Then a beam of light revealed Gabriel had been shot several times in the face. His head lolled slightly to one side, as if he were unconscious. At first the officers thought he was alive. Next to it, in the shadows, Gabriel was seated, motionless, bound to a chair with wire wrapped around his ankles and wrists. She was immobilized, frozen-a statue carved from ice-with a strange, frightened look on her face, as if confronting some unseen terror.Ī gun was on the floor. Alicia seemed oblivious to the presence of the police. Her white dress glowed ghostlike in the torchlight. Alicia was discovered standing by the fireplace. They shone torches around the room, illuminating it in intermittent beams of light. The officers made their way along the hallway and into the living room. The house was in pitch-black darkness none of the light switches worked. It arrived at the Berensons’ house in just under three minutes. Barbie phoned the police, and a car was dispatched from the station on Haverstock Hill at 11:35 p.m. Half an hour later, their neighbor, Barbie Hellmann, heard several gunshots. In the end, Gabriel’s shoot ran late, and he wasn’t driven home until eleven p.m.

It’s likely she spent the day painting in the summerhouse at the end of the garden, which she had recently converted into a studio. She had an upcoming exhibition and was behind with her work. Not much is known about Alicia’s movements. He spent the day photographing models on a rooftop for Vogue. from the house he shared with Alicia in northwest London, on the edge of Hampstead Heath, and he was driven to a shoot in Shoreditch. On the last day of his life, Gabriel rose early. The day he died was the hottest of the year. He was killed on the twenty-fifth of August-it was an unusually hot summer, you may remember, with some of the highest temperatures ever recorded. Gabriel Berenson was murdered six years ago. Apart from her technical skill, her paintings have an uncanny ability to grab your attention-by the throat, almost-and hold it in a viselike grip. All I can offer is my opinion, for what it’s worth. And you might well accuse me of being biased. Her talent will always be overshadowed by her notoriety, so it’s hard to be objective. I don’t know enough about art to say whether Alicia Berenson will stand the test of time as a painter. It has none of the visceral quality of Alicia’s best work. I find his stuff rather slick and shallow, to be honest. Since his death, the price of his photographs has increased astronomically. He had a distinctive style, shooting semi-starved, semi-naked women in strange, unflattering angles. They were both artists-Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer.

ALICIA BERENSON WAS THIRTY-THREE YEARS OLD when she killed her husband.

The book the silent patient