As if the death of Stephanie Adams and her young son, Vincent, wasn’t sad enough, police have confirmed a tragic detail surrounding the former Playboy model’s suicide.
Before Stephanie Adams, 46, fell to her death on May 18, plummeting 25 stories from her penthouse suite in the Gotham Hotel to the streets below, she pushed her seven-year-old son, Vincent, out the window, police confirm to the New York Daily News. The New York City medical examiner’s officer ruled Stephanie’s death a suicide, but in light of these new details, the young boy’s death has been ruled a homicide. An autopsy revealed both the former Miss November 1992 and Vincent perished from multiple blunt impact injuries.
The ex-Playboy centerfold was in a bitter custody battle with her estranged husband, Manhattan chiropractor Charles Nicolai, 47. The dispute had taken a heated turn when he filed a motion for sole custody of his boy on May 15. Stephanie reportedly called up the New York Post’s Richard Johnson to rail against the ruling. “All I want to do is take my son and get away from this nightmare for a few days,” she said in a two-minute phone call, “but they won’t let me.”
The death of both his ex and his son, who was “the center” of his life, has left Charles distraught, his lawyer told the post. “He’s numb, as one would expect.” A close friend of Charles said that he was an “amazing, caring” father. “I can remember him talking about when his son first learned to read. He was a very excited father, very proud,” the friend said. “I do know that he was very distraught and very saddened by the breakup of [his] marriage.”
Stephanie filed for divorce in 2017. The marriage has apparently been toxic, as sources told the Post that there were 10 domestic-incident reports between them, thought not all of them were against each other. Stephanie reportedly filed at least three complaints of child abuse against her ex-husband – in May 2016, August 2017 and September 2017 – but all three were deemed “unfounded” by child-welfare officials, according to documents obtained by the Post.
In addition to appearing in Playboy, Stephanie also reportedly wrote self-help books, ran an online organic beauty products company and managed the financial side of her former-husband’s doctors office. “The stereotypes are sexist and unfair,” she said at the time. “Just because I look a certain way and have expensive tastes, it doesn’t mean I’m shallow. Style and looks don’t mean lack of brains, sweetheart!”
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