Former Playboy Model And 7-Year-Old Son Plunge To Death From Manhattan Hotel

A former Playboy model in the middle of a custody battle fell to her death along with her 7-year-old son in Manhattan, according to police.

Stephanie Adams and her son Vincent plunged 23 floors from the penthouse of the Gotham Hotel near Grand Central Terminal on Thursday night in a suspected suicide jump. They were found on a second-floor balcony Friday morning, officials told the Associated Press. Adams was in the middle of a custody fight with her estranged husband Charles Nicolai, a Manhattan chiropractor.

Lawyer Raoul Felder, who represented Adams until a few months ago, told the wire service that it was "a very tough custody case," and explained that Adams and Nicolai would bring their child to a police precinct when he changed custody from her house to his.

"She was never depressed while I knew her. She had certain problems, but depression wasn't one of them," Felder said.

Adams appeared in Playboy as the "Miss November" centerfold in 1992 and had more recently become a self-help author and secured two business degrees, according to a 2013 New York Post profile.

"Style and looks don't mean lack of brains, sweetheart!" she told the Post.

Adams and her estranged husband were sued in 2014 by a yoga instructor who said they fired her because she was "too cute" and made Adams jealous. The suit was later dismissed, the New York Daily News reported at the time.

Adams, who said she was a descendant of U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, was awarded $1.2 million in 2012 after suing the New York City Police Department for excessive force, saying they threw her to the ground and roughly searched her in a 2006 incident, the paper also reported.

[Photo: Getty]