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Dear reader,
Today, one of the first women to come forward with an allegation against the Alexander brothers took the stand during their federal sex trafficking trial.
Lindsey Acree, a Brooklyn art gallerist who first shared her story with the New York Times in 2024, testified on Tuesday about an alleged attack in the Hamptons during Memorial Day weekend in 2011. Acree, identified as “Victim 1” in the indictment, claims she was drugged and raped by Tal Alexander and another man when she was 25 years old. She has also filed a civil lawsuit against Tal, his brother Oren and a John Doe.
During her testimony, Acree said her friend invited her to a rental house in the Hamptons with Tal and other men. They took a train from Manhattan to East Hampton, where Tal and the other unknown man picked them up. While in the car, she asked Tal if he knew of Oren, who she had met in the city. Tal said he didn’t.
Acree said when they arrived at the house, it wasn’t what she expected. The home was quiet and empty, save for a couple who left shortly after.
Acree said Tal handed her a glass of wine before the four of them got in a hot tub in the backyard of the home. She said she remembered drinking some of the wine but not the whole glass. At some point in the afternoon, Boulos and the other man left her and Tal alone in the hot tub, where they stayed until around dusk. Tal then asked her to join him in the sauna.
As she followed Tal to the sauna, she said her body “felt heavy and slow, sort of almost zombie-like.” Acree said she felt disoriented and compared her memory that night to a flip book with pages missing.
In the sauna with Tal, she said she felt “bewildered” before he “became super angry and grabbed the back of my neck” and “pinned me down” on the sauna bench, she said. That’s when she became fearful that Tal was about to rape her, she said. Her next memory is another man walking into the sauna.
“It was sort of like a brace for impact situation,” she said. “Something bad was going to happen.”
She then remembers Tal and the other man leading her out of the sauna and into a gym at the home, though she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. There, she said she felt like she was getting weaker until eventually she “stumbled” to the ground and felt “paralyzed.”
She said she noticed the two men nod at each other before Tal left the room and came back with a tripod. After setting it up, she said she remembers the two of them laughing as they raped her.
“It was like I was there, but not there,” Acree said. “I wasn’t even a human being. I couldn’t help myself.”
The next morning, she said she woke up alone outside on a lawn chair. She found Tal in the house, who told her she’d had “quite the night” and said it was time for her and Boulos to leave.
Acree said that part of the reason she decided to testify was her memory of leaving and seeing two “really, really young girls” approaching the house. Acree asked them their age, and they said they were freshmen in high school.
“Leaving those two girls there is something I get very upset about,” Acree said.
Deanna Paul, an attorney for Tal, pressed Acree on what she characterized as inconsistencies in the story she first shared with the New York Times in June 2024 and later in her first meetings with the government, including when the alleged attack happened and which parts of it she remembered.
Paul questioned Acree on why she didn’t seek medical attention or call the police. Acree said she only spoke to the FBI after reading an article about allegations against Oren and Alon in The Real Deal in June 2024.
“I had probably the worst time of my life,” Acree said, responding to a question about an email she sent her mom at the time describing her trip as “a good time” despite the two men behaving like “assholes.”
“I’ve just learned that it doesn’t matter where you are or how glamorous the place is, if you’re with creeps, it isn’t fun,” Acree wrote in the email.
Acree added that after the trip, she went into a “downward spiral,” during which she quit her job and fell sick multiple times.
In the courtroom on Tuesday were the Alexander brothers’ parents, Orly and Shlomy, Alon’s wife, Shani, and the eldest Alexander brother, Niv. Also present were Marc Riedel, a Serhant broker who previously worked with Oren and Tal’s Official Partners and on the Alexander Team at Douglas Elliman, and attorney Jason Goldman, who has represented the Alexanders.
— Katherine Kallergis and Sheridan Wall
What we’re watching
- Kayley Brown, who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Alon in the Aspen attack included in the indictment, is expected to continue her testimony on Wednesday.
- Dr. Lisa Rocchio and Grace Snyder, an outcry witness, will testify as part of the prosecution’s case.
- A woman identified in the indictment as Minor Victim 3 could begin her testimony about an allegation from May 2009.
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