Boom-Bust
The so-called “Dr. Boom” was laid to rest in a Queens cemetery yesterday:
Posted: July 20th, 2006 | Filed under: QueensDr. Boom went out with hardly a whimper yesterday.
Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who last week allegedly blew up his own tony East Side townhouse rather than see his ex-wife get it, was finally laid to rest in Cypress Hill Cemetery, Queens.
Bartha, 66, died late Saturday night after hanging on a week following the July 10 blast, making good on the last of three reported suicide attempts.
A woman who answered the phone at Glascott Funeral Home in Forest Hills yesterday said she had no details on the doctor’s final above-ground appearance.
“There was no funeral services or anything else like that,” she said. There was a gathering “just with the immediate family.”
Bartha, locked in a life-and-death struggle with ex-wife Cordula Hahn over a building worth more than $5 million, vowed that he would never give it up alive — and he didn’t. The East 62nd Street townhouse was blown to smithereens on July 10 after someone opened a gas line, fire officials said.
The blast left a four-story gully between the adjoining buildings.
At the double tombstone, there was a sole vase containing a selection of red roses, carnations, white daisies and white chrysanthemums. A note said the flowers were “from the Foldes family,” the family that owned the adjacent tombstone.
Taped atop the Bartha half was a 3-by-5 snapshot of the doctor, taken perhaps 20 years ago, since he looked to be in his mid-40s. He was holding a little girl, about 2 1/2. Bartha is survived by two daughters, Serena and Johanna, both of whom would have been very young at the time of the photo.
Attached to the snapshot was a purple string with a bouquet of white roses, the flowers a bit flattened. A cemetery worker said they had been left by Hahn.