#8 - Jacqueline Kent Cooke
29-year-old Jacqueline Kent Cooke was arrested for verbally and physically assaulting a stranger at
a high-end restaurant in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve 2017. The millionaire socialite daughter of
former Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke was reportedly on her way out of Caravaggio on the
Upper East Side when she made an anti-Semitic remark towards another patron, described as an
older woman. Cooke was then confronted by the woman’s son, 52-year-old Matthew Haberkorn,
whom she proceeded to strike over the head with her sharp-edged glass purse. The handbag, reported
as having been a Lulu Guinness Mirrored Perspex Clutch, inflicted a nasty gash on Haberkorn’s
scalp, which caused blood to drip along the side of his face and stain his collared shirt. In the
incident’s aftermath, Cooke claimed to have been acting in self-defense when she attacked the man,
who she accused of chasing her down the street and breaking her finger after she’d insulted
his mother. However, in October of 2018, the socialite pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct,
and, instead of taking her case to trial, was ordered to serve 3 days of community service.
#7 - Rebecca Grossman
On September the 29th of 2020, socialite Rebecca Grossman was responsible for a high-speed traffic
accident in Westlake Village, California, which claimed the lives of 2 young brothers.
During a preliminary court hearing on the matter, investigators detailed how the woman, then in her
late 50s, had been traveling at speeds of up to 81 miles per hour in the moments leading up to the
fateful crash. Grossman ultimately blazed through an unmarked crosswalk and struck the two victims,
who were crossing the street with their parents at the time. One of the boys was killed instantly,
while the other passed away later at the hospital. In a conversation with a Mercedes-Benz operator
following the collision, Grossman indicated that she didn’t know if she had hit anything,
but that her airbag had exploded suddenly while she was driving down the road. In the
wake of the tragic incident, the socialite was charged with two felony counts each of
murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, as well as one felony count of
hit-and-run driving resulting in death. Grossman, a co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation,
was initially scheduled to stand trial in May of 2022. However, her legal team subsequently filed
a motion to have her aforementioned murder charges dismissed. In September of 2022,
Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino denied that motion, ensuring a murder trial for Grossman,
who would face a maximum sentence of 34 years to life in federal prison.
#6 - Tinsley Mortimer
Television personality and socialite Tinsley Mortimer was taken into police custody, on April
the 9th of 2016, after allegedly trespassing on her ex-boyfriend’s property in Palm Beach,
Florida. The 40-year-old woman, who rose to prominence following appearances on the reality
TV series High Society and The Real Housewives of New York City, had, prior to her arrest, requested
a civil standby because she wanted to retrieve her belongings from inside the residence. Local
authorities responded by informing Mortimer that she was, in fact, trespassing on private property
after a previous trespass warning in October of the previous year. The socialite became enraged
with the 9-1-1 dispatcher and reportedly screamed into her phone before disconnecting the call, at
which point officers were sent to the scene. Upon their arrival, they found Mortimer in a state of
hysteria, howling about how her purse was inside her former partner’s house. The ex-boyfriend,
identified as Alex Fanjul, denied that he had any of Mortimer’s belongings,
and the police then placed her under arrest. A few months later, the woman struck a deal with
prosecutors to have her trespassing charges dismissed. In exchange, Mortimer agreed to
cease all communication with Fanjul, as well as stay away from his and his parents’ homes.
#5 - Jasmine Hartin
The estranged wife of the son of Britain’s Lord Michael Ashcroft, was arrested, in May of 2021,
after she fatally shot a Belize Police Superintendent following an evening of drinking.
It was reported that Jasmine Hartin initially told investigators that the victim, Henry Jemmott,
was a friend, and that he’d been hit by a gunshot fired from a boat passing by the San Pedro pier
on which they were standing. However, after a jailhouse visit from her lawyer, Hartin’s account
of the events changed. She admitted that Jemmott had been showing her how to load and unload a gun
when she inadvertently fired the fatal round at him herself. The woman was charged with
manslaughter by negligence before being released on bond pending the commencement of her trial.
The following year, Hartin made international headlines once again after it emerged that she’d
allegedly put out a hit on Belize’s police commissioner, as well as a local magistrate.
The socialite vehemently denied these accusations, and expressed her personal belief that she was
being “set up” by corrupt government officials. As of recent updates, a trial date hadn’t yet been
set. If convicted of her charges, Hartin faced the possibility of spending up to 5 years behind bars.
#4 - Jocelyn Wildenstein
New York socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein was accused of launching a vicious attack on her
boyfriend at her Trump World Tower apartment in the early hours of December the 7th of
2016. The 71-year-old previously gained international notoriety for her extensive
cosmetic modifications and facial plastic surgery, which earned her the derisive nickname “Catwoman”,
due to her supposedly cat-like appearance. According to the resulting police report,
Wildenstein used her fingernails to claw at 49-year-old Lloyd Klein’s face. She then
allegedly took a pair of scissors to the man’s chest, “causing several red marks and substantial
pain”. Klein, a designer, managed to escape by stuffing the woman inside a closet. Wildenstein
later accused him of forcefully pushing her when he returned to the apartment to collect
his belongings. In the initial aftermath, the socialite and her boyfriend were both ordered to
refrain from making any form of contact with one another. However, the criminal charges
stemming from the domestic episode were later dropped at the couple’s behest. In November
of the following year, Wildenstein and Klein were involved in yet another domestic violence incident
at the former’s apartment. A reportedly trivial argument had sparked between the two, culminating
in a physical altercation that resulted in both of their arrests on charges of misdemeanor assault.
#3 - Sipapa
Ugandan socialite Charles Olimu, known under the alias Sipapa, was placed on the police’s
most wanted list after allegedly taking part in a home invasion on the night of August the 28th of
2022. According to local authorities, 33-year-old Sipapa, along with a group of yet-unidentified
accomplices, broke into the Kawuku-Bunga home of a South Sudanese national named James Arok.
State prosecutors claimed that the intruders used chloroform rags to sedate the house’s occupants
before stealing $429,000 in cash, a television set, mobile phones, and an Apple laptop. Sipapa
and his girlfriend, designer Nakayemba, went on the run in the incident’s immediate aftermath.
On September the 6th of 2022, it was reported that the pair had been remanded into custody on
charges of aggravated robbery, a capital offense that is only triable by the High Court of Uganda.
Today’s topic was requested by Charlotte Stowell. If you have any other topics you’d
like to learn about subscribe and let us know in the comments section below.
#2 - Hadley Palmer
Connecticut socialite Hadley Palmer was accused of secretly filming people in her
multi million-dollar Greenwich mansion for her own twisted voyeuristic pleasure. Court documents
revealed that the woman, then in her 50s, had, between 2017 and 2018, “knowingly photographed,
filmed and recorded certain individuals without their knowledge or consent,
and under circumstances where those individuals were not in plain view, and had a reasonable
expectation of privacy”. It was mentioned how one such instance of voyeurism involved a minor,
although the specific details of Palmer’s misdeeds were largely left out of public
reports. The Greenwich Police Department’s investigation into the salacious socialite
also led to the arrest of Dr. Jerome F. Brodlie. The latter was reported as a child psychologist
who faced charges of failure to report abuse, neglect or injury of a child in connection to
the case. Palmer, the daughter of wealthy hedge fund founder Jerrold Fine, ultimately agreed to
a plea deal that reduced her initially severe charges to three counts of voyeurism and risk
of injury to a minor. She consequently served 90 days at the York Correctional Institution
pending her actual sentencing date, which was reportedly scheduled for August of 2022.
#1 - Farouk Abdulhak
In the early morning hours of March the 14th of 2008, Norwegian university student Martine
Vik Magnussen left a nightclub in London’s wealthy Mayfair district. The 23-year-old
was reportedly accompanied by Farouk Abdulhak, a fellow student at Regent’s Business School and
the son of one of Yemen's richest men, Shaher Abdulhak. The pair got into a cab together,
marking the final time Magnussen was ever seen alive. Hours later,
Abdulhak got on a plane to Cairo, where it was believed he boarded a private jet bound
for Yemen’s capital city. On March the 15th, after Magnussen never returned home from her night out,
her friends reported her missing to local authorities. Then, the following day,
the young woman’s body was found “in the basement of an apartment block, hidden under rubble,
in a block of flats on Great Portland Street”. An autopsy determined that she’d been assaulted and
fatally strangled. Magnussen’s socialite companion immediately became the focus of Metropolitan
Police’s homicide investigation. After it emerged that Abdulhak had fled to his home country in the
aftermath of the murder, UK authorities issued a formal request for his extradition to the
Yemeni government. As of the latest updates on the case, the suspect was still at large,
believed to have been holed up in Yemen since the crime occurred. However, in March of 2022,
the police arrested an unnamed woman on charges of "assisting an offender", which was labeled a
“significant development” in the effort to bring Magnussen’s killer, or killers, to justice.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather be stuck in an elevator with a ditsy,
hysterical socialite for 5 hours or have to listen to screamo while you try to fall
asleep for 3 days straight? Let us know in the comments section below!