A 30-year-old man shot his hedge fund founder father dead inside his New York apartment after the pair argued over the son's allowance, police said.
Thomas Gilbert Jr was arrested on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon over the death of Thomas Gilbert Sr, 70, in Manhattan. He was being held pending arraignment and the law office representing him had no comment.
Police said Gilbert Jr went to his parents' home on Sunday afternoon and asked his mother to go out to get him some food. About 15 minutes later, she got a "bad feeling" and came back, said Robert Boyce, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department.
"She found Senior on the floor with a bullet hole in the head," said Mr Boyce. "She also found a gun resting on his chest with his left hand covering it."
But Mr Boyce said it was a "staged suicide" - his son was trying to cover up the killing.
Officers with a search warrant went to Gilbert Jr's apartment, where they found magazines, loose bullets and a shell which matched the gun found at the scene, police said. Authorities were investigating how he got the gun.
Gilbert Jr was in debt and had argued with his father over his allowance, police said.
In 2011, the elder Gilbert founded Wainscott Capital Partners Fund, which has 200 million dollars in assets. Industry publication Hedge Fund Alert said in an August 2013 article that the fund had a net return of nearly 25% in 2012. He was a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School.
Gilbert Jr also attended Princeton, graduating in 2009 with a degree in economics. Authorities said he had no recent work history.
Gilbert Sr worked on Wall Street for more than 40 years, according to his profile on Wainscott's website, and he previously co-founded Syzygy Therapeutics, a biotech asset acquisition fund. He also was founder and chief executive of an online teacher-education company called Knowledge Delivery Systems Inc.
Wainscott was not available for comment. The hedge fund invests in biotechnology and health care stocks. The fund focuses on stocks traded on large exchanges like the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange, and the minimum amount for investors is 500,000 dollars.
The younger Gilbert has a pending criminal case in the town of Southampton, on eastern Long Island.
He was arrested September 18 on a charge of criminal contempt. Southampton town police say he violated an order of protection issued in Brooklyn in June.
He has pleaded not guilty and is due in court on February 2.