The beautiful blonde designer had one thing in mind when she boarded the fancy yacht in the Hamptons that hot August night: boosting her fledgling fashion label.
But the boat’s owner? He had other plans, her family claims.
Martha Nolan, a 33-year-old Irish immigrant, had arranged to meet 60-year-old investor Christopher Durnan on August 4 to discuss his possible investment in East x East.
But a family source tells the Daily Mail the insurance tycoon appeared to have a very different evening in mind.
The pair had originally planned to meet at 4pm in a public setting, but Durnan allegedly texted her later, asking her to come instead to his yacht around 7.30pm, the source said.
Nolan’s wealthy benefactor had stocked the boat with many bottles of pricey Dom Pérignon champagne before she arrived.
‘It seems like it was intended to be a romantic interlude,’ the family source told the Daily Mail. ‘He was the one driving the boat as to when and where they were meeting.’
‘There’s no doubt they were drinking a lot of champagne,’ a second source added.
Bikini designer Martha Nolan, 33, and insurance tycoon Christopher Durnan, 60, allegedly met for a ‘romantic interlude’ aboard his Hamptons yacht where bottles of luxury Dom Perignon were ready to be popped before her mysterious death, family sources told the Daily Mail
Nolan’s body was discovered on Durnan’s yacht, the Ripple, and her family told the Daily Mail that the initial autopsy – shared privately but not publicly released by police – showed only ‘trace amounts of cocaine’ in her system, raising doubts that she died of a drug overdose
Close friends of Nolan sent her some chilling text messages the night of August 4, hours before she was found dead
The two set out on his fishing boat to share the bubbly and watch the Montauk sunset.
Later that night, Nolan was found dead on the yacht – and Durnan was seen running down the dock naked, hurling sunscreen at a neighboring boat and shouting for help.
Nolan had only ‘trace amounts of cocaine’ in her system – a revelation that has led her grief-stricken family to doubt she died of a drug overdose and question the account given by her companion that night, a source close to the family told the Daily Mail.
In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Durnan’s attorney, Robert Holman, claimed his client had stripped only because his clothes were ‘soaked’ in the designer’s vomit.
Holman said the pair had been sitting on the deck of the Ripple in the dark discussing business when Nolan suddenly went limp around 10.30 or 11pm. Durnan attempted CPR, he said, but she was already unresponsive.
Police were alerted by a bystander close to midnight – a timeline that appears to leave at least an hour unaccounted for between the moment Nolan lost consciousness and when Suffolk County police say they were called.
Holman maintained that ‘it all happened immediately,’ and added that one detail Durnan could offer investigators was that Nolan had excused herself twice that evening to use the restroom.
‘It could be an indication of someone going to the bathroom, it could be an indication of someone doing drugs, or it could be both,’ the lawyer suggested.
Her grieving family, who laid her to rest in August, told the Daily Mail that Nolan had originally planned to meet Durnan in a public setting – until he insisted they switch to his yacht around 7.30pm
Durnan’s lawyer claimed he and Nolan had been sitting on the deck of the Ripple in the dark discussing business when the designer suddenly went limp at around 10.30pm or 11pm
The fashion designer had recently celebrated the opening of her East x East popup shop at Gurney’s Montauk Resort and Seawater Spa and met with Durnan to discuss the brand on the day of her death
Police sources early on had called this a suspected overdose but were awaiting autopsy and toxicology results to make an official determination.
But according to Nolan’s grieving family, the tests so far have been inconclusive.
In lieu of waiting for results, the family ordered a second autopsy about a week to ten days after the initial Medical Examiner’s exam.
And according to the second autopsy’s findings, there were no visible signs of foul play.
‘There was no indication of drugs in her system that would have killed her,’ the source said. ‘There were only trace amounts of cocaine. And it could have been in her system for days.’
‘Our own autopsy didn’t show any cause of death,’ the source added. ‘There was no obvious cause of death, no blunt force trauma, no trauma, no signs of strangulation.
‘We were told she was a young and healthy woman,’ the source said.
Nolan’s family has yet to speak with Durnan and were skeptical when they read his lawyer’s account of that night.
‘Durnan was the last one with her,’ the source said, and noted the family is awaiting the official findings of police. ‘Her family wants to cross every t and dot every i.’
Photos taken the next morning showed a dusting of white powder on a seat inside the 50-foot cruiser. Durnan’s lawyer claimed Nolan went to the restroom twice that night – a sign, he suggested, that she may have been using drugs
Durnan, who is believed to split his time between his waterfront home in Florida and New York, has a fleet of supercars parked outside his Florida mansion, including a bright purple Lamborghini Urus worth $250,000
In his interview with New York Magazine, Holman said that while his client’s meeting with Nolan was strictly about business, he acknowledged that the two had previously ‘actually dated,’ even claiming Durnan had traveled to her hometown in Ireland and met her family.
But when pressed for details, the attorney appeared to retreat from that characterization, saying Durnan loved Nolan ‘as a friend’ and insisting the pair did not have a ‘hard relationship.’
A source close to Nolan’s family told the magazine that Nolan never mentioned anything about a relationship with Durnan, and that the family had never met him.
A separate family source who spoke with the Daily Mail repeated that assertion and said they’d never met Holdman and that Nolan had never mentioned him them having a relationship.
Chilling text messages revealed the chaos and confusion that unfolded before her death.
After leaving the dock, the fashion designer could not be reached, and her friends began to worry.
Her pals initially used the Find My app, which showed her location was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
‘lmao. I’m sure her phone died. Or maybe she’s dead,’ one of her friends wrote in an eerily prescient joke.
Nolan, however, responded about ten minutes later: ‘Lol I’m at the yacht club now, my phone is on.’
Although her family told our outlet the meeting may have been a romantic tryst, Durnan’s lawyer later walked back his own claims that they had been involved – despite admitting to NY Magazine that Durnan had visited Nolan’s family in Ireland and that the two had previously ‘actually dated’
Nolan had settled a divorce from her husband just months before her untimely death and was reportedly considering marrying her boyfriend, Nick DiRubio
About an hour after her last text message, Nolan was slumped over, unresponsive.
‘Chris is distraught,’ his lawyer told New York Magazine. ‘He watched his friend die in trauma. He’s absolutely destroyed.’
He added that his client ‘really liked Martha and he wanted to help her succeed.’ ‘He was hopeful and he liked her energy and liked the way she presented it to him.’
Nolan was living an enviable life in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, posting TikToks of herself sipping champagne, taking private jets and helicopter trips with her boyfriend, Nick DiRubio, whom she reportedly planned to marry.
She had finalized her uncontested divorce from ex-husband Sam Ryan in April, according to court documents filed in New York Supreme Court.
She worked in Ireland until 2015 before moving to the US, where she founded several companies, including fashion accessories brand Duper and a luxury swimwear label.
As police now continue to probe what may have happened to the fashion designer, they are searching for potential drug dealers, according to the New York Post.
‘[These dealers] may or may not have known [they were selling] poison to this girl, but that doesn’t matter,’ a law enforcement source told the New York Post in August.
The final post-mortem report, which will include toxicological, histological, and other testing, will take at least three months to conclude.
If the toxicology report comes back positive for drug usage, the dealers could face manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide charges, police sources said. Federal authorities could also become involved.
