Ammon Aftermath

The twins were 11 years old on October 22, 2001, when their adoptive father, Ted Ammon, a brilliant Wall Street deal-maker, was found bludgeoned to death by an unknown intruder in their East Hampton home. Out of public view since then, they're back with a searing documentary about the aftermath: their mother's marriage three months later to electrician Danny Pelosi, his time as their stepfather, her death from breast cancer, his trial and conviction for the slaying. "We loved the guy who killed our father," Greg declares in 59 Middle Lane, which debuts this month at the Hamptons International Film Festival and then at New York's Jazz at Fincoln Center. It's hard to imagine a more horrifying line.

"Danny was and still is a pure psychopath," says Greg, 22, director of the documentary and founder of an F.A. film-production company, speaking out for the first time about the man who tore their family apart. Pelosi wooed them—and it worked. In the movie, Alexa recalls thinking, "This is the greatest man alive—I love him so much!" Even as his trial started, the twins kept faith: by then he was the only parent they had. Gradually the evidence mounted. "It was like we lost another father," Greg says, "which is a horrible way to put it, but that's how it felt." Interwoven with this story of betrayal is another: the twins' abandonment by their Ukrainian birth mother. In the him, Greg and Alexa fly to Kiev and drive to the orphanage from which Ted and Generosa Ammon adopted them. They go on to discover their birth family's humble homestead, meeting a brother and sister but also learning that their mother had been an alcoholic who conceived them on a one-night stand and mistreated the children until the state intervened. She has since died: a fourth parent gone.

Today the twins are financially sound, run the charitable Ammon Foundation, and still own the house on Middle Fane, which they hope to make a home again. But of the $80 million their father had at the time of his death, most is now gone, much of it to Pelosi, the probate lawyers, caregivers, and Uncle Sam. "Trust," says Greg, "is a difficult issue for us. We take it day by day.'