Antony Baekeland

Who was Antony Baekeland?

Antony Baekeland was not yet 30 when he died in a Riker's Island prison by suffocation. He was discovered in his cell with a plastic bag (how ironic since his great grandfather invented the plastic with which it was made) tightly wrapped about his head which was covered with a blanket. His death enacted a new rule on Riker's that no inmate was to be allowed to lie in their bunk with their head covered. Another rule enacted due to Antony's death was that no inmate could be in possession of plastic bags sufficient to cover one's head. Antony, by all accounts, was artistically gifted and extremely intelligent. When his parents (Brooks and Barbara Baeleland) separated (they never divorced) he was 21. His father had run away with a girl (Sylvie Baekeland Skira) that Antony had brought home to meet his parents. There are conflicting reports as to whether she was his girlfriend as Antony had homosexual tendencies. At any rate, his father running off with Sylvie (Brooks Baekeland married her a month after Barbara's death) was a constant cause of turmoil for Antony for the remainder of his life. The day before Brooks and Barbara's 30th wedding anniversary, Antony stabbed his mother (Barbara) to death in the kitchen of their London flat located at 81 Cadogan Square. After 8 years in Broadmoor (an English institution for the criminally insane where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia) he was freed mainly due to the efforts of a multitude of his mother's friends and sent back to New York to live with his elderly maternal grandmother (Nina Daly). Within a week, he had stabbed her multiple times in an attempt to "put her out of her misery" and was sent to Riker's Island for attempted murder (Ms. Daly survived the attack). Barbara Baekeland admitted to numerous associates and friends that she had begun years earlier having sex with Antony in an effort to "cure" him of his homosexual tendencies. In his will, Antony left half of his sizable trust fund to his grandmother, Nina, and the other half to a peasant couple who were domestics for him and his mother in Mallorca. He said he never felt quite as content as he did when sitting on their hearth with them.