I Knew This Guy In Law School

Ken AshfordCrime1 Comment

Not well though.  He was in one of my study groups:

GardnerAndrew Gardner’s body was found under a stand of trees in a bird sanctuary in tony upstate Bedford – a mile from the sprawling gray cedar-shingled Colonial home he no longer shared with his college-sweetheart wife and their three children.

Gardner, a charming, socially connected lawyer with a prestigious New York firm, had moved out of his hillside house in Armonk and was bunking in a White Plains apartment with his recently widowed father – overwhelmed at how his storybook life was quickly unraveling.

He was living under a cloud – accused of a rape he swore he didn’t commit while attending a business conference in Atlanta in August.

A graduate of the elite Collegiate School in Manhattan, Harvard University and NYU Law School, Gardner, 39, spent a week in jail before he was released on $225,000 bail.

A month later, he attempted suicide – slashing his wrists in a failed bid to escape what an old Harvard friend described as an "unbearable humiliation."

Two weeks ago, when he didn’t return home as expected, his father, retired ad exec Allen Gardner, panicked and went to the police.

He told cops that Andrew had not returned to either the White Plains apartment or the Armonk home he had lived in until recently with his wife, Kimberley, their twin 13-year-old sons and 9-year-old daughter.

"He stated that his son is suicidal," the White Plains police noted in a missing-person’s report filed Oct. 30.

The alarmed dad said he had last spoken to his son the previous day "and he seemed to be fine at the time."

The officers contacted police in nearby Bedford and learned that an officer there had run the plates on Gardner’s 2004 metallic-gray BMW-325 shortly before midnight after a patrol cop spotted it parked in the Butler bird sanctuary.

When Bedford cops returned to the sanctuary, the BMW was still there, the key in the ignition.

Gardner’s body was found in the woods about 200 yards away.

It’s believed he took his own life.