Heir Mail #2

Real estate, butt-biting, and at least two lil' existential crises about why we care about heiresses.

Welcome to Week 2 of Heir Mail, the only newsletter to come from having a Google Alert for the world “heiress.” Unless there are others, but… they’d probably come up in the alert, right? Maybe!

This whole experiment is new and its value is TBD, but at the very least, I am learning a lot. Week one was more international finance that I ever expected to grapple with (thank you Margarita Dreyfus), and this week brings us lessons in matters of high priced property, ethics in heiress journalism, and Italian history. Plus, many new-to-me news sources — TotalProSports, IrishCentral, so much stuff from Australia, etc. This is an education, the kind heiresses’ families pay gobs of money for! All for the price of a library card.

(It’s cool if you read the subhead and wanna Ctrl+F “butt.” I would.)

And if you don’t already, let’s get this out of the way:

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“Helicopter Heiress Cindy Robinson Asks $23 Million for Massive Hermosa Beach Mansion, ” from Variety

“Helicopter heiress lists Hermosa Beach home for $23M,” from The Real Deal

Helicopter heiress is just great alliteration, as it “wildly wealthy,” which is how Variety describes Cindy Robinson. She’s the youngest daughter of Frank D. Robinson, the founder of the Robinson Helicopter Company, which The Real Deal says “manufactures the best-selling civilian helicopter of the past 20 years.” The phrase “civilian helicopter” is also very beautiful, in its way. “Civilian helicopter.”

Cindy is selling a house in Hermosa Beach, which is now the most expensive listing in the area, and she’s been buying and selling real estate all over the sunniest parts of the US this year (Malibu! Hollywood Hills! Hawaii!). Hey, we’re all bored. This house, which she inherited from her mother, is by far the most expensive of the lot, though.

Variety describes the house’s exterior as “distinctly early-2000s” and the interior as “slightly generic,” and indeed it’s fairly dull, if nice. Dull sells houses though, I am lead to believe. Clicking though the gallery, you see the only even kind of standout thing in the house — chairs that look like they were made from an old airplane, maybe eek? — and come across a comment section with gems like: “Hope she has a Ashley M. Account,” and “Rumor has it that the criminals [in Hermosa Beach] all wear tuxedos.” Is one respondent a “jealous” “homeless” person? Perhaps, commenters agree!

Heiress points: Multiple simultaneous real estate deals, 40 points. Tuxedoed criminal neighbors, 20 points. Close association with the phrase “civilian helicopter,” 10 points. Generic taste, -20 points. 50 heiress points!

Net worth estimate: Not forthcoming, but her dad’s company has posted revenue of $200 million, according to AircraftCompare.com.

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“Guinness family curse strikes again as young heiress drowns in pool,” from New York Post

“Guinness heiress, 19, dies in tragic pool accident during BBQ at family's mansion,” from the Mirror

“Guinness Heiress Honor Uloth, 19, Drowns in Swimming Pool During Family Party,” from People

“Family curse strikes again as young heiress mysteriously drowns,” from Yahoo News Australia

“Guinness heiress, 19, dies in pool tragedy,” from Irish Central

“Guinness Heiress Honor Uloth, 19, Dies in Freak Pool Accident,” from Inside Edition

“Guinness Heiress Honor Uloth, 19, Drowns in Swimming Pool During Family Party,” from PopCulture.com

So. Last week I did include a single link about Honor Uloth’s death in the extra section (it was the only article that popped up). What I didn’t realize at the time is that while Honor died this summer, her passing was only just revealed to the larger world. This week she showed up in the Alert a lot. Too much to ignore, I think.

Honor was 19. She had fantastic Shiv Roy hair; she loved singing and horses. She drowned after, it seems, hitting her head by or in the pool at a family barbecue; her friends, still in the hot tub she’d just gotten out of, had their backs to her. Nearly every outlet notes that she wasn’t drinking, but I’ll say I don’t think it should matter much if she was. 18 is the legal age in Ireland, and drinking by a pool isn’t some shameful thing. Drinking by a pool is a whole reason to have money.

The Post explains that Honor’s death is just the latest tribulation to the Guinness legacy; they’re a kind of proto-Kennedys, older and Irisher and perhaps even more tragic; they’ve died in car crashes and by suicide and of alcoholism and were murdered in Cairo.

Honor showing up again and again and again in the alert is forcing me to realize that this is the type of story we expect from the word “heiress.” The carefully-catalogued run of tragedy repeated in link after link captures some of what compels us about the very rich: their fame and fortune often make us privy to the sadnesses in their lives.

Those sadnesses feel special, because of the money, but they’re ultimately average. I mean, haven’t people in the long history of your family died from car crashes and suicide and disease? Maybe not murder in far-flung locales, but I guess that’s what it all buys you. And that normalcy is what really strikes me, at least. Despite every structural advantage, heiresses are still vulnerable to many of the stupid realities of being alive; to social judgement, to complex families, to being a woman (not to be too 2012 about it), and in this case, to the sheer fragility of humans, subject to the laws of physics and effects of grievous injury on bone and brain.

It’s no sadder because of her wealth, but it’s no less sad. She wasn’t even 20.

[I’m going to skip Heiress points here, obviously, but Metro puts the family’s net worth at around £906 million, or about $1.2 billion.]

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“MILWAUKEE BUCKS HEIRESS MALLORY EDENS STRIPS DOWN IN THE FOREST TO TAKE A QUICK SWIM (VIDEO),” from Total Pro Sports

Mallory Edens is the 24-year-old daughter of Wes Edens, one of three dudes who own the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. Wes made his money first at Lehman and then BlackRock — just like Margarita Dreyfus’s boyf! — before starting his own investment group, private equity company, and mortgage brokerage. And even this dude has get friends to chip in to own some sports.

Mallory is young and very pretty — a model, even — and she went swimming, which is a great occasion for Total Pro Sports to publish a series of her Instagrams. I might argue that she herself has this handled, by putting up the Instagrams in the first place, but clicks, gotta get ‘em. Her bathing suit is a great shade of red, and I’m assuming she’s not in Wisconsin because the pictures are new. I too can riff on aggregated Instagrams!

TPS also tells us that Mallory was supportive of the Bucks’ decision not to play following the shooting of Jacob Blake. Good!! Here’s the second conundrum of the week: is being on the right side of history an occasion for positive or negative heiress points? I just made them up last week and darn it if I’m not sure. Part of what interests me about this group of people is their potential (i.e. funding) for pushing social change, even if it’s hard to assume that’s a common use of modern heiress powers. I’m going with positive for now.

Heiress points: Public display of good politics, 30 points. Being pretty enough that a website that is supposed to be about sports wants to publish pictures of you in a bikini, 40 points. Sassing Drake (see below), 15 points. Not being in Wisconsin… probably at least 5 points, right? No offense to Wisconsin, I hear you’re fun. 90 heiress points!

Net worth estimate: $1 million, personally, according to WaliKali. (The also say her favorite food is “Italian dish,” and that once she trolled Drake by wearing a Pusha T tee.)

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“Society doyenne's pooch could soon be facing death row,” from the Sydney Morning Herald

Like last week’s entry from Myrtle Beach SC (“Inspired News and Reviews”), I absolutely cannot outdo the original here, this time from the Sydney Morning Herald. We are just so lucky.

Heiress Ros Oatley's beloved great Dane, Abbie, which has been accused of biting a charity fundraiser on the behind during a gala event at the millionaire's palatial Mosman harbour-side home, could soon be facing death row.

(Ros is the sister of late wine magnate and island-owner Bob Oatley, but honestly who even cares where the money came from this time, back to the dog!!!)

The bitten butt, in this case, belonged to the founder of the very charity the gala was for. Juliet Potter was reportedly looking for the mansion’s bathroom when her ass got chomped. The 2018 event was called “Merry Litmas” and was held to raise money for Juliet’s White Caravan, which SMH says “provides shelter for women fleeing domestic violence” (a GoFundMe for the organization calls it an “awareness campaign”). Again that’s “Merry Litmas.” Following the event, there was also disagreement between Juliet and the “Merry Litmas” team around how the $30K AUD raised should be spent — in part, the battle was over a literal white caravan named “The Ros,” which, in the Australian spelling, “never materialised.”

Sadly, this does not seem to be Abbie’s first or last time using a person as a chew toy. At the very least, she seems to have sunk her teeth into a gardener who was working on Ros’s property. Juliet, for her part, tells Private Syndey columnist Andrew Horney that she is a “committed animal lover” and making this decision to seek the dog’s actual death was a tough one.

Heiress points: Reckless pet ownership, 40 points. Having a daughter-in-law-to-be named “Xanthe Wetzler,” 20 points. Fighting with a charity over a car named after you, 60 points. Naming a charity gala for abused women “Merry Litmas,” 300 points. 420 heiress points!

Net worth estimate: When Bob died in 2016, he was reportedly worth $910 million AUD ($664.6 million US), and his estate was split between his wife, his three children, his 7 grandchildren, his 8 great-grandchildren, and his siblings and their kids, according to SmartCompany.

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“Tamara Ecclestone raid: 'Burglars scaled garages',” from BBC News

British bling ring, maybe!!! As per the BBC, a trial is underway for the robbery at the residence of Tamara Ecclestone, among other luxury homes. Delightfully, Detective Constable Andy Payne told the court that the perpetrators “did a bit of Spiderman” to get into the house (they jumped into a garden, after climbing a garage).

Tamara, 36, is the daughter of the former CEO of Formula One (car racing, among of the most expensive sports*) and a Croatian model, but she’s famous in her own right in the UK as a model and TV personality. Last December, Tamara was burgled, along with her sports-related neighbors, Chelsea manager Frank Lampard and “the family of former Leicester City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha” (those place names both refer to soccer teams, I checked). Tamara got it the worst though, getting ripped off of watches and jewelry worth £25 million.

The alleged “support team” to the thieves — Maria Mester, Emil Bogdan Savastru, Alexandru Stan, and Sorin Marcovici — deny the allegations against them. According to LeicestershireLive, which I looked up because I was confused about this whole “support team” thing, the actual robbers “cannot be named for legal reasons” (is this how British law works?? Is this libel? Is being alleged to be on a support team… not libel?).

What’s important is 1) there’s a picture of Maria looking like GD Ivanka Trump, wearing Tamara’s necklace, glam as hell, and its taken from her own Facebook. Gotta post! And 2) Emil is her son. That’s how you amass an inheritance, robberies as a family.

The article also notes that the unnamed burglars allegedly hailed a taxi to get away.

*Yacht racing exists, so.

Heiress points: Victim of a particularly elaborate and cinematic robbery, 30 points. Using your heiress status to get on TV, 80 points. Having eight figures worth of liftable shit lying around the flat, 50 points. 160 heiress points!

Net worth estimate: $300 million, according to Next Alerts.

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From the rest of the Alert

The alert only caught one instance of “heiress” being the descriptor for Republican megadonor Rebekah Mercer, who is in the news for funding Twitter-for-white-supremacists Parler, but I suspect at some point I will feel called to do a deeper dive on her. It will, undoubtedly, be some of my meanest work. I dread it!

The Times of Israel has a small piece about an Italian comic book called “The Wandering Jewess.” The titular character is a real life lady, Gracia Nasi, a “16th-century heiress, philanthropist and crypto-Jew” who was forced to pretend to be Christian during the Spanish Inquisition. She used her resources to educate and feed Sephardic Jews. An argument that being on the right side of history is a positive heiress point situation!

Barratt Homes heiress and interior designer Fiona Barratt is the owner of what both she and website AmoMama called “an unexpected mosaic corn portrait” of David Beckham, her husband Sol Campbell’s former Arsenal teammate. (The portrait was bought, Fiona says, at charity auction.) But that’s not all she owns! AmoMama has more in a tour of her home taken, like Mallory’s pics, from Fiona’s own Instagram.

Nicola Peltz gets barely an aside in an article about her soon-to-be mother-in-law, Victoria Beckham, even though the article is about her own nuptials. According to New Idea Magazine (from the Paris Hilton telephone last week!), Posh is planning to trick Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton into reconciling by seating them together at the Transformers actress’s wedding to V’s son Brooklyn. Hijinks!

“It's good to be a billionaire heiress, but it's even better to be her best friend” begins this Sydney Morning Herald piece about Francesca Packer Barham’s hairdresser. Francesca is the niece of Mariah Carey’s former, never-boned fiancee James Packer, and Jacki Mann is the — not to make assumptions — fun gay guy she’s palling around with. He’s been “pootling” around in an Aston Martin she bought him. “Pootling!”

Okay, I’m trying to end this newsletter — seriously, it’s so long I’m skipping an article about Tamara’s sister Petra’s cokey, gold dealer ex-husband — but as a person with another Alert for “art heist” I have to at least include a link to this new book, reviewed in WaPo: The Woman Who Stole Vermeer. TLDR: Bridget Rose Dugdale was “an IRA-adjacent, self-propelled political activist, terrorist and art-heist mastermind.” Fuck that’s so good, should we have a book club??? I’ll just plop this here:

And finally, in the heirs

No no no, never mind, this newsletter is long enough.