The search for answers in Montauk Death continues

The mysterious death of a beautiful woman at the Montauk Yacht Club made international headlines over the summer. Nearly five months later, county police have yet to announce an official cause of death, but the search for answers continued through media outlets, revealing new details, including, in November, the first account from the man who was on the boat with her the night she died.

Martha Nolan O’Slatarra, 33, was found unconscious on a boat docked at the club just after midnight on August 5. East Hampton Town Police initially responded and pronounced him dead, and around 4 a.m. the scene was turned over to Suffolk County Police Department homicide detectives, according to a news release issued that evening.

The last official update from county police came on Aug. 5 — the day after the death — announcing that an autopsy performed by the county medical examiner found that the body “showed no evidence of violence” and that “the final cause of death is pending further examination.”

The day after the death, several media outlets published statements from witnesses who were on other boats docked at the club that night, describing a naked man running onto the dock from the boat, screaming for help. Two of those witnesses had boarded the boat and attempted CPR on the woman, they said, and they made the initial 911 call that led city police to the scene.

The naked man was identified in the press as Christopher Durnan, 60, owner of the boat she was found on. He was reportedly the only other person on the boat that night, but his relationship with Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra was not immediately clear, inspiring further speculation about what might have caused the sudden, non-violent death.

Over the next few weeks, photos of Ms. Nolan-O’Slatarra made the front pages of newspapers and tabloids in the United States and Ireland, where she was born, with the news of her death accompanied by every detail that journalists could glean about her life. Originally from a small town in County Carlow, Ireland, she studied business and digital marketing at University College Dublin before moving to New York in 2015 with entrepreneurial aspirations.

She had since been involved in several business ventures, but her main focus at the time of her death appeared to be East They had opened a summer pop-up at Gurney’s Resort and Spa in Montauk just a month before her death, and Ms. Nolan-O’Slatarra allegedly told friends that she was going to the yacht club that evening for a meeting to discuss the business, and texted her boyfriend, who was out of town, to say she would order an Uber taxi home around 1 a.m.

His mother, Elma Nolan, told The Independent on August 6 that she felt “numb and in shock” and that police had not told them anything about the circumstances of the death. The family was informed that a final autopsy report, including the results of toxicology tests, would take at least three months, according to the media outlet, and requested a second private autopsy, which was carried out before the body was flown back to Ireland for funerals. (A family source told the outlet in November that they were still awaiting reports from both exams.)

After the funeral, which took place on the morning of August 20, there was a lull in coverage of the case — until November, when New York magazine published a detailed report that included stories from Dylan Grace, the co-founder of East X East, and Robert Holdman, a lawyer representing Mr. Durnan, speaking publicly for the first time about his client’s account of the night.

According to the story “The Mysterious Death of a Hamptons Fashion Star,” Mr. Durnan, an insurance executive, had invested in East struggling to keep the business running.

Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra met Mr Durnan at the club at 7.30pm on August 4, and the two sailed on his fishing boat, Hell in a Bucket, before moving to his other boat, Ripple, at around 9.30am. They discussed business on deck for about an hour, Mr. Holdman said, until Ms. Nolan-O’Slatarra “suddenly went limp” around 10:30 or 11 p.m. Mr Durnan thought she was having a heart attack and tried to perform CPR, but “she left almost immediately”, her lawyer said. “She wasn’t responding.”

“He watched his friend die traumatized. He is absolutely destroyed,” Mr Holdman said, explaining that his client had taken off his clothes before fleeing the boat because they had been “soaked” by Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra’s vomit. He said “there was no pause” before Mr. Durnan ran for help, although the account leaves a gap of at least an hour between when Ms. Nolan-O’Slatarra lost consciousness and reports that Mr. Durnan ran from the boat, naked and screaming, leading a passerby to call 911 just after midnight.

The lawyer also told the magazine that his client and Ms Nolan-O’Slatarra “had actually dated” and that he had met her family in Ireland, but when questioned further he reportedly “walked back” his comments, saying Mr Durnan “loved him like a friend”. Asked if his client had denied having a previous romantic or sexual relationship, he said Mr Durnan was “not interested in sharing anything like that, whether it was an absolute ‘no’ or an absolute ‘yes’.” I don’t think he thinks it’s just for his memory.

Arthur Aidala, a New York criminal lawyer who has represented Ms. Nolan O’Slatarra’s family since August, commented on the story during an appearance on NewsNation the week after it was published.

“Obviously this is a primary person who is being monitored, because it’s common sense,” he said of Mr. Durnan, adding that “no one is sure at the moment” about the hour-long discrepancy in his story. “As far as we know, he was the only one there, so the police are primarily trying to check what he was doing.”

“I can tell you that we are very pleased with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office – they are very focused on this matter,” Mr. Aidala continued, explaining that he had helped the family navigate the American justice system “out of the kindness of his heart.” [his] heart” since they became aware of their situation.

“My heart breaks for them. They come from another country,” he said. “It’s the Christmas time of the year, where Martha goes home and celebrates in Ireland with her whole family and, you know, they’re devastated by this. And to not have answers is very, very frustrating and upsetting.”

A county police representative, contacted by email last month, confirmed that their investigation is “continuing” and that there is “no new information at this time.”