The Back Alley Archives

Remember that Miami Heat "fan" (insomuch as people who occasionally attend Heat games can be considered fans) who flipped off Joakim Noah last night? Yeah, we're getting more background on her and it appears as if last night was the least crazy thing she's been involved in.

The Sun-Sentinel has identified the woman as Filomena Tobias, widow of former CNBC commentator Seth Tobias. Her daughter told the Sun-Sentinel, "She's embarrassed, but she is being a good sport. She was having fun just like any other fan. All she has to say is that people need to get a life ... I have to say she still looks really hot." Then you Google her and things become interesting. Like the fact that people - including Seth's brothers - think she murdered him.

From a N.Y. Times article in 2007:

The brothers, Samuel, Spence, Scott and Joshua, claim that Filomena Tobias drugged her husband and lured him into the pool, where he drowned. A former assistant to Seth Tobias has told the police that Filomena Tobias confessed to him that she had cajoled her husband, who was on a cocaine binge, into the water, promising him sex with a male go-go dancer know as "Tiger." A lawyer for Filomena Tobias has called the claims outrageous.

Before Seth Tobias wound up dead in his pool; before the accusations surfaced that his wife was a thrice-divorced pill-popper and cocaine user who drugged Seth and killed him for his money; before the claims that Seth had led a secret life in which he drank too much, snorted a boatload of coke, and liked to pick up male hustlers and strippers, including one named Tiger; before Seth’s brothers filed suit in Palm Beach to block Phyllis from getting her hands on Seth’s estimated $25 million estate; and certainly before I found myself face-to-face with the main source of all the dirt—a 300-pound gay con man and Internet psychic with a long criminal history named Billy Ash who claims to have been the couple’s personal assistant and may well have fabricated all or part of his claims regarding Seth and Phyllis because he’s a proven liar and self-serving attention seeker … Before all of that, Seth Tobias was known to the world, to the extent he was known at all, as an upright cable-TV talking head and multimillionaire hedge-fund manager. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

There were more fights, more police visits. The following February, one night when she hadn’t returned home from dinner by 2 a.m., Tobias drove to Cucina, a West Palm Beach restaurant, and confronted Phyllis, who was having drinks with a male friend.

“You’re a whore!” Tobias screamed, according to police reports.

A passing officer witnessed the rest: “F. Tobias immediately responded by striking S. Tobias across the left side of his face with an open hand. The force of the slap turned S. Tobias’ head and made a loud popping sound … it became clear she was intoxicated. I had to grab F. Tobias so she could not get close enough to strike S. Tobias again. I placed F. Tobias in handcuffs.”

Phyllis spent a night a jail, but the charges were dropped.

On it went. The West Palm Beach police answered a number of calls to the couple’s home in their first year of marriage. Just before the couple’s first anniversary, Phyllis confronted her husband with evidence of an affair. Tobias responded by filing for divorce on March 10.

Three days later, the two engaged in an instant-message exchange:

Phyllis: YOU ARE NOT CAPABLE OF STOPPING TO DRINK, OR DOING YOUR COKE OR BEING HONEST …

Seth: I am sad about this.

Phyllis: I HOPE YOU GET AIDS WIT ALL THE WHORES YOU FUK TOO.

Seth: I am sorry … take a breather.

Phyllis: NOW IT’S WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Phyllis cited her husband’s infidelities, gambling losses, and unspecified “illicit activity” in her request for spousal support. She asked for nearly $47,000 a month, including $9,429 for vacations, $1,000 for makeup, $4,400 for clothing, and $3,000 for unreimbursed counseling fees. Her lawyer at the time argued that Tobias had promised a lifestyle grander than the one she could afford on Jay Jacknin’s alimony. Tobias responded by accusing his wife of forging his signature on expensive purchases, including a $74,000 Porsche.

Tobias’s marriage was also tanking. Phyllis would often appear at the office and demand cash. “Give me 15,000 fucking dollars. Give me 15,000 fucking dollars,” she hissed on one visit, according to the former Circle T staffer. Tobias had promised Phyllis that he would stop using cocaine, but she didn’t believe him. In the fall of 2005, the couple was having dinner at Bice, a Palm Beach restaurant, with six other people. Just after sitting down, Phyllis jumped from her seat and placed her lips over Tobias’s nose and began sucking. She was searching for cocaine residue.

As Tiger tells it, he was living in Los Angeles a few years ago when he went to get his hair cut in West Hollywood. Out front were two attractive women. Tiger, who says he is bisexual, chatted them up. He said the girls were interested in rough sex, and the trio headed back to his RV in Orange County. “We were tying each other up,” says Tiger. “When it was my turn, they handcuffed me and threw a blanket over my head. Then they let in a guy who starting beating the shit out of me and forced drugs in my mouth. I woke up in prison. Then when I heard about Seth, I listened to the 911 tapes and heard Phyllis’s voice. She was one of the women. She must have heard about my affair with Seth.” What Tiger was saying, in other words, is that a jealous Phyllis Tobias traveled all the way across the country, deliberately hunted him down, lured him into a lurid sexual tryst, and assaulted him. Jacknin emphatically denies it. “That story is such bullshit, I can’t even believe I’m answering it.”

Jacknin then floats a possible defense for Phyllis Tobias that won’t win her wife of the year but might get her off the legal hook. “Look, the law isn’t did she not call 911 quick enough or did she not pull him out of the water quick enough. The law asks whether she caused his death, and that is not provable.” The request for summary judgment was recently continued by the judge. Who knows, in the end, who’ll get what?