Mark R. Buick & a Sensational Murder in the Hamptons

In this column, I write about existing buildings in the Hamptons and what happens to them as they get sold from one buyer to another. In this column, however, the building on the property I’m writing about is not there anymore. It is just an empty field. The hope, however, was to make it that. Although it only got that way because of a sensational murder.

The property today, a vacant two acres, is owned by the Village of East Hampton and is part of the eastern end of Main Street’s town green. It lies directly across the historic Sheep’s Meadow triangle facing the East Hampton Post Office.

Six months before the murder, which was in 2002, the Village offered to buy it from a wealthy Wall Street banker and his wife, Ted and Generosa Ammon. An abandoned car dealership building occupied the property at the time. Built about 1940 as Mark R. Buick, it lasted until about 1990 when the dealership failed. The village offered the Ammons $2 million. Buying this would enlarge the Town Green.

But the Ammons wouldn’t sell it. So it didn’t happen.

But then the Ammons separated and commenced to go into divorce proceedings. It evolved into the worst divorce ever.

Mostly, the person seeking the divorce was Generosa. She had secretly begun an affair with Daniel Pelosi, a handsome blue collar electrician from Manorville who Ted had hired to install a security system at their East Hampton mansion. Generosa and Pelosi believed Ted was worth more than two hundred million. But Ted said it was only $50 million. Generosa and Daniel decided to straighten that out. They’d kill Ted. Then have it all.

On the night of October 20, 2002, Ted Ammon was sleeping alone in the master bedroom of the family’s summer mansion on Middle Lane in East Hampton. Generosa and the children were in the city. At 2 a.m., Daniel Pelosi, carrying what was believed was a baseball bat, secretly entered the house. The security system didn’t warn Ted Ammon. Because Pelosi as he entered, disabled it.

Climbing the stairs, Pelosi quietly entered the master bedroom and immediately bludgened Ted Ammon to death. Then he left. Two days later, because Ammon did not show up for work on Wall Street, a colleague and friend of his came out to East Hampton and discovered the body.

This murder unnerved everyone in East Hampton. But soon the police and detectives figured it out. Daniel Pelosi was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison, where he will perhaps remain for the rest of his life.

There was a time, however, when the lovebirds went to London thinking they’d gotten away with it all. And during that time, Pelosi was spending Ammon money like there was no tomorrow. As a result, Generosa, fearing the money would run out, contacted the Village of East Hampton and to immediately raise cash, offered to sell the property for $800,000. The Village, surprised but thinking this was quite the bargain, said okay, and went ahead with the purchase.

About a year later, however, it was learned that Mrs. Pelosi had terminal cancer. She soon died. And the rest you know.

At this time, there’s a small single story wooden office building, now a child care center, on land just adjacent to the former Buick property. If it were bought by the village and removed, it would complete the entire historic eastern village green to how things were in the 17th century here.

I hope it happens.

Have a East End real estate story? Want to share? Text us at 516-527-3566. We’ll call you back, and then write it up for this weekly column. –Dan