one night a drunken Danny had flat out told her he'd murdered Ted and warned he could do the same to her.

Bob Pelosi, Danny's dad, testified that right after the murder, his son had asked for advice. on how to dispose of something incriminating, and Danny, like many a dumbass before him, decided to take the stand in his own defense. There were nine women on the jury, and he had absolute confidence in his ability to trim the panties off of him. But the prosecutor was easily able to goad him into showing his temper, catch him in repeated lies, and get him to admit how much he'd enjoyed using the taser on that one guy in the renovation crew. And while he was sitting in jail, Danny tried to intimidate a witness and threaten the prosecutor's kids. So you've probably guessed where this verdict is headed.

Danny Pelosi was found guilty of murdering Ted Ammon. As the verdict was red, Danny's face turned beat red, and then he started sobbing. He'd really convinced himself he'd be home by crime. Christmas. He was sentenced to 25 years to life, and he's still in prison, still proclaiming his innocence. In accordance with Generos' wishes, Kay was granted custody of Alexa and Grego. Generosa's will also gave her the Hampton's Beach House. For a year, Alexa lived miserably alone with Kay, Grego having been sent off to boarding school as a punishment. It was the first time the twins had ever been apart, and they weren't even allowed to call or write each other. But Ted's

Mr. Sandy and her husband ended up winning custody of the kids, and they moved with them down to Huntsville, Alabama, to start yet another new life. They'd always been close to Sandy until Generosa and Ted split up, after which Generosa threw out every letter and presents Sandy sent to them and told the kids their aunt had obviously never loved them. Sandy was 55 and had raised three kids of her own. The twins, now 12, got a stable, loving home, and apparently were happy there. Ted's dogs, by the way, also did well, one being adopted by one of the police officers investigating the case, and the other two being taken in and spoiled by rich East Hampton neighbors. Good. I always worry about the pets in these cases. So here again, folks, we have a story about people who had everything you could possibly want in life. More money than they could ever spend, beautiful kids, a beautiful house, the freedom to pursue whatever passions they wanted. But none of that could stop the runaway train that was generally. Generosa Ammon's rage, greed, and paranoia.

In her mind, she was the only real person in the world. Everybody else just existed to serve her needs. And I'm not sure if this is really a thing, but I almost feel like the cancer was a physical manifestation of all that hate and poison just roiling around and Generosa's desiccated little heart. Eventually, it ate her alive from the inside out and left a whole world of hurt in its wake.

So that was a wild one, right campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Thalia, Jenna, Jennifer, Victoria, Mo, Rachel, and Josh. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode. ad free at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only

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