‘I was so scared’: US trial witnesses allege Alexander brothers worked together to rape women

In their time as real estate brokers, the Israeli-American Alexander brothers – twins Alon and Oren and older brother Tal – were known as “closers”, the salesmen who could a get a sale over finish line, often to wealthy hedge funders who were then making hay in aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.Their technique, one real estate expert explained outside the 26th floor of the federal court house in lower Manhattan last week, was based on the sense that the property salesman “were just like their clients” – young, eager and successful. Kim Kardashian and then-husband Kanye West, Jared and Ivanka Trump were clients.And like many, they were party animals. Nightclubs in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Miami, Aspen, Tulum and Ibiza were seasonal stops. Tal and Oren, 38, were profiled in the New York Times on “How Two Luxury Real Estate Agents Spend Their Sundays”. The Wall Street Journal followed on the family’s $31m sale of their Miami beach home. US Vogue featured Oren’s wedding to a Brazilian model.But a far nastier picture of their high life has been on display in court for the past few weeks, where the three brothers are on trial for sex trafficking. Prosecutors have accused each of the three brothers of violent, forcible rape of at least 10 women each and in some cases of threatening them if they spoke of their experiences.The accomplished real estate “closers”, according to prosecutors, took no chances when it came to their pursuit of sex, and worked together in a conspiracy to lure, incapacitate and attack women.The three brothers have pleaded not guilty and deny the allegations.The civil case against Oren and his twin began in March 2024 when they were sued by Kate Whiteman, a woman who said she had met at a Manhattan nightclub in 2012. She claimed they had forced her into an SUV as she was leaving and drove her to the Hamptons, where she was assaulted at a party mansion called Sir Ivan’s Castle. A flood of similar allegations followed.But Whiteman is not in court to testify. It was reported last month that she was found dead near Sydney late last year. Authorities in New South Wales have said the circumstances of Whiteman’s death “were found to be non-suspicious”.As the trial entered its third week, the court heard from Abusshan Bodjnoud, a woman who testified that she witnessed an unidentified woman being raped by Tal, 39, and one of the twins in the Hamptons in May 2009. Bodjnoud told jurors she was in the house when a party of men returned and she saw Tal “dragging” a woman who “was not walking on her own” to the pool.“Then the next thing I heard was a woman screaming and just asking people to stop,” she testified. She said she witnessed Tal and the twin “moaning” as they raped the woman in the hot tub.Bodjnoud, who said she was “terrified” to intervene, acknowledged she had written “rapist” and “you need to apologize” on the brother’s door before she left the house but acknowledged she had not call 911 and was warned that the Alexander brothers “were very powerful”.A day earlier, jurors were shown text exchanges the government says showed that the brothers coordinated to secure drugs, including ketamine, Xanax, Ambien and GHB, they allegedly used to incapacitate women, lured using the promise of luxury travel and exclusive experiences.In one exchange from September 2011, Alon tested about an upcoming party, telling the recipient to “throw some panty dropper pills in the dishes sent to our table”. Attorneys for the defendants have suggested the described some of the references as “crude jokes.”Maylen Gehret, who is suing Alon and Oren for sexual assault, told the court that Alon raped her in Aspen, Colorado, in 2017 when she was 17. She said she was at a club with two friends when Alon gave her a vodka cranberry. After the second, her head began to feel “really heavy” and she could “barely hold it up”.The twin took the girls to an empty hotel room and raped her in the bathroom. “It really hurt, and I was so scared,” Gehret testified.In this, the prosecution phase of the case, other accounts have followed a similar path. But when the defense takes its turn, attorneys are set to argue that both the civil lawsuits and criminal allegations against the brothers are an intertwined conspiracy led by women seeking to extort them.Outside court last week, their father Shlomi Alexander, who emigrated from Israel to the US to start a successful security company before branching into Miami real estate, claimed the cases had began with a $35m effort to extort him.Under cross-examination, defense attorneys have pressed witnesses on changes to their testimony, timelines, and claimed that prior statements that don’t align with what the jury heard. Juda Engelmayer, a crisis PR consultant for the defendants, said the challenges to witnesses rarely make the headlines.“The coverage often highlights the most sensational passages from direct, or the one line on cross where a witness confidently insists they ‘remember’ the single detail anchoring the allegation, while leaving out the broader credibility challenges unfolding in real time”, Engelmayer said.In opening arguments last month, defense attorney Teny Geragos said the brothers were successful, arrogant young men “who liked and pursued women”, adding “that’s not trafficking. That’s dating. That’s hooking up.”But she acknowledged the jury might frown upon of their lifestyle and vulgar communications. “Two things can be true at once – you can disapprove of their lifestyle and still find them not guilty”, Geragos said before a courtroom packed with family and supporters of the brothers.