Barbara Hamburg, her sister Conway Beach, and Platt were all involved in recruiting women in the area, and Platt eventually went to jail for wire fraud, filing false tax returns and conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.Īt the time Barbara was murdered, she had been on the cusp of receiving a $40,000 bounty, leading some to question if she’d been murdered by someone disgruntled with the system. As per the pyramid structure, the idea was then for women to break off and start new groups, beginning the cycle again.īecause the Gifting Table scheme began during the recession of 2008, it was described by its main proponents - who included Madison’s great-aunt Jill Platt - as a way for struggling women to pull themselves out of financial peril. Modeled after the courses in a dinner party, the money was an “appetizer,” while members who’d been in the group longer moved up to the “dessert” course, where they would reap as much as $40,000 in gifts. It consisted of a periodic women-only gathering, in which new recruits were required to bring a hefty financial “gift” of $5,000 in cash. It was kind of a rite of passage for my family.”Īnother shadow over the family was a now-defunct group called the Gifting Table, a multilevel marketing scheme which had been billed as a self-help group. My grandfather is famous in AA, if you can be famous in an anonymous program. It squared with his own past as a troubled teenager. He learned the extent of his mother’s alcoholism, and of the thread of addiction that runs through his entire family. “It was really overwhelming.” Barbara Hamburg’s mother, Barbara Lund (left), and sister, Conway. “There was so much to learn about my mom’s life, and our community, that I just didn’t know,” said Madison. At one such proceeding, his ex-wife accused him of raiding his children’s bank accounts.”Īn initial police investigation concluded DNA collected from the scene did not match Madison’s father, and Barbara Hamburg’s body was cremated shortly thereafter.īut Jeffrey Hamburg, and his mysterious finances, were just the tip of the iceberg. According to a report at the time in the Hartford Courant, “court records show that Jeffrey Hamburg had been in a precarious financial condition related to a bankruptcy filing in June 2009. And then my parents were divorced, and my mother had no money, and I was living with her, and there’s all these problems.”Īt the time Barbara was murdered, she was due in court for proceedings related to the divorce Jeffrey had been ordered to pay a lump sum to his wife or be held in contempt. But I didn’t know at all that my mom was worried about what he did. I always thought maybe he was in the CIA, or something. He was the CEO of an international energy company, but we didn’t really know what he did. My dad was unrealistically, inexplicably wealthy. “I started to hear these crazy things about my dad,” said Madison. Jeffrey Hamburg, Barbara Beach Hamburg, Madison Hamburg and Ali Hamburg HBO The logical place to start turned out to be his father, Jeffrey Hamburg. He didn’t have to look far for suspects, as he uncovered a trove of secrets, resentments and dark legacies in his own family. That 130 hours of initial footage became the forthcoming “Murder on Middle Beach,” a four-part HBO series directed by Hamburg as he attempts to do what the Madison police force couldn’t: find out who brutally killed his mother, and why. But it had turned into a cold case by 2013, when Madison (whose name is a coincidence he was born in Atlanta) decided to make a documentary for a film school project. It was a grisly crime that shocked the seaside town of Madison, CT. Barbara Beach Hamburg, Madison’s 48-year-old mother, had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death, her body hidden under a pile of lawn-furniture cushions outside their Connecticut home. This isn’t funny.’ ” Barbara Hamburg īut it wasn’t a joke. “My initial response, which I know now is a part of grief, was, ‘That can’t be right. Hamburg, now 29 and living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, thought it was a mistake, or a bad joke. “And when I called, she said, ‘Mom’s dead.’ She was crying. “I thought she had gotten in trouble or something,” he told The Post. One of my best friends reached out to another friend, who was with me, to say my sister really needed to talk to me.” Hamburg’s younger sibling, Ali, had sent word that Madison shouldn’t call back until he was sitting down. “I was at Chik-fil-A with a bunch of friends, and my phone was broken that day. Madison Hamburg was on a lunch break during film school on March 3, 2010, when the call came. Indigenous group furious after Columbian president gives blessing for doc on Amazon survivor kids Wham! doc reveals why George Michael hid his sexuality for so long Shocking story of Mexico's first serial killer-a female wannabe wrestlerĮxclusive beach town torn apart by shark attack
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