After she left her homeland alone as a teenager, Sabina Khorramdel found life as an artist in New York City. And now she had earned a residency abroad — if she could raise the money.
“You have an amazing gift and soon all the world will see,” a man, Thomas Gannon, who owned a Pennsylvania tile company, wrote on a website where she was raising money for the trip. He gave her a $1,000 gift, her largest, adding, “I love you
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On Oct. 28, a housekeeper found Ms. Khorramdel, 33, dead in a nearly $1,500-a-night guest room in a luxuriously austere spa-resort in the Hamptons, according to the Suffolk County police. The police said she had been murdered, but provided no details about the killing or the motive.
By Wednesday, Mr. Gannon was also dead. The police, who described him as the suspect in her murder, said he had shot himself in his home in Honesdale, Pa., in the Poconos.
Mr. Gannon, 56, had been Ms. Khorramdel’s boyfriend and benefactor, according to Elizabeth Phillips, her mentor and former art professor at the State University of New York at Purchase.
“She was naïve about the consequences of this type of relationship,” Ms. Phillips said. “Nobody imagines anything like this, but I did say be careful.”
Ms. Khorramdel was killed at the Shou Sugi Ban House in Water Mill, a place that seemed the sort of transcendental sanctuary she was eternally seeking, built on “a spirit of openness and exploration,” according to its website. “We welcome diverse points of view and are especially galvanized by the strength of women and the wisdom of community,” it says.
Out front, a giant stone Buddha sits cross-legged before a sleek reception center. Beyond it are 13 studios in stone and artfully weathered wood, wreathed by beach grass. Guests can soak in wooden Japanese hinoki tubs, sleep on Kassatex linens and sample recipes by a chef who has won a Michelin star.
A day after her body was found, yellow crime scene tape fluttered beside the Buddha and the native white pine.
Ms. Khorramdel and Mr. Gannon had dated since at least 2021, Ms. Phillips said. It was unclear how they met, but they had traveled frequently. They went to Pennsylvania and to New York City, where they stayed in high-end hotels in trendy areas like the East Village — at Ms. Khorramdel’s request, and Mr. Gannon’s expense, Ms. Phillips said.
When Ms. Khorramdel needed an Uber home from an art opening or a visit with friends in the city, Ms. Phillips often saw her call him, sometimes at home in Honesdale, to send her a car.
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Soon they were traveling the world, often to wellness retreats like yoga or meditation centers on trips he paid for, Ms. Phillips said. Ms. Khorramdel had built a new artistic practice based in meditation and deep listening, she wrote on her own website, and their excursions reflected that.
Mr. Gannon was quiet and reserved, Ms. Phillips said, and Ms. Khorramdel was his effervescent counterpoint. Often, when they visited Ms. Phillips at her home in Sunnyside, Queens, he would sit outside in his parked car. After several instances, the professor became uncomfortable and insisted he be invited upstairs.
Ms. Khorramdel’s art was a way to heal, her mentor said.
She was the eldest of three daughters in a family from Tajikistan, according to a statement published by a friend. As a toddler, civil war caused her family to relocate to Turkmenistan; there, the oppressive government pushed them to Crimea while she was in middle school, according to an online biography shared by Harvestworks, an organization that granted her an artistic fellowship. They later returned to Tajikistan.
She arrived alone in New York City in 2009 at 17, hoping to attend a prestigious art school. But she had little money and lived in Queens, knowing few people and seeking work and stability. Ms. Khorramdel studied at Borough of Manhattan Community College before attending SUNY. She married Franklin Rosas, of Richmond Hill, Queens, changing her last name to his in 2021, according to court records. It was unclear if they ever divorced. Mr. Rosas did not respond to efforts to reach him.
Her art became multidimensional, from vibrant watercolor to performance to sound, often focused on Central Asian women. In 2023 she founded Ruyò Journal, a magazine to amplify Central Asian art, and published a book of work by women artists from the region — projects she told Ms. Phillips were in part funded by her romantic partners.
“These men were a source of funding for her work and her various explorations,” Ms. Phillips said. “A lot of them were to heal, she said, herself.”
Unlike her other suitors, Mr. Gannon showed an ardor and intensity that was unnerving, Ms. Phillips said. She encouraged Ms. Khorramdel to apply for grants, so she wouldn’t have to rely on money from Mr. Gannon, who owned Majestic Tile, Granite and Flooring in his hometown, which has since shut down.
Mr. Gannon had recently built Ms. Khorramdel a house in her homeland, she told Ms. Phillips. Her online biography said she was based between New York and Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital.
But, Ms. Phillips said, her student confided early last year that she had planned to break up with him.
“He was a man who had given up, it seemed like, his entire life, to be devoted to her, follow her, travel with her,” Ms. Phillips said. “I warned her if she was getting bored with him it was dangerous, to be with somebody where they purely supported you. ” She added: “I didn’t see him as someone who would give her up easily.”
Last March, Ms. Khorramdel was arrested in Miami and charged with battery, under circumstances that were not immediately clear. The case was dismissed a month later, according to the Miami-Dade County Clerk of the Court; a mug shot shows her with a black eye.
On Tuesday, about 10 p.m., police cars and ambulances descended on 19 Hidden Brooke Drive in Honesdale, Mr. Gannon’s home, Giselle Serrano, a neighbor, said. She has lived next door for the past year and dog sits for Mr. Gannon’s college-aged son, Justin, who she said lives there without his parents. He told her his parents had divorced, Ms. Serrano said. “All I can think is: his poor son.”
Mr. Gannon’s son and former wife did not answer calls seeking comment.
Just beside the hotel off Montauk Highway is the Parrish Art Museum, nestled in a town where murders are vanishingly rare; the last time anyone can recall violence at a hotel was in 1860: It was an attempted murder, jotted down in a local doctor’s journal and preserved in the stacks of the East Hampton Town Library.
Kristine Nemeth, 52, the Parrish museum’s development assistant, was stunned by the death. “It doesn’t seem real,” she said.
Far from the elite Hamptons hamlets, in Kazakhstan, Berlin and Tajikistan, Ms. Khorramdel’s family and friends absorbed the artist’s death with shock and pain, they said in text messages and social media posts.
“Sabina moved walls so that gardens could flourish,” the journal she founded posted on its Instagram account on Wednesday. “Inviting everyone seeking light.”
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