Interior designer Micky Hurley and graphic designer Malu Custer Edwards are the Chilean power couple accused of keeping their nanny in "slave-like conditions" on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Last week, the New York Post reported that Hurley and Edwards, both members of Chile's aristocratic elite, are in the midst of a lawsuit
Garnica started with the Hurley-Edwards family in Chile and came to America with them after being enticed with promises of $10 an hour, healthcare, lodging, and more. Once in Manhattan, the reality was much different: Hurley, Edwards, and their three children lived the high life, complete with glowing coverage in the New York Observer and New York magazine, which covered the clan's globetrotting sailing trip last year under the heading, "The Well-Heeled Family of Five." Garnica, on the other hand, alleges that she was refused a living wage while also being physically and emotionally abused.
Garnica followed the couple when they decided to move to SoHo so that Edwards could study graphic design at the New School. But Garnica alleges that when they arrived in January, 2011, everything changed. The children grew violent and the couple refused to feed her adequately, although they were regulars at Balthazar and "spent lavishly" on themselves.
Garnica says that the last straw came in March 2011, when a member of the Hurley-Edwards family hit her in the head with the refrigerator door. That day she walked out and went to Safe Horizon, a nonprofit support group for abuse victims. Soon after that, the state Department of Labor ordered Hurley and Edwards to pay Garnica more than $6,000 in back wages.
Two years later, as Garnica's lawsuit makes its way through the courts, a Chilean photographer named Roque Rodriguez has come forth to claim that penny-pinching, deceit, and vitriol are all par for the course when it comes to Micky Hurley. Chilean news outlet The Clinic published a group of emails this week purportedly sent between Hurley and Rodriguez, who apparently did some interior design photography for Hurley in 2009. After daring to request money he was still owed for the job in 2010, Rodriguez says he was subjected to an email assault that could have made Maryland's famed "deranged sorority girl
Ain't blue bloods grand?
The full email exchange, originally written in Spanish, can be found here. A translated version, courtesy of Victor Jeffreys and Peter Krupa, is below.
Asunto: Fwd: Mail de la discordia
Asunto: Caso Hurley
From: M&M Hurley <xx@yahoo.com>
To: roque rodriguez <xx@yahoo.com>
Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 12:34:50 PM
Subject:
Hi Roque, how are you? What happened with the photographs? I have been in NY for 2 months and tomorrow I leave for Key Biscayne to finish an apartment that I am decorating and a client wants to see photos from Lo Curro [Ed note: Lo Curro is an ultra-exclusive neighborhood in Santiago].
Send me the photos (take time to interrupt your daily party in Berlin).
And answer this email.
Micky
HURLEY & CO.
www. hurleyandcompany.com
———————-
From: roque rodriguez <xx@yahoo.com>
To: M&M Hurley <xx@yahoo.com>
Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 1:00:39 PM
Subject: Re:
Hi Micky! Transfer the US$240 that you owe me from 5 months ago for this job to my account and I would be happy to send you the photos.
[then he gives his banking details]
Datos: Banco Santander, cta cte 0437xxxx, Rut. 11740.xxx-x, Roque Rodríguez Castillo, xxxxx@yahoo.com
Saludos,
Roque
—————-
From: M&M Hurley <xx@yahoo.com>
To: roque rodriguez <xx@yahoo.com>
Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 3:28:44 PM
Subject: Re:
Stop with your nonsense. I DO NOT OWE YOU ANYTHING!!!! How am I going to PAY if you don’t deliver the job to me.
HURLEY & CO.
www. hurleyandcompany.com
———————
From: roque rodriguez <xx@yahoo.com>
To: M&M Hurley <xx@yahoo.com>
Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 4:43:04 PM
Subject: Re:
The job has been ready for months and don’t come at me with this bullshit, Micky. If you want your photos, I will send them to you after you transfer [the funds] online into my account, simple and easy.
Let me know by tomorrow if you want them, if not, I will erase them from my files as they are taking up space on my hard drive. At the end of the day, if you are not willing to pay, I will not be bitter about the US$240, but forget about me ever working with you in the future.
I was looking at your website and I see that almost half of the images there are mine... and I also saw that the photos that we took in different apartments in NY are included as work you've done. I didn't know you decorated all those places...
Saludos,
R.
—————————-
MAIL DE HURLEY:
Read carefully what I am writing here, as it will be the last time I do so. Listen you poor, miserable, ROTEQUE [Ed note: "Roteque" does not have a direct translation to English. It implies someone from a lower class and is an incredibly offensive word. The most awful adjective you can think of], low-born social climber. Delete your grubby photos. DON'T COME THREATENING ME YOU WORTHLESS LITTLE SHIT. NEVER. Remember, you are ALWAYS going to be from a different class, you were born where you were born, and even if you were reborn a billion times, you will never have a Baroness for a grandmother like me.
This is what I get for working with street trash like you. For your information, the photos on my webpage, the ones that I have not bothered updating, are from STYLING. I don't have to fake my way through with other peoples' work. They know my work, they know I have a good eye, and I've been on the cover of magazines a number of times.
What’s more, you wretch, in April Architectural Design is coming to photograph the apartment I am decorating in Miami. With all of its Matisse, Dufy, and Bonard paintings. So I guess you can see, you idiot, the level I’m on. Oh! and the gentleman from Sutton Place asked me to renovate his home in Greenwich...what do you think of that? Jealous?? I would have paid you your miserable US$240 immediately if you if you’d delivered the work first, AS IT SHOULD BE. Delete my email address and all of my information. You, parvenu, are dead to me. Malu once asked me how I could trust you so much. It’s obvious now, when you give poor trash an inch, they take a mile.
You screwed me over with the Lo Curro photos, very unprofessional. Just remember, because you have angered me you will NEVER work for ANY magazine or newspaper in Chile.
Goodbye, great-grandson of a seamstress.
HURLEY & CO.
www. hurleyandcompany.com
An emailed request for comment from Micky Hurley has not been returned.
[Image via Facebook]