Swimsuit designer Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra’s final text messages have been revealed months after she was found dead on a boat at the age of 33.
According to a New York Magazine profile published earlier this month, Nolan had been texting investor Christopher Durnan about his involvement in her and business partner Dylan Grace’s East x East line shortly before her death.
“If you guys are looking for more money, let’s sit down and talk about it,” Durnan, 60, allegedly wrote to Nolan, who ultimately agreed to meet the businessman alone while Grace, 30, was out of town in August.
Grace, who spoke to the outlet, claimed that Nolan met Durnan on his boat at the Montauk Yacht Club.
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“Martha does what Martha wants … or did,” Grace recalled, revealing that her friend stopped answering her phone while out on the boat.
Grace said Nolan sent her boyfriend, Nick DiRubio, a text that she planned to order an Uber home at 1 a.m. the next morning. By 9:20 p.m. that night, Nolan went quiet in her and Grace’s group chat with their other friends.
“Lol I’m at the yacht club now, my phone is on,” Nolan responded 10 minutes later.
Another hour went by, and Nolan was found dead aboard the boat.
“She was gone almost immediately,” Durnan’s lawyer Robert Holdman told the magazine, claiming that his client performed CPR after believing Nolan had a heart attack. “She was nonresponsive. … Chris is distraught. He watched his friend die in trauma. He’s absolutely destroyed.”
Holdman continued, “It all happened immediately. She passed away, and everything went down from there. He went running to go look for help. He tried CPR — like it all happened, one right after another. There was no pause.”
Nolan and Grace met Durnan in 2022 when they pitched him their idea for East x East. He subsequently agreed to financially back the swimsuit brand.
“He really liked Martha, and he wanted to help her succeed. She was a good friend,” Holdman told New York Magazine. “He was hopeful, and he liked her energy and liked the way she presented it to him.”
According to Holdman, his client and Nolan briefly dated ahead of her death.
“He had told me, after it happened, that he loved her and that he had met her family,” the attorney said. “They did care for each other, but it wasn’t a super-commitment. Chris is not interested in sharing anything [more than] that, whether it’s an absolute ‘no’ or an absolute ‘yes.’ I don’t think he thinks it’s fair to her memory. He just didn’t want to talk about it.”
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Friends of Nolan, however, denied to New York Magazine that she ever had a romantic connection with Durnan. She was in a relationship with DiRubio at the time of her death.
“Martha had a special way of lighting up every room she walked into, whether it was her signature ‘Hi’ or her famous hand gestures,” DiRubio said during a funeral service held in Nolan’s native Ireland in August. “One couldn’t help but feel her positive presence in every space she entered. Martha had a way of putting people first. She loved helping people and many of you in this room have been lucky enough to experience that love, whether it was telling you to cop on or focus on the good in this life, or just being a shoulder to lean on.”
