By Thursday afternoon, the Montauk boutique where Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra had worked through hot summer days was cleared of its wares. The signature mirror, bearing the East x East swimwear brand she had created, stood against the mahogany stall. Many of the sunloungers were vacant in the late afternoon and the attendants now used the vacant stand to stack the cushions for the evening.
The pop-up boutique, right on the beachfront below Gurney’s Resort and Seawater Spa, represented the Irish woman’s small piece of Montauk real estate and her vivid business dream, no small feat in a rarefied slice of Long Island where real estate has had a transformative and hallucinogenic impact on what was, for decades, a ramshackle fishing town.
Summer workers on the beach came to know the Irish woman as she had worked at her boutique through last summer and this. They are reluctant to say too much. “Everyone is very tight-lipped,” says one young man.
“We were friendly, but not ‘friends’, you know,” says another beach worker, and looks upset as soon as she begins to speak.
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“I see her here each day. We speak. She was nice. A good person. It is sad. Everyone ... we are just very, very sad about it. And shocked.”
[ Irish woman found dead on New York yacht was successful entrepreneurOpens in new window ]
We make the short walk cross the pale sand to the wooden frame and she points out how everything had been so beautifully arranged. She says some friends of Nolan-O’Slatarra’s had arrived in the morning to dismantle the boutique. They were in tears as they began to take stands and clothing away. It is an upsetting scene. At the back of the stall other items of the inventory have been bagged up, awaiting collection.
“She was just 33. This is young. It makes me want to follow my dreams. Because ...”
Her thoughts fade out. This is a gorgeous stretch of beach, but apart from the small crowd in front of Gurneys, desolate too. The Atlantic has few swimmers. Gurneys has an indoor saltwater pool for guests of its 158 rooms, which go for around $1,200 nightly in high season. On Wednesday a statement was issued by the Spa: “We are deeply saddened by the tragic news regarding Martha Nolan and extend our sincere condolences to her family and loved ones. While Martha was not an employee of Gurney’s, we were proud to host her East x East pop-up and admired her entrepreneurial spirit and creative vision.” And it is clear from recent social media postings that Martha was delighted with her collaboration with the resort, too.
Nolan O’Slatarra’s place of work was five miles away from the Montauk Yacht club where she spent her final hours on Monday night. The full circumstances and the cause of her death have yet to be explained. What has been ascertained is that police from East Hampton Town station arrived after receiving a 911 call from a man reporting a woman unconscious on a boat. Afterwards, it was confirmed that although attempts by nearby Good Samaritans to revive her had taken place after the alarm was raised, medical personnel declared her dead at the scene.
The Suffolk County Police department initially released a statement confirming its homicide squad was investigating. On Wednesday, that statement was updated to confirm that an autopsy “did not show evidence of violence and her final cause of death is pending further examination”.
The identity of the person who was with Nolan-O’Slatarra on the yacht before and during her moment of distress has not been made public. A spokesperson for the Suffolk county police says they do not anticipate that its investigating team will be speaking about the case, unless something “unusual” is deemed to have happened.
But tragedies of this nature are extremely rare in Montauk. The details – a young woman; a Montauk yacht club; reports of a late-night anguished cry for help on the docks – meant it got the full front-page treatment from the New York Post. Because Nolan-O’Slattara’s career was built on selling an elusive lifestyle brand through social media, where projection and aspiration and real life are often impossible to distinguish, curated snapshots of her life were quickly repackaged as the backstory to that life.
A first-person piece she contributed to the Irish Independent in February 2024 chronicled her determination, from a childhood in a farming home outside Carlow, to go it alone and shoot for something that combined a commerce and business education, entrepreneurship skills with a fascination with aesthetics and glamour. Meanwhile, her grieving family have been given scant detail as to what happened to cause the death of their daughter and sister as they made preparations to travel to the United States.
Ripple, the name of the boat where Nolan O’Slatarra died, remains docked at Montauk Yacht Club, one of the last vessels at the end of the main dock directly in front of the club and swimming pool. Since releasing a statement of sympathy, management has instructed its staff not to speak publicly about the events of Monday night. The executive director repeated on Thursday morning that the club had nothing more to add, at least until after the investigation is completed. The morning atmosphere was laid back - guests checking in and out; laughter and splashes from the pool-area. Resort towns are transient: new guests might well have been unaware of any tragedy.
“The Hamptons” has, since the advent of social media and reality shows, acquired global cachet as a coda for new wealth and luxury. But it’s a small strip, beginning at the Shinnecock Canal and snaking through Westhampton – nicknamed “Wronghampton” by snarks as it’s on the less pricey side of the canal – and on through the old-money Southampton and Bridgehampton and glitzy East Hampton, which finally leads into Montauk.
Montauk had its own identity but in my eyes, and in the eyes of many, it’s just another Hamptons location
— Local journalist Brian Harmon
By Thursday night, Montauk was readying itself for what may be one of the last hurrahs of summer: the mid-August evenings are already cooling and it is easy to imagine how forlorn this place must become once autumn hits. As a tourist town, its moneymaking potential is compressed into three months. It doesn’t take long to figure Montauk out: its touristic evolution is evident in the 40- and 50-year-old motels that were built to attract ordinary summer families, before the limitless draw of the nouveau riche Hamptons finally infiltrated the farthest strip of Long Island, which for decades had retained a sort of independence.
“That’s true, that’s spot on,” says Brian Harmon, a veteran New York journalist and Long Island native who now curates the Greater Long Island news site.
“Montauk used to be much more family oriented. Middle-class people could afford to come here on vacation but now, I kind of think its lumped in with the Hamptons. It had its own identity but in my eyes, and in the eyes of many, it’s just another Hamptons location.”
So now, Montauk is a strange mix of Atlantic seascapes and jaded places with jacked-up prices alongside beach front fantasias and coastal properties snapped up for colossal sums and redeveloped into private palaces. Even the old motels command room rates that range from $300-$700 nightly in summer. Newer enterprises, such as The Surf Lodge, have been transformed into meccas for the influencer-generation that leave it impossible for even the patrons to figure out where the advert ends and the fun begins. The change is much to the annoyance of long term residents and old-school holiday makers. One local joke about Montauk is that it’s a drinking town with a fishing problem. Another local saying is that Montauk is the most expensive zip code in America.
And it was in this rarefied world of summer hustle and limitless wealth that Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra had, since moving to Manhattan a decade ago, managed to stake her claim. It should have been the beginning. Nobody down at the beach front was sure of what would become of the boutique stall next summer.
