february1–14, 2021 | newyork 41to Pittsburgh and they married. Though they lived together for five
years, Klein didn’t know who Gladstone really was, it seems, and still
doesn’t. “I think I only know like one percent of what has really
happened to her,” he says.
Their 2013 separation agreement stipulated Klein would
pay Gladstone $25,000, an amount they have been fighting
over ever since. Klein claimed that Gladstone had taken
money from his business account and “concealed her romantic
involvement with another woman with whom she eventually
cohabited in New York.” (It didn’t help his case. “There was
no evidence that the payment to Wife was contingent upon
her remaining celibate, single, or heterosexual,” the court
said.) This was the woman on Christopher Street with whom
Gladstone had settled in the city. Though their relationship
ended in 2014, Gladstone and Lily stayed at her apartment
on and off for years.
Gladstone appears to have begun skipping out on rent in the
West Village not long after she and the woman broke up. In
September 2014, she moved into an apartment on Bank Street,
where, according to the landlord, she stopped paying rent four
months before she moved out, leaving an unpaid debt of around
$9,000. Klein says that every time he came to visit Lily,she and
her mother were living in a different place. In 2015, he filed for
custody in Allegheny County as part of their divorce dispute.
In 2017, Gladstone moved into a studio on West 13th Street
belonging to Matt Titus, a former celebrity matchmaker who was
hastily subletting the four remaining months on his lease. The
studio was so small “you could cook from the bed,” Titus says, and
Gladstone did not disclose that she would be moving in with a kid.
Gladstone, whom he had met via Craigslist, paid for only one
month. One day in July, Titus and a friend waited until Gladstone
left, then ran up to change the locks. Gladstone returned and
called the police, who said Titus was performing an illegal
lo ckout—which he was—and forced him to give Gladstone a new
key. When Titus’s lease ended in September, Gladstone remained,
and Titus himself was evicted by the management company; by
the time she left in November, he owed $20,000.
In September of that year, during her stay at Titus’s studio,
Gladstone briefly left the Village to book a room in Morningside
Heights in the apartment of a man in his 50s named Paul. He too
was a single parent who worked in film and was so cash-strapped
he had illicitly converted part of his living room into an extra bed-
room cordoned off by French doors. Paul met Gladstone on Airbnb
but negotiated a steeply discounted, slightly ambiguous,off-the-
books arrangement. She and Lily could stay—but only if she paid
up-front. Gladstone told Paul that she’d had to “flee Pennsylvania”
because of her husband, he says, and that her West Village place
was being renovated. He didn’t think it was so strange that she
wanted him to pretend, in front of Lily, that they were friends.
Gladstone paid piecemeal at first, then stopped. When Paul
told her he would be changing the locks if she didn’t pay,she sent
several long, heated emails demanding a full refund: “What an
enormous loss of time, energy, and money you’re wasting for all
of us—and how undeniably jarring the results to my daughter
and me,” she wrote. She accused him of leaving open a window
as a “tactic” to give Lily mosquito bites so bad she had to see the
school nurse. After receiving no update on when they would be
leaving, Paul confronted Gladstone in person, standing several
feet away from the bathroom in which Lily was brushing her
teeth, prompting Gladstone to accuse him of “harassing” her. To
Paul, it felt like a threat: “Whatever my child has said or says to
her teachers,” Gladstone wrote, “the administration, nurse, ther-
apist at school or elsewhere ... is fully within her rights.”He had
a friend come over to make sure he wasn’t alone when they
packed up and left.Gladstone also stayed at boutique hotels like the Marlton and
the Maritime—and was arrested in November 2017 for paying
for the rooms with her ex-girlfriend’s credit card. According to
police records, Gladstone (using her ex’s AmEx information)
spent $11,719 at the hotels between September and November,
and with her Citibank account spent $15,292 on purchases
including Lyft rides and items from Amazon. She pleaded not
guilty, and a restraining order was issued on behalf of her ex-
girlfriend. Gladstone is currently being prosecuted for three
felony counts. Parents at P.S. 3 say it was as if Gladstone was
made of Teflon—she had been arrested after dropping Lily off
at school and acted like it was all related to her custody drama.
A month later, Gladstone found Russell and Bajada’s place on
Airbnb, just around the corner.onherwalkbacktoBarrowStreet, Russellfelta strangemix
ofrelief andfear:relief becauseshefiguredthat Gladstone’son-
goingcriminalcasewouldhelpgetheroutoftheapartment,and
fearbecauseshewasstartingtothinkthat shehadbeenconned
farmoreaggressivelythanshe’d everimagined.In herlongtext
accusations,Gladstonehadusedsomeofthesamephraseswith
Russellthat shehadwithothers;like Paul,Russellhadbeen
accusedofintimidatingLilyandwasterrifiedofbeingaccused
ofworse.Shebegansiftingthroughanagonizingcatalogueof
warningsigns:textsfromGladstone,desperatetostayagainaf-
ter their initial visit, beggingtopay $50foronenightat the
apartment, lest she and Lily endup“ina hotellobby(iflucky)
again.” Russell had chalked theseuptothegeneralchaosof
Gladstone’s divorce proceedingsandunpredictableworklife.
Now she was understanding thattheitinerancywasa permanent
PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY HEIDI RUSSELL (GLADSTONE) st ate—no, not just that. It was herM.O.
G s a
f i(Continued on page 81)