The mysterious death of the teenager who posed as a Russian billionaire
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Who was Zac Brettler and what led to his tragic death?
This is The Guardian.
Today, the teenager who pretended to be a Russian billionaire and was found dead in the River Thames. For decades, London has been a magnet for global wealth, a flashy playground for the super rich. To one teenage boy, it contained an elite scene he desperately wanted to be part of, the oligarch class. Not just rich, but powerfully connected billionaires who amassed such huge fortunes with so few questions asked, they helped turn London into what was called the dirty money capital of the world. Zach Brettler began posing as the son of one. Within months, he was found dead on the riverbank in central London. He was 19 years old.
How did Zac Brettler's double life as a faux billionaire begin?
In his explosive new book, author and New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe has tried to uncover what the Metropolitan Police failed to. What really happened to Zach? How did he become ensnared in one of London's most dangerous circles? And who is responsible for his death? From The Guardian, I'm Lashana Iqbal. Today in Focus, Patrick Radden Keefe on a fatal fall into London's dark underworld.
Patrick Radden Keefe, welcome to Today in Focus.
It's lovely to be with you.
Now, you're a New Yorker writer, staff writer, and author of some of the best nonfiction narrative books of the last decade. And your new one, London Falling, is about the life and mysterious death of Zach Brettler. It's about a lot more, but it's mostly about Zach. How did you come upon this story?
It came to me in the strangest way. I was living in London in the summer of 2023. I was producing a television drama based on my book, Say Nothing. And I was just sort of sitting on a chair between shots and a guy plopped down next to me, a stranger who was visiting the set that day. So I just started chatting with the guy and he said, I might have a story for you. And he said, I know this family, I'm very close with them. They lost a son in mysterious circumstances in 2019. And after he died, they learned that he'd been pretending to be the son of a Russian oligarch. When I heard that, what I said to this guy was, listen, if this family will talk to me, then I'm in. Right. But I went back, I remember going back to my apartment that night and Googling Zach Brettler, death, Thames, and not finding anything.
They had kept his death very quiet. There was no mention whatsoever in the press on the internet that he was even dead. And so the family wasn't sure that they wanted to talk. And I think that they had been feeling very isolated for years in trying to figure out what had happened to their son. And we then had this kind of delicate process where I really wanted them to go on the record with me, but I also didn't want them to feel as though I was kind of twisting their arms or I didn't want them to kind of say yes on the day and then later come to regret it.
So who was Zach Brettler? Can you tell me what you learned about him?
He was the second child of this couple, Matthew and Rochelle. There was an older brother named Joe. And Zach, who was born in the year 2000, was a kind of fun, zingy, unpredictable little boy, a boy who did voices and told jokes and could do impersonations and accents. You know, not everything he said was completely reliable, even from a very early age.
What changes occurred in London that influenced Zac's life?
He sometimes was putting a little spin on the truth to entertain people. As he got older, he ended up going to a school called Mill Hill on the outskirts of London. He came from a very particular kind of family. He had... Two grandfathers who were Holocaust survivors. One of them had become a very famous rabbi in London. And he grew up, I would say, upper middle class. His father worked in finance. His mother was a freelance journalist. A very comfortable family, but also a family that was quite modest in terms of their approach to religion. money and wealth and conspicuous consumption. And he got to this school, Mill Hill, at 13 and found himself surrounded by the children of oligarchs, the children of very wealthy foreigners in many cases who had come to London and wanted to send their kids to good English schools.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who was Zac Brettler and what led to his tragic death?
0:00–1:12
2
How did Zac Brettler's double life as a faux billionaire begin?
1:12–4:12
3
What changes occurred in London that influenced Zac's life?
4:12–7:51
4
What was the role of Zac's family in understanding his death?
7:51–11:16
5
What circumstances surrounded Zac's final night before his death?
11:16–15:31
6
How did the police handle the investigation into Zac's death?
15:31–18:52
7
What deeper issues does Zac's story reveal about London's elite?
18:52–20:44
8
How has the perception of wealth and crime in London shifted since Zac's death?
20:44–32:16