Where do the Sackler family live?

The gruesome faces of evil: Mortimer Sackler Jr., and his wife Jacqueline Sackler.  The 40 or so members of the Sackler family have been the chief beneficiaries of the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.  And a few of these Sacklers are surprisingly easy to find.

Unless you've been living under a rock these past 20 years, you're probably aware there's a drug crisis in the United States of America.  

This drug crisis is an order of magnitude larger than the previous (CIA-sponsored) heroin and crack cocaine crises of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

It turns out that Americans, who live in a dystopian capitalist nightmare from which they cannot awake, and who have watched helplessly as their jobs have been sent to Asia to be performed by child laborers (or robots, as the case may be), are uniquely vulnerable to becoming drug addicts.  

Who could have imagined such a thing?

In any event, the main drug fueling the most recent crisis has been a prescription painkiller known as Oxycontin. 

This post isn't about how Oxycontin came to be overprescribed by medical doctors who were paid off by its manufacturer, Perdue Pharma, to do so.  

And it isn't a post about how the Sackler family, the owners of Perdue Pharma, became vastly wealthy from the misery and suffering of countless Americans. 

You can piece together that whole sordid story in many places, including here and here and here.  

And here.

You can watch John Oliver give a breakdown of it.  You can even watch a documentary about it.  

You don't need Thee Optimist to explain what happened.  The information is widely available.

This is a much simpler post than any of that.

This is Theresa Sackler.  She is the widow of Mortimer Sackler, Sr., one of the three brothers who founded Purdue Pharma.  She is a direct beneficiary of human suffering to the tune of billions of dollars.  Check out all the facial surgery she's had.  Nip, tuck, nip, tuck.  What an uggo this overpriced call girl is.
  

Terminate... with extreme prejudice.

Suppose you're the uninhibited type, who enjoys getting out there and doing stuff.  You like to meet new friends, let's say.

And suppose further that some new friends you might want to meet are members of the famous Sackler family.  Why you would want to do that is your own affair, and not any business of mine. 

You might suspect that these are not easy people to meet, and that they live inside walled and gated compounds in exclusive areas like Greenwich, Connecticut, and Bel Air, California.  You would be right to suspect that.

But a few of them live in Manhattan.  And whereas Manhattan can be a pretty exclusive place to live, anyone is free to walk around on the streets.

You never know who you're gonna meet on the streets of Manhattan.  When Thee Optimist was a yoot of 15, he met and chatted with legendary actress Katherine Hepburn right out on Park Avenue one sunny afternoon.  He even helped her hail a taxicab.

The above pictured Theresa Sackler lives in the building below, which is located at 980 Fifth Avenue.  To be clear, 980 Fifth Avenue is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 79th Street, which is a very pricey neighborhood indeed. 

980 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City.  Notice the people standing around outside.  Anyone can stand there, if they want.  Theresa Sackler might be standing there.  YOU could be standing there.

It's always pig hunting season

Since you're in town anyway, where else in Manhattan do Sacklers happen to live?

Well, the family as a group (as well as one of their shell-game corporate entities) owns the Alfred Rossin House, the four-story townhouse at #15 East 62nd Street.  

This home is between Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue, very close to Central Park.  It was built in the 1870s, and is thought to be worth in the neighborhood of $50 million. 

Seems like there might be something unfair about people who profited from immense suffering getting to keep their fancy homes.  Does it not?

15 East 62nd Street, half a block from Central Park.  Sackler family members come and go from here on the regular.

Anywhere else?  Sure, let's do one more, shall we?  

Pictured below is another Sackler heir, another beneficiary of their foul misdeeds.  Her name is Ilene Sackler-Lefcourt, and she is the daughter of Mortimer Sackler, Sr. with his first wife Muriel.

Ilene Sackler-Lefcourt is not the daughter of Theresa Sackler.  In fact, Theresa was Mortimer's third (trophy) wife, and she and Ilene are just about the same age, mid-70s or so.

Is there anything we can find to like about Ilene?

Nah.  Not really.

But if there were, what would it be?

Well, she founded and runs a non-profit organization focused on children's mental health.

Not sure if they've done anything worthwhile.  Could just be another way to glom money.  Weirdly (or maybe not), the offices of the non-profit are located at 17 East 62nd Street, right next door to the townhouse shown above.

Ilene owns an apartment at the famous San Remo building, at 145 Central Park West, between 74th and 75th Streets.  This building is less than a mile and a half from her office, not that I think she ever walks to work.  

The San Remo has been, and is, home to many, many celebrities.  These include (among others) Bruce Willis, Bono, Tiger Woods, Billy Squier, Steven Spielberg, Donna Karan, Glenn Close, Dustin Hoffman... you get the idea.

Bono and Billy Squier once had a neighborly war over Billy Squier's fireplace smoke backing up into Bono's penthouse.

To give you an even better idea of the quality of the place, Madonna tried to buy an apartment there, but she was rejected by the Board.

In other words, if you go there looking to meet Ilene, you're just as likely to do some star-gazing.  

The twin towers of the San Remo.  It's a big building, with a lot of fancy people inside.  Good luck trying to meet new friends there.

Words of Wisdom

"For decades, the Sacklers have put themselves and their profits before people, and, under their leadership, Purdue committed crimes that helped fuel the opioid epidemic."

- US Senators Richard Markey, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, Maggie Hassan, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Joe Manchin, from a letter urging the Department of Justice to investigate the criminal activities of the Sackler family, February 16, 2022.