Peter Nygard, the flamboyant Canadian trend mogul, constructed a virtually billion-dollar fortune hawking slacks and blouses at Sears, Walmart and his personal retailer in Occasions Sq.. Often known as a hard-partying Peter Pan, the person Forbes dubbed “The Polyester Phenom” was usually surrounded by younger ladies and threw legendary events at his houses within the Bahamas and Los Angeles.
However it all got here to a halt in February when the FBI raided Nygard’s Manhattan workplace. The bust got here only a week after 10 unidentified ladies filed a federal lawsuit accusing the 78-year-old of a “decades-long sex-trafficking scheme” during which he “recruited, lured, and enticed younger, impressionable and sometimes impoverished youngsters and ladies, with money funds and false guarantees of profitable modeling alternatives” — solely to, allegedly, sexually assault and rape them. On April 22, 36 extra ladies joined a class-action grievance towards Nygard.
The brand new guide “Predator King: Peter Nygard’s Darkish Lifetime of Rape, Medicine and Blackmail” (Scorching Books) by Melissa Cronin tells this darkish story. (Nygard’s lawyer, who has despatched a cease-and-desist letter to the guide’s writer, informed The Submit: “‘Predator King’ recklessly presents a one-sided, unreliable, and wholly deceptive portrayal of the allegations towards Mr. Nygard.”) Right here, an tailored excerpt chronicles how Nygard allegedly used his energy and privilege to reap the benefits of folks.
A lot of the alleged criminal activity is claimed to have taken place in and round Nygard’s 150,000-square-foot property in Lyford Cay, Bahamas, which featured faux volcanos spouting dry ice, a gymnasium on the seashore, statues of nudes supposedly modeled on Nygard’s exes, a “disco hut” with cameras below the flooring, an underground Mayan-themed cave housing 30 automobiles and an indoor swimming pool with glass via the center, which allegedly had dolphins on one facet and sharks on the opposite.
Huge cauldrons come to life, blazing with flames. The eyes of concrete Mayan-style gargoyles and snakes glow like embers. Indignant organ chords in a minor key shoot out throughout the ocean, the seashore and the encircling properties: the foreboding first notes of the theme to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera.”
When Peter Nygard was in residence at Nygard Cay, neighbors say, that was the nightly soundtrack. Within the booming early 2000s, Nygard Cay was a playground for lingerie and bikini fashions flown in from Las Vegas and different main US cities.
In line with Nygard’s [house manager], Richette Ross, his staffers used Fb posts and messages to advertise upcoming events, which provided “free dinners, massages, pedicures, and boat rides” to company—“primarily females,” stated Ross. “Mr. Nygard didn’t just like the competitors.”
As soon as the get together started, although, Nygard would kick off a twisted competitors of his personal, she claimed. As company arrived, they’d be photographed and entered into Nygard’s private database. He even rated them upon entry, Ross claimed: A, B, C or D, with A being essentially the most stunning. Ross claimed [those] ladies needed to have what Nygard known as “a pleasant bathroom … a pleasant ass. It needed to be large and spherical.”
Ross claimed, “All through the day, he’d ask a specific woman if she’d like to remain the evening.” If she stated no? Ross alleged, “Then there’s all the time drugging.”
Ross stated that she personally witnessed one in every of Nygard’s bartenders drop a capsule into a lady’s drink.
“Round 10:00, we have been nearly able to shut down,” Ross claimed, when she noticed the woman once more. “She was crying … bare … within the workplace. Disorientated.”
Tragically, in response to Ross, this wasn’t an uncommon prevalence. She claimed, “It occurred usually.” She even stated that not less than as soon as, she noticed a lady “escape” from the property, solely to be introduced again by Bahamian police, apparently towards her will.
When the New York Occasions lined the sexual assault accusations towards Nygard earlier this 12 months, it revealed that two accusers interviewed had then recanted and stated that they had been paid to lie by Ross. (Nygard has additionally claimed that his billionaire neighbor, Louis Bacon, with whom he’s feuded for years, has paid folks to make false statements about him.) Nevertheless, Ross denied having paid anybody to lie and handed a polygraph check supporting her denial. Within the guide, Ross alleges that she herself even fell prey to her boss’ depraved scheme…
Nygard’s girlfriend provided [Ross] a glass of wine. It appeared uncommon, and she or he declined the supply to concentrate on her work. Nonetheless, Ross stated, “She stopped me and insisted I’ve that tumbler of wine.” “As I used to be going up the steps … I felt a warmness coming over my physique. I turned to inform [Nygard] I wasn’t feeling good. I bear in mind happening.
“After I got here to,” Ross alleged, “he was penetrating me. I might see from the mirror (on the ceiling). I knew he was on high of me. I bear in mind making an attempt to ease my method to the sting of the mattress … He raped me.”
Ross lastly stop working for Nygard in 2014. She discovered help in a neighborhood nonprofit group based to assist sexual violence victims. Ross even grew to become a kind of chief in the neighborhood, introducing different alleged victims to the group within the hopes of getting them remedy and the group help they’d by no means had.
Earlier than lengthy, although, Ross had made herself a goal. “At one level, I used to be mainly in hiding,” she alleged, describing threats that have been issued “on a regular basis.”
She even has alleged that Nygard went as far as to kill her household canine. The New York Occasions discovered that Nygard truly wired her $10,000 at one level, emailing Ross: “I despatched you cash to purchase a brand new canine.” (He blamed the canine’s demise on a political rival.)
In line with the guide, Nygard had nearly limitless energy to do what he wished within the Bahamas after bribing officers from the federal government’s Progressive Liberal Get together.
Former Nygard worker Richette Ross stated … she was personally tasked with placing collectively payoffs for high-ranking [Progressive Liberal Party] members.
[She claimed to have seen] “stacks of $10,000 bundles from the financial institution” stuffed into luggage for supply. For some, Ross stated even that methodology of handoff was too dangerous. She claimed that Nygard received artistic in his efforts to repay politicos.
“Mr. Nygard had required that I order some very massive fish,” she stated. “He had about $100,000 in $10,000 bundles. He informed me he wished me to interrupt them up, roll them, and put them on this fish.”
In line with information obtained by the Bahamas Tribune, Shane Gibson [a member of the PLP] acquired $94,131.10 deposited into his Miami checking account from the Nygard Corporations in 2012 and 2013. The donations have been often $5,000 or extra, and have been deposited on a semi-regular foundation, marked “providers” or “journey.”
When confronted with the information, Gibson, the Minister of Immigration and Labor on the time, informed the Tribune that they have been marketing campaign donations, in addition to monetary contributions to group applications he was spearheading, like scholarships for native college students. Gibson would later be photographed at one in every of Nygard’s “pamper events” in 2014. (Gibson didn’t reply to The Submit’s requests for remark.) With Nygard’s help, the PLP rolled to victory in 2012 and the designer was fast to assert credit score.
In line with courtroom paperwork obtained by the Tribune newspaper … shortly [after the election] the federal government “decided that acceptable acreage needs to be leased to Mr. Peter Nygard” so he might … develop a stem cell facility as part of what was termed a “touristic growth.”
Nygard admitted to having [met with government officials], however his attorneys later claimed that the minutes of that assembly had been fabricated, and that he had no want to “curry preferential remedy by the Bahamian authorities.” The marketing campaign to get his stem cell mecca constructed, although, would eat him for the subsequent a number of years.
Nygard, obsessive about staying younger, ended up establishing his stem cell analysis firm in close by St. Kitts. The alleged function: to make use of aborted fetuses from his pregnant girlfriends to offer him with recent stem cells.
Nygard appeared to recommend that one thing like that could possibly be afoot when he talked concerning the know-how behind his therapies publicly. “I will be the solely individual on the earth,” he bragged, “who has my very own embryos rising in a petri dish.”
After I got here to … he was on high of me. I bear in mind making an attempt to ease my method to the sting of the mattress.
– Peter Nygard’s former home supervisor Richette Ross, claiming in ‘Predator King’ that he drugged and raped her
One among his girlfriends, Suelyn Medeiros, wrote in her 2014 memoir a couple of journey she took with Nygard to Ukraine, the place he was having stem cell analysis executed.
“He requested, ‘Suelyn, have you learnt what one of the best stem cells are?’” she writes.
She did: Embryos.
“Right!” she says Nygard responded. “In the event you received pregnant and had an abortion, we might use these embryonic cells and have a life’s provide for all of us: you, your mom and me. Lots of people are doing it.”
Medeiros says she “was past shocked.”
“This was the sickest factor I’d ever heard Peter say,” she writes. “I couldn’t communicate for a second … Lastly, catching my breath, I stated, ‘Peter, I don’t imagine in abortion.’”
On Feb. 13, 2020, a class-action grievance on behalf of a number of Jane Does was filed within the US District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York and revealed Nygard’s depravation.
On so many nights, it was alleged, the identical story would unfold: Nygard lures the victims to his bed room or has them ushered there by groomers, below the false pretense of discussing a possible modeling contract in personal, the place he makes use of bodily drive or coercion or understanding the sufferer has not attained the age of 18 years, to have interaction in business intercourse acts and coerce and drive them to have interaction in undesirable sexual acts …
The quantities of cash offered to the victims is greater than most of [them] have seen at one time of their total lifetimes … He guarantees many victims that he’ll contact them about future modeling contracts. Nevertheless, within the overwhelming majority of instances, Nygard by no means intends to comply with via with the modeling contracts and tells his victims this for the only function of sustaining management over them.
[He] additionally threatens the victims with implied or categorical threats of retribution in the event that they inform anybody about what occurred, usually implying or expressly threatening to have his victims killed if they don’t cooperate.
Right now, Nygard’s Lyford Cay property is quiet — no extra “Phantom of the Opera” melodies — after it was seized by native authorities in 2018 due to unlawful dredging, in response to Canada’s Nationwide Submit. The mogul’s firm filed for Chapter 15 chapter in New York final week, and Nygard is reportedly in Winnipeg, Manitoba, awaiting the end result of the FBI investigation.