Jack Dorrian, Upper East Side Bar Owner With Checkered History, Dies

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Jack Dorrian, a Yorkville bar owner whose decades-long tenure in the neighborhood included brushes with multiple high-profile murder trials, died on Thursday.

His death was announced on social media by Dorrian's Red Hand, the bar on Second Avenue and East 84th Street that was founded by Dorrian's father in 1960, and which Dorrian himself ran for years afterward alongside his wife, Carol.

His age was not disclosed, but Dorrian was reportedly 73 in 2006, putting him at close to 90 by this year.

"If you ever felt at home at Dorrian's, it is because of the love and compassion of its stalwart patriarch," relatives wrote in an online obituary. "He was a generous soul who embraced everyone."

Though styled as an Irish pub that harkened back to Dorrian's family roots — his father was reportedly a gunman in the Irish Republican Army — Dorrian's became best known as a popular haunt for the Upper East Side's prep-school youth.

In 1986, the bar was thrust into the spotlight when 20-year-old Robert Chambers killed 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in Central Park after having met her at Dorrian's Red Hand. Chambers was later dubbed the "Preppy Killer" by tabloids, for having attended several of the city's elite private schools.

Jack Dorrian, whose sons had known Chambers since childhood, used his $650,000 townhouse on East 71st Street as collateral to secure Chambers's $150,000 bail, the New York Times reported. Chambers was ultimately convicted of manslaughter.

Years later, Levin's parents filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against Jack and Carol Dorrian, accusing them of using Chambers as a "decoy" to lure underage girls to their bar. The suit was settled out of court, according to the New York Post.

"I could tell you all the times kids sit down and talk to me and tell me what they get and what they don't get at home," Dorrian told the Times in 1986, in defense of the role his bar played in young patrons' lives. "'I have kids coming and hugging me because they want the feeling of being touched."

Still, the case followed Dorrian — when the state suspended his bar's liquor license in 1987, saying it had served alcohol to minors and disturbed the peace, Dorrian said it was payback from neighbors who were angry about his involvement in the Chambers case.

Dorrian's was also fined $10,000 in 1997 for filing false tax returns, and faced citations in 2000 and 2003 for operating outside of its licensed hours, according to the Village Voice.

Another dark chapter played out in 2006, when student Imette St. Guillen was murdered after leaving a SoHo bar owned by Jack's son, Michael, and managed by his son Daniel.

The bar's bouncer was ultimately convicted of the crime, but Daniel Dorrian admitted to having lied to police about whether St. Guillen had been at the bar last night — saying he had remembered his family's treatment during the "Preppy Killer" case.

An attorney for the bouncer later accused Daniel Dorrian of being the true culprit, saying her client was being framed to protect a "member of a rich and powerful family."

In his obituary, relatives memorialized Dorrian as a "fierce competitor at backgammon and cards," and a beloved community leader in Yorkville who fed senior citizens for free each week.

He was predeceased last year by Carol, whom family members called "the love of his life."

"As one of the most memorable and successful of New York's bar owners, he was iconic for: his love of a cold glass of milk and a champagne bucket filled with Coca Cola in a bottle, standing at the horse track, cheering on his many thoroughbreds, driving around Europe stopping where it suited him, his generous and valued advice, his talent for listening intently and kindly to those who sought him out, and, of course, enjoying a good cigar," his obituary reads.