Kate Whiteman, the Australian woman whose accusation of sexual assault against Oren and Alon Alexander opened the floodgates for dozens of similar allegations from women across the globe, was found dead near Sydney late last year. She was 45.
Her death, which has not been previously reported, was confirmed by a spokesman for the coroner of the Australian state of New South Wales and is currently under investigation. A cause of death has not been officially determined, the spokesman said, but investigations are prompted only when there are doubts about whether the death was the result of “natural causes.”
Ms. Whiteman sued Oren Alexander, a high-profile real estate agent, and his twin brother, Alon, in March 2024. She said she met the brothers, regulars on the New York party circuit, at a Manhattan nightclub in 2012 and they forced her into an S.U.V. as she was leaving. They drove her to the Hamptons, she said, where she was assaulted at Sir Ivan’s Castle, a party mansion in the Southampton town of Water Mill.
Her accusations were followed the next day by a lawsuit from Rebecca Mandel, who accused the brothers of drugging and then assaulting her at a party in Manhattan in 2010. Ms. Mandel described consuming a drink — her first of the evening — that Alon had handed to her before her memory went hazy. But in the lawsuit, she recalled Oren forcefully penetrating her while Alon held her down. She said they then switched places and the assault continued, according to the lawsuit.
The brothers have denied all allegations. Their lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ms. Whiteman’s death.
Evan Torgan, Ms. Whiteman’s lawyer, declined to comment.
Text messages and compromising photographs between Ms. Whiteman and the brothers had been leaked to The Daily Mail, one of the biggest newspapers in England, which ran a story in July with a headline claiming that “raunchy nude-filled sexts threaten to blow the case wide open.”
Oren Alexander had been one of the top-earning real estate brokers in New York alongside his older brother Tal Alexander, who was his partner first at the brokerage Douglas Elliman, and then at Official, a boutique luxury brokerage the two founded in 2022. They regularly smashed real estate records, including with the 2019 sale of a nearly $240 million penthouse — at the time, the most expensive residential sale in U.S. history.
Alon Alexander, who worked as an executive at his family’s private security company, was his brothers’ regular sidekick at social events and private clubs from Mykonos to Miami.
Charismatic and armed with both youth and millions of dollars, Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander together built an image of jet-setting bachelors. But whispers that the brothers may have assaulted people had followed them since high school.
In the summer of 2024, those whispers spilled into public view when The Real Deal, a real estate trade publication, first reported that Ms. Whiteman and Ms. Mandel had filed lawsuits against the twins.
A third woman soon sued the twins and Tal Alexander, and a chorus of allegations began mounting on social media against all three. In July 2024, 10 women shared with The New York Times personal accusations of sexual assault against the brothers. Seven of those women said they believed they had been drugged, describing a fog that erased or clouded their memory.
Tal Alexander, like the twins, has denied all allegations, and the brothers began a public-relations campaign to clear their names. But in December 2024, in a series of predawn raids by the police in Miami and the F.B.I., all three were arrested and charged with a federal sex trafficking conspiracy. Prosecutors have filed 11 counts against the three men. Their trial is set to begin in Manhattan federal court on Jan. 26.
The brothers have been held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, and in the 13 months since their arrest, have sought to frame both the civil lawsuits and criminal allegations as an intertwined conspiracy led by women seeking to extort them. Last summer, the three men sued The Real Deal for defamation, accusing the publication of refusing “to consider or publish anything that called into question its false narrative” of the case against them.
In exhibits accompanying their lawsuit, the brothers included photographs and screenshots of suggestive messages Ms. Whiteman had sent to both Oren and Alon Alexander in the months after the alleged assault — the same material that The Daily Mail published.
Oren Alexander had personally given the messages to The Real Deal, according to the suit.
“TRD refused to let facts get in the way of an opportunity to make millions of dollars profiting off printing false allegations against the Alexanders,” the brothers said in their complaint.
Amir Korangy, the publisher of The Real Deal, did not immediately provide a comment when reached by The Times.
Debra Kamin is an investigative reporter for The Times who covers wealth and power in New York.
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