CHAPTER 4

Mr. and Mrs. George Kogan

George was a dream come true for Barbara, the kind of man she’d always hoped to meet—educated, already successful, and from a wealthy, influential family, not to mention pleasant looking. One of George’s most endearing qualities, however, was his deep affection and love for his family. He described for Barbara what it was like living in Puerto Rico in the thriving tourist area of San Juan, its port, the harbor, and his family’s rural farm. His taste for living a posh lifestyle came through loud and clear to Barbara when he flew her first class to Puerto Rico to meet his extended family. She could hardly wait to move there permanently.

George eventually relocated with Barbara to the island. She had only lived in New Jersey, except for her time in New York City while she was in college, so she was excited about building a life somewhere new. Barbara and George settled in a nice apartment in the Condado district, a middle- to upper-class area just east of Old San Juan that offered a broad selection of accommodations and facilities in all price ranges. Luxurious homes nestled between high-rise condominiums and the shops, inns, restaurants, seaside parks, and museums that, as a whole, made up the Condado. Originally developed in the 1950s as San Juan’s first tourist zone, the Condado district was created in the likeness of Miami Beach. In the eastern area of the district was Ocean Park, a mile-wide beach encompassing residential homes and beach retreats.

George Kogan would soon have his own hotel on Ocean Park, which would make it possible for the Kogans to purchase an oceanfront penthouse on the Ashford Avenue strip, across the street from one of George’s cousins. Located on the top floor of the Mirador del Condado condominiums, it came replete with a swimming pool and a white-sand beach in its backyard, plus an incredible view of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Oh, George, it’s so beautiful,” Barbara said as she stood in their four-bedroom apartment for the first time and looked out the bay window at the ocean below. It even included quarters for a live-in nanny.

“It’s for you and our future children,” he said.

Very much in love, the Kogans wanted to share their good fortune by having a family of their own. They tried to have a baby. When they were unsuccessful, they decided to pursue private adoption. Their much longed-for baby boy, born in Passaic, New Jersey, arrived in Puerto Rico a week after his birth in 1966. George and Barbara named him Scott. A month later, without the pressure on the couple to conceive, Barbara became pregnant with their second son, William Stewart, or Billy, as his family took to calling him. San Juan, a metropolis on the north coast facing the Atlantic, offered miles of swimming beaches, and it was a healthy place to raise a family. The Kogan boys, just ten months apart, thrived.

Condado was also the location of the University of Puerto Rico campus, making it convenient for Barbara while she pursued her graduate degree. Barbara cared for the children and, with the help of a housekeeper and nanny, eventually went back to work as her husband’s business partner. For grade school, their sons attended public school, then went on to the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro, a Catholic preparatory school on the island.

The Kogan boys had a slew of cousins to play with, especially during family gatherings at the expansive Kogan farm. A main two-story home sat on the property, along with a smaller wooden house where farmhands lived. “It was a fabulous property. Absolutely beautiful,” said one cousin, “with lemon trees, orange trees, chickens, horses. Some of the family rode the horses. I just loved going to Uncle Solomon’s farm. It was a lot of fun, and there was so much to do.” Joining in on the fun now were George and Barbara. Another cousin, a woman a few years younger than George, would sometimes see Barbara at parties hosted by Ida. “I saw Barbara occasionally when my grandmother would have Sunday brunches and everyone would come over,” she said. “The gatherings were memorable and a Kogan tradition.”

In January 1968, when Scott and Billy were young, their grandfather Solomon passed away. He was just sixty years old. Solomon was not only the Kogan family’s father, uncle, and grandfather, he was the boss and the brains behind New York Department Stores de Puerto Rico. The patriarch of the Kogan clan was buried at the Jewish cemetery in San Juan, which the Orthodox Shaare Zion congregation oversees and keeps up through the International Jewish Cemetery Project. After her husband’s death, Ida continued with the weekend gatherings at the family farm.

For George and Barbara, San Juan was a comfortable, upbeat, family-oriented environment. Over the course of the next twenty years, George and Barbara lived the good life in San Juan, raising their sons, traveling, investing in real estate, running a variety of retail businesses, and dabbling in the casino industry. George continued working in his family’s business, albeit not full-time because of his busy schedule. The couple also owned and operated London House, a high-end jewelry store. Barbara’s teenage years in her father’s jewelry shop had come in handy. And George, like his father before him, had a vision, always thinking of ways to expand the couple’s enterprises. Theirs was more than a marriage; Barbara and George were a team. She thrived in that environment, in a tropical and trendy resort area, raising a family while working side by side with her husband. Together, they built a good life for themselves and their family. Barbara was living her dream: comfortable surroundings with a husband, two children, and profitable, growing businesses. Barbara felt as if she were living a charmed existence.

By all appearances, the Kogans were happy, as a couple, as a family, and as business partners. If they disagreed on something, they made a point of never arguing in front of their sons. Barbara had a day nanny for the boys but was still involved in their lives. When they traveled, they’d take along a nanny and the boys and mix business with family vacations, including trips to Florida and New York. As the boys got older, they accompanied their parents to Europe on buying trips.

Barbara and George were among the affluent in Puerto Rico. As a couple, they were part of San Juan’s high-society life. According to a cousin who’d worked with George and who asked not to be named, “George’s wife was always mentioned as one of the ten best-dressed women on the island. She was always in the newspaper. I knew her on a superficial basis. I saw them around San Juan. It was mostly at family gatherings.”

Unlike Barbara, George never dressed the part of a wealthy Puerto Rican. “I knew George from the store,” the cousin continued. “The whole family was in the department store business. George was not a sharp dresser like Barbara. He wore just slacks and a shirt. I never saw him in a suit, even at the store—except I did see him in a suit at my wedding in 1970.”

Barbara owned and operated a dress shop called Vog inside the Condado Beach Hotel. George, while working some in the family business, also continued to expand his own ventures. Soon, he opened Antiquarium, an antiques store. Shortly after, Barbara opened her own store and named it Ambiance, which the Puerto Rico Daily Sun once described as an “exclusive home furnishings shop.” The businesses opened “one after the other,” the cousin said.

George also ran the International Gem Enterprises, a company for which his wife served as vice president and secretary. In addition, he was president of the Magna Development Corporation, a nonresidential real estate group still operating today in San Juan.

As a sideline venture in the 1970s and ’80s, George managed prizefighters and boxers. “He owned their contracts. It was like a hobby for him,” said George’s cousin.

In addition, in 1979, George made an offer of $350,000 to purchase from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, Le Petit Hotel, which had previously gone out of business with control taken over by Banco Credito y Ahorro Ponceno, a local bank. Located in San Juan’s Condado section, Le Petit Hotel had been abandoned by its operators in 1971, a year after it opened. Because the building had been vacant for some time, it was collapsing and needed repairs. George was the only one who formally bid on it, according to court documents, and his cash offer to the bank was accepted. But a potential buyer sued the FDIC a year later for selling the hotel to George, who was mentioned but not named as a defendant in the civil suit. The plaintiffs asked that the sale to be reversed, explaining that they’d tried to buy the hotel but the FDIC instead sold it to George Kogan. The plaintiffs’ original offer to the bank had been $400,000, with financing. Bank representatives said in a reply to the suit that the bank had wanted no less than $490,000. Still, a month later, the bank turned around and sold it to George for a discounted cash arrangement of $350,000, which was why the plaintiffs sued.

According to the May 1982 decision by the United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit, however, the court sided with the FDIC that it was a sound sale and let the deal stand. “There are no allegations nor any indications in the record that the sale to Kogan was collusive or that the negotiations with the plaintiffs were a mere sham,” the court ruled. “There is no indication in the record that the decision to accept the $350,000 offer was the result of anything but the exercise of the FDIC’s discretion to sell the asset for those terms and conditions it deemed acceptable.” In 1981, George bought a second hotel, the ninety-six-room Ramada San Juan Hotel and Casino, just a block from the Kogans’ apartment.

Eventually, Barbara’s parents followed her to San Juan to live, as did her sister, Elaine, and they also went into business. Barbara’s father, Manny Siegel, for many years operated a few tourism magazines on the island, including the Caribbean Sun, a publication that Barbara and George owned but Manny Siegel ran. Barbara’s sister went to work in the couple’s casino, ultimately becoming a floor supervisor.

As the Kogans’ sons grew up, it was understood they would go on to college. Barbara believed in education and, even though George hadn’t finished his degree, he, too, pushed his sons to further their educations. After Scott graduated the twelfth grade, he enrolled in a Boston, Massachusetts prep school to improve his English. His brother, Scott, wanted to attend, too. With both boys out of the house, the Kogans found themselves adjusting to life with just the two of them.

After private high school, Scott studied accounting and finance at Sacred Heart University in San Juan, while Bill enrolled at Connecticut College to work on his undergraduate degree before transferring to law school. With their boys grown, Barbara suggested to George that they return to New York, near her New Jersey roots.

“The first 25 years of our marriage, I have lived in Puerto Rico with you. Now, let’s try the next 25 years in New York,” Barbara told her husband.

George agreed, and, in preparation for the move, they sold their controlling interests in the Ramada Hotel and Casino to a group of New York investors in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community. They then sold their four-bedroom penthouse apartment and purchased a smaller unit, also on Ashford Avenue in the Condado, which they kept for visits to the island and for their sons to use. Before the move, the couple also sold Ambiance, one of their stores in San Juan, for $1.85 million. Also, in 1985, in preparation for relocating to New York, the Kogans purchased an apartment at 61 East Seventy-seventh Street in Manhattan for $240,000.

George also sold off his interest in some of his other Puerto Rican businesses before he and Barbara moved back to New York. The farm property, where the family gatherings had taken place for years, was still a working farm and stayed in the family. George shared the land with other family members, who all were regularly paid out of profits from the farm, according to estate documents.

Then, George and Barbara returned to New York, the city where they had first met. Barbara’s parents and sister remained on the island, living in the same Condado apartment building, but in separate units.

In 1988, a year after George and Barbara moved back to New York, the Kogan clan sold the family’s chain of nine New York Department Stores de Puerto Rico. As one of Solomon’s sons, George received a hefty share of the proceeds. After the sale, “Everybody went their own way,” a cousin said.

But another reason George decided to return to New York and leave the Kogan clan behind in Puerto Rico was to be near his sister, Myrna Borus, who had moved from the island to New Jersey years earlier, after she married.

Despite the distance between them, Myrna had maintained a close relationship with her brother with regular phone calls to Puerto Rico and visits when business trips took George to the East Coast. But she did not know Barbara well. To her, Barbara was not a warm person. Myrna witnessed her brother slowly grow apart from his wife as George immersed himself in his various ventures and Barbara worked in her boutiques and attended high-society luncheons with the wives of successful businessmen in the San Juan area. Barbara, seemingly unaware of her husband’s growing distance, loved being mentioned on the society pages of the local newspapers. George, on the other hand, was content to keep a low profile as he worked hard to keep his businesses successful.

Myrna first met her sister-in-law not long after Barbara and George’s wedding in Virginia. “I think the reason they got married so quickly is that [George] didn’t want to go into the service, and, at that time, if you were married, you didn’t have to go into the service. Mostly, [Barbara] did her own thing and went her own way,” Myrna would say, pointing out that she and Barbara never formed a strong relationship.

Barbara viewed the Kogans’ move back to New York City as a new chapter in their life as a couple. Because their lives were busy, they’d been cohabiting more as friends than as a romantic couple, and Barbara looked at the relocation as an opportunity to rekindle the spark in their marriage. George, for his part, was looking forward to living near his sister. And as Barbara was soon to learn, he was about to make even bigger changes in his life than the move back to the States.

*   *   *

The Kogans settled down on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, living off the money they had made from the San Juan properties and businesses they’d sold. In June 1988, they began searching for a viable property in which to open a high-end antiques, art, and jewelry store. They found a prime location in the Madison Avenue area on East Seventy-sixth Street, a perfect spot for accommodating the rich and famous, and, in September of that year, they bought commercial space on the second floor. Madison Avenue, often referred to as “the fashionable road,” is considered a premier shopping boulevard, starting at Fifty-seventh Street and spanning up to Eighty-fifth. The 30 East Seventy-sixth Street site, known for its boutiques, was the same location as New York City’s then-famous Dining Room Table Shop. The Kogans were optimistic that location, location, location would pay off. After all, they each had extensive experience in retail, plus their shop would be a draw for Madison Avenue clientele, so they purchased the space for $600,000. The red brick, pitched-roof structure, built in 1925, was directly across the street from the Carlyle Hotel, so not only did it have potential neighborhood customers, but tourists as well. The antiques business was a natural fit for George, with his family’s history of running a chain of high-end department stores for as long as George could remember. They called their new store Kogan & Company, fashioned after James II Galleries, a popular high-end New York City antiques and retail store.

With the location set, Barbara began looking for a public-relations specialist to get out the word about the shop. She settled on Matthew Evins, owner of Evins Communications. Matthew appointed an employee, Mary-Louise Hawkins, as the lead publicist, along with a couple of other employees to work with Mary-Louise and handle PR for Kogan & Company.

Mary-Louise was well qualified for the job. She had gotten her history degree, with a focus on art, in 1985 from the private Ivy League Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Barbara instantly liked her and was impressed that Mary-Louise, the daughter of a wealthy owner of an oil retailing business, had studied ballet and attended the pricey and highly regarded Trinity School, a fixture on the Upper West Side since the late 1800s, as well as The Hotchkiss School, a boarding school located in Connecticut, two hours from New York. Mary-Louise was a socialite from the hamlet town of Manhasset, bordering the affluent North Shore on Long Island. Growing up, she’d lived in a beachfront home on an acre and a half with her sister and their parents, whom Mary-Louise once described as “country-club types.”

Hawkins was blonde, pretty, sophisticated, confident, and energetic, which impressed Barbara, as did the junior year of college Mary-Louise spent studying in Paris. One of Mary-Louise’s first jobs after graduating was at Sotheby’s, setting up exhibits. She then worked at Tiffany & Co., a premier jeweler, which influenced Barbara’s high opinion even more. Mary-Louise was raised in affluence and opulence. Barbara felt she had the exact touch the store needed.

Before her job with Evins Communications, Mary-Louise had worked for Matthew’s mother, Mary Evins, who ran in high-society circles in New York. Mary-Louise spearheaded publicity for Mary Evins’s projects. At Kogan & Company, Mary-Louise’s job was to raise awareness of the business, getting mentions and blurbs in newspapers and magazines, including gossip columns. She soon became familiar with the shop’s merchandise, which offered something for everyone, ranging from tables for $10,000 to coasters for $10, as well as pricey art and jewelry. Just Barbara, not George, had been working with Mary-Louise, although George and Mary-Louise had spoken once or twice on the phone.

To help even more with their new shop before it opened, the Kogans hired a store manager. They set up a meeting with Lia Fernandez, a manager from James II, which at the time specialized in nineteenth-century English porcelain and other high-end merchandise. The Kogans wanted someone with expertise in that area to manage their shop. The new manager was excited at the prospect of working in the Kogans’ new store and accepted the offer. George and Barbara talked about their plans for the store’s inventory and invited Lia on a purchasing trip they had planned for that August. During one of two meetings, they discussed a need for an additional person familiar with inventory and control systems. Fernandez suggested a woman she knew from James II whom she thought would be perfect for the job, so Barbara and George gave their new manager the green light to hire her. In addition, Fernandez hired four sales clerks, all of whom had worked for her in the past at James II. As the shop was about to open its doors for business, the Kogans felt everything was coming together nicely.

For the November 3, 1988, grand opening, they invited neighboring shop owners and residents, as well as the media, to their store. It was an exciting day for the Kogans and the store was abuzz with activity. That evening, at the opening-day party, Mary-Louise, looking luminous in a dressy suit, greeted visitors at the store’s entrance. During the party, Barbara approached Mary-Louise, pointed out George, who was across the room, and said, “You have to meet my husband. He tells me he thinks you’re attractive.” Mary-Louise at the time thought it an odd comment, but she brushed it aside. Even so, when she was introduced to George at the end of the evening, she thanked him for the compliment.

“I meant it,” he said to Mary-Louise. She in turn told him she was flattered. That first meeting was the spark that ignited their romance.

From the start, Kogan & Company, open seven days a week, catered to well-heeled clientele, tourists, and New York’s rich and famous. George and Barbara were pleased that the shop was off to a wonderful start. But it was short lived. Just ten days after the grand opening, on the morning of November 13, a Sunday, Barbara asked her store manager Lia to report to the Kogans’ apartment instead of to the shop. Once at their apartment, Barbara let Lia go, because she had disagreed with Barbara about the store’s rules. George blamed Barbara for the debacle. After all, it was Barbara to whom the manager complained that the rules, which included asking clerks to use a basement bathroom, were a “wrong decision, discriminatory, and would embarrass and dispirit the employees.” But Barbara put the rules into place anyway, and then decided to fire Fernandez. Barbara also informed the manager that she was firing the sales clerks, too. Thus, Barbara and George began running the store themselves.

A short time later, two of the employees, who were minorities, and the manager filed a discrimination lawsuit in US Federal Court against the Kogans that cited seven violations, including breach of an oral contract. The complaint named both Barbara and George. However, the employees singled out Barbara for asking them not to appear in public areas of the store when customers were present and to use the restroom in the basement instead of the one inside the shop. The Kogans argued bitterly over the suit. George hired attorney Martin I. Saperstein, with the law offices of Goodman & Saperstein. On the Kogans’ behalf, Saperstein countersued, asking that the court dismiss the case. The wheels of justice in federal court, however, often move slowly, and no decision would come for a couple of years.

Later, it would become clear that not just New York City employees had been displeased with Barbara as a boss. A former San Juan employee chimed in as well, via a New York Daily News online discussion forum on NYDailyNews.com. Identified only as the online name “Yoyo139,” the employee wrote: “I worked for the Kogans when they lived in Puerto Rico.… She was a real piece of work … She was extremely used to the lavish living—a real ‘princess’ in every sense of the word, and a drama queen to boot.”

Things did begin to settle down as George and Barbara put their energies into the shop. Barbara was pleased that George had taken such an interest in the store’s daily operation, including the public-relations part, which she had handled in the past. She felt as much a partner in the couple’s new business as she had in their earlier years in Puerto Rico. New York had been a good move for them, in Barbara’s mind. Mary-Louise, for her part, had occasion to meet with George in those early days to hammer out publicity strategies for the shop. From the outside, all looked well.

Meanwhile, the Kogans relocated their living quarters to the famed Volney Hotel (which had since been converted into a co-op) at 34 East Seventy-fourth Street between Madison and Fifth, just blocks from their antique store. But after living there a short five months, they realized they no longer needed a two-story apartment. Jazz singer Lena Horne bought it for $525,000—$285,000 more than they’d paid. Horne, who lived nearby, was one of the Kogans’ regular store customers. The couple had also bought a smaller, three-bedroom unit inside the Volney before their move from San Juan to New York, so their son Scott could use it while on break from college. After they sold their apartment to Horne, they bought yet another Volney apartment, this one smaller, to be near Scott.

Around the same time, Lena Horne, known for collecting antiques, was browsing inside Kogan & Company when a robber held up the store. Because the singer had been present, the media played up the story. With the bad press, despite the store’s prime location, the Kogans’ business floundered. They had been optimistic about the shop, but the New York market had turned out to be different from the resort clientele they had been accustomed to in San Juan. There, the Kogans’ businesses had thrived. However, their Madison Avenue shop suffered, and the Kogans were unprepared for that. They had poured money into the store’s inventory, not to mention investing in expensive improvements on the interior of the shop, plus the cost of hiring a public-relations firm.

It was Mary-Louise’s task, as the lead publicist for Evins Communications, to counter the bad press by garnering positive write-ups for the store. She was able to get mentions in the New York Post’s “Page Six” column and other tabloid gossip sections. Business increased and things were back on track—or so Barbara thought. Mary-Louise regularly stopped by the shop, and both Barbara and George enjoyed having her there. George said as much to his wife, going so far as to describe Mary-Louise as “vivacious” and “attractive.” Barbara did not think twice about George’s comments. In fact, she passed on the compliments to Mary-Louise, just as she had at the store’s grand opening.

Barbara even thought that Mary-Louise, twenty-six at the time, might be a good match for her oldest son, Scott, who was also single, twenty-two, and in college. She suggested to Mary-Louise that the two meet.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to set them up on a date?” Barbara asked George and a couple of friends. Scott and Mary-Louise met for a coffee, but there was no chemistry between the two, and they did not go on a second date.

Around the same time, George and Mary-Louise began spending more time together to work on strategies to give Kogan & Company a larger public presence. Barbara hadn’t given it a second thought, because she’d had no reason to distrust her husband in the past. She continued maintaining the store’s day-to-day operations, while George worked behind the scenes, purchasing merchandise and overseeing PR. The frequency of George and Mary-Louise’s meetings increased, and they began catching lunches together after their meetings. “In the course of our conversations,” Mary-Louise said, “he would ask me questions about where I grew up, what my background was, where I was educated, what my family was like. He asked me personal questions.” During one of their first lunch dates, at the upscale Plaza Hotel, their relationship became even more personal.

“He was friendly and sweet,” Mary-Louise later said. George confided in Mary-Louise that he had been unhappy in his marriage for some time. He’d grown—evolved, even—and, for him, the marriage had changed as he and Barbara grew apart, despite working together in their New York business. He’d done some soul searching about his marriage, but he didn’t want to try to salvage it. He told Mary-Louise he’d like to get to know her better and wondered if she’d be interested. Over the course of that lunch, George told Mary-Louise once again that he found her attractive. She didn’t refuse George’s overtures, despite the age difference, George’s marriage, and the betrayal of Barbara such a relationship would entail. Instead, Mary-Louise was flattered, just as she had been when Barbara had unwittingly relayed George’s compliment about her after the store’s grand opening party. That’s how trusting and secure Barbara had been in her relationship with her husband and how unaware she was that there was trouble in her marriage.

Soon, lunches at the Plaza graduated to breakfasts before work at Mary-Louise’s co-op apartment. “He often, when I was on my way to work, would come up behind me on the street and say, ‘Do you want to have breakfast before you go to work?’ I lived on Sixty-ninth and Third and his business was on Madison, so he’d have breakfast at my place on his way down [to work],” Mary-Louise would later explain.

The relationship turned even more personal in mid-November 1988 when George invited Mary-Louise to join him on a business trip to Puerto Rico. She hadn’t been there before, and she looked forward to having George show her around his home turf. They checked into the Caribe Hilton, an oceanfront resort on an exclusive seventeen-acre tropical peninsula near Old San Juan with a private balcony and a view of the lagoon. It could not have been a more romantic setting.

George was smitten, and Mary-Louise was impressed by the time she spent with the worldly older man. They soaked up the sun, enjoyed long walks on the beach, and indulged in the local culture and food. It was there, on his old stomping grounds, that George swept Mary-Louise off her feet. Old San Juan was also where, during their four-day stay, the twosome’s relationship turned from business-friendly to sexually charged. That romantic getaway would be one of the things that would rankle Barbara the most, once she learned of the adulterous relationship.

When George and Mary-Louise returned home, the relationship continued stronger than ever, unbeknownst to Barbara. Then, about a week after they returned from their trip, George reserved a room at the Plaza Hotel for Mary-Louise, took her to it, and told her, “If I come back tonight, it’s because I’ve left [Barbara] and I’m coming to you.”

“And if I don’t come back,” he added, “it’s because I can’t go through with it.”

That evening, George did return to the Plaza Hotel, with its old-world luxury and elegance. And he returned to Mary-Louise. Officially, George and Mary-Louise were now a couple; Barbara and George were no more.

That night was when Barbara learned the awful truth that her husband had been having an affair with Mary-Louise.

“I’m moving out,” George told her as he packed a bag.

“What are you saying, George?” she asked, stunned.

“Our marriage isn’t working,” he said. “I’m in love with Mary-Louise.”

Barbara did not take the news well. She felt betrayed, not only by her trusted husband of twenty-four years, but by Mary-Louise too. George was twenty years Mary-Louise’s senior, and, more hurtful to Barbara, Mary-Louise was two decades younger than she was. George didn’t want to discuss it. He had made up his mind. And there was no changing it. George could hardly wait to get back to the Plaza, where Mary-Louise was waiting for him.

Before he left the apartment, he told his son Bill, who had been staying with George and Barbara while he finished college, that he would call him. But Bill did not appreciate that his father had cheated on his mother. A bitterness toward George formed that evening, and it would last the next eighteen months.

While Mary-Louise and George celebrated his newfound freedom, Barbara and Bill remained at home, devastated by news of the affair and by George’s abrupt move out of the apartment he had shared with Barbara. Bill tried to comfort his mother, but he was at a loss for words. Like his mother, he didn’t understand what had just transpired. It all had happened so fast.

George had quickly become infatuated with Mary-Louise, and the feeling was mutual. Despite what was going on back home, Mary-Louise became his focus. Two weeks later, Mary-Louise and George took another trip, to St. Bartholomew Island in the West Indies, where they acknowledged they were falling in love with each other. Although George, in his mid-40s, was not strikingly handsome, his hair had held its dark color and he still had that boyish, friendly charm, coupled with a slight shyness that had attracted Barbara two and a half decades earlier. Despite the years, George’s demeanor was still endearing and appealing. For her part, Mary-Louise made George feel like a new man. He felt alive. He felt young. And, for the first time in many years, he was in love.

Though Jewish, he celebrated Christmas day with Mary-Louise’s family on Long Island and, the same month, he moved into Mary-Louise’s East Sixty-ninth Street co-op, a brown-brick, eleven-story apartment building that was erected in 1928 and converted to a co-op in 1982. It was just steps from the subway, a convenient location for George.

But having lost George so abruptly, especially to a woman entrusted to do work for the Kogans’ store, was more than Barbara could bear. So, on the day after Christmas, on Friday, December 26, Barbara picked up the phone and called Matthew Evins, Mary-Louise’s boss.

“Do you know that your employee is having an affair with my husband?” she asked the startled Evins.

Caught off guard, he told Barbara he would look into it and get back to her. That same day, Matthew summoned Mary-Louise to his office to confront her and get her side of the story. He felt partially responsible, because he’d been the one to assign Mary-Louise to the Kogan & Company account. Evins was all business, so this type of behavior shocked him.

“Do you have anything to tell me about you and George?” Matthew asked Mary-Louise after she stepped into his office.

“No,” Mary-Louise answered. She appeared surprised by the question.

“Are you having an affair with George Kogan?”

“No,” she told him.

“You’re sure? Are you intimate?”

“No,” Mary-Louise answered.

But, after they talked longer, Mary-Louise admitted that her relationship with George was more than just business.

Without hesitation, Matthew told Mary-Louise, “I’m going to have to fire you. You cannot consort with a client. It is unacceptable for you to see Mr. Kogan.” Mary-Louise had crossed the line, and Matthew felt he had no choice but to let her go.

That same afternoon, after learning about Mary-Louise’s firing, Matthew received a phone call from George.

“Look,” George told Matthew, “you’ve got to hire her back. It’s my fault. It is not her fault. Please, hire her back.”

“No way,” Matthew said.

George asked Matthew to meet him for a drink at a local pub to talk about it further, and Matthew agreed.

Once there, George again pleaded with Matthew, saying, “Please hire her back.”

“I can’t do that,” Evins said, telling George the same thing he had told Mary-Louise.

A couple days later, Matthew got another call from Barbara Kogan. She’d had a surprising change of heart.

“Please hire Mary-Louise back,” Barbara asked. “George is going to take this out on me. There are going to be recriminations. There is going to be retaliation. You have to hire her back.”

But Matthew again refused. He could not rehire Mary-Louise, he said, because she had violated the rules. It was unacceptable business behavior, and Matthew said he had no choice. He no longer felt confident in her. He also terminated his firm’s contract with Kogan & Company.

Shortly after, to ring in the New Year and to help Mary-Louise through the disappointment of losing her job, George took her to Anguilla, in the West Indies, where they spent five days. To George, it seemed like a fitting refuge, even though his wife and younger son were left at home, crushed by the unraveling of the Kogans’ marriage and trying to digest the recent turn of events.

Then, during three weekends in January, George and Mary-Louise also traveled to Miami Beach, Florida, and stayed at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa for a couple of days. After that, they rented a nearby apartment, on Palm Bay Court, for an additional twelve days. They were head over heels in love.

Barbara, however, was receiving the bills in the mail and was very much aware of all the places George and Mary-Louise traveled, causing her intense emotional distress. She felt betrayed by both George and Mary-Louise, and even at times blamed herself, because she’d been the one to hire Mary-Louise. In February 1989, using attorney Norman Perlman, Barbara filed for divorce against George for dumping her for the younger woman. Officially, adultery was the reason given for the divorce. Barbara had papers served on her husband, once he arrived home from vacationing with Mary-Louise, as he sat at a coffee shop around the corner from Mary-Louise’s East Sixty-ninth Street apartment. The day before, Barbara had packed up George’s clothes in suitcases and had them delivered to Mary-Louise’s apartment lobby.

Then, Mary-Louise was served a court summons as well, a few days later, as she sat inside the same coffee shop. Barbara wanted Mary-Louise’s statement about sharing rent with George, because Barbara was convinced that joint funds, shared by the Kogans, were being used to pay for apartment costs. But Mary-Louise, it would later be determined, lived rent-free in the apartment, which her father owned.

Barbara had not only lost her husband, but she’d also lost the store. Per George’s request, she stopped working at the shop, and George took over running it, eventually closing it down temporarily. Once his personal life settled down, he reopened it. But for Barbara, life as she knew it had ceased to exist. She was hurt. The hurt would gradually turn to anger as the divorce proceedings grew “acrimonious,” a tabloid would later report.

Amid the bad feelings during the divorce, there was some relief. In June 1990, Barbara and George each received the good news from the US Federal Court. A judge had dismissed the discrimination lawsuit filed against them two years earlier by some of their former Kogan & Company employees. Jurists ruled on the side of the Kogans, dismissing two of the claims and tossing out the remaining five allegations because of a “lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.” Besides recommending filing it as a civil suit, the court ruled there were no written employment contracts outlining the store’s rules and no witnesses who overheard Barbara telling the manager those rules; it was a matter of the manager’s word against the Kogans. The case lacked evidence to warrant a discrimination suit—thus the dismissal. It was a welcome relief to Barbara and George, especially while in the throes of their nasty divorce.

*   *   *

Once George had separated from Barbara, he underwent a transformation that was immediately noticeable to his friends and family. A friend, interviewed by the New York Post after George’s murder, said he was “happy. George and Mary-Louise were adorable,” the friend told the paper. “They told us they planned to get married. He always introduced her as his fiancée.” One of George’s cousins, raised in Puerto Rico with him, was pleasantly surprised with the positive change in George’s demeanor. He and his wife had seen George walking in the city one evening with Mary-Louise, holding her hand. It was about two months before the murder. George’s cousin and wife were on their way to Greenwich Village for dinner. “We were driving down Third Avenue on our way to the Village,” said his cousin’s wife, who asked that their names not be used. “‘There’s George!’ my husband said, pointing him out on the sidewalk. We rolled down the window and called to him. My husband stopped the car and George came over. He seemed so happy and full of life. They were going out for drinks. He invited us to go with them, and we said we were famished, coming back from one of our children’s events and heading to dinner, but said we would get together with them later. He wanted us to meet his girlfriend. He looked at Mary-Louise and told her, ‘These are my cousins.’ He was beaming and seemed pleased to have run into us.”

Also, the cousin said, “He seemed happy and smiling about extending his evening to us. That is something that would not have happened with Barbara. You never knew how she would be toward you. Sometimes she would be standoffish, not smiling and not friendly, and then the next time she would hug you and smile.”

They told George and Mary-Louise, “We’ll catch you the next time we’re in the city.”

“The next thing we knew, he was gone,” his cousin’s wife continued. “At that time, when we ran into him, he was the George I’d never before seen, unconcerned with material things and just happy.”

Another relative, who also did not want to be named, agreed. “He did come to life after Barbara. He completely adored Mary-Louise, as did she completely and wholly adore him.”

George’s sister, Myrna Borus, said she visited the couple in their East Sixty-ninth Street apartment. Borus also noted that her brother seemed happier once he left Barbara and moved in with Mary-Louise: “It was a wonderful relationship. [Mary-Louise] taught him how to live.”

But was his new life with Mary-Louise really a bed of roses? She and George were regularly cash-strapped, because, as Mary-Louise later explained it, George owed many people money, and many people owed him. On top of that, the court froze George and Barbara’s joint assets until the finalization of their divorce. Even so, George and Mary-Louise vacationed together in the Caribbean and Miami, staying at resorts. By all outward signs and despite the financial stress, they appeared to be happy.