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Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren on the front steps of his rental. file photo
Mayor Jesse Warren shared messages he received from Marianne Epley. They were written in response to his calling her husband a goon, Mark Epley said.
The political foe, former mayor vs. current mayor, landlord vs. tenant fracas continued in Southampton Village this month with Mark Epley, the landlord and former mayor, excoriating Jesse Warren, the tenant and current mayor, labeling him a “squatter.” The current mayor, meanwhile, dissed back, repeatedly labeling his adversary’s assertions as lies.
Mayor Warren was due to vacate the apartment where he lives with his girlfriend, Martyna Sokol, on January 15. On January 16, Mark and Zach Epley, the former mayor’s son, were at the house, then on the phone to the press, declaring Mr. Warren “a squatter.”
“You got a 90 day notice,” the former mayor says on a video of the visit lensed by the current mayor. “Now you’re squatting,” his son, Zach enjoins.
“Why are you still here?” Mark Epley asks, seen opening the front door in the video shared with The New York Post and on Mr. Warren’s Instagram.
“Because we live here,” Mr. Warren replies, asking the Epleys to leave. “We paid rent,” Ms. Sokol can be heard saying.
The Epleys argue the couple did not pay their last month’s rent for January. However, Mr. Warren displayed a postal receipt dated January 15 that he says was the mailed rent check. He also shared texts from his attorney to the Epleys’ attorney dated January 12 looking to set up a surrender agreement as well as alerting him to Mr. Warren’s need to stay until February.
According to the Epleys, the mayor purchased a $1.2 million, three bedroom, three bath, 1,900-square-foot home on Potato Field Court and was renovating the house. Mr. Warren acknowledged buying a home in the village, but said it was undergoing work to remove mold and rotting wood. That necessary work delayed his departure from the Epley house on David White’s Lane. “We can’t get out of here soon enough,” he said, labeling the Epleys’ actions “crazy.”
Mr. Warren pointed to posts and texts from Marianne Epley — wife of Mark and mother of Zach — to underscore his point. Under an Instagram post about COVID-19 testing by the mayor, Ms. Epley wrote “squatter.” He shared a series of seven texts sent Saturday afternoon after a story about the kerfuffle appeared in the New York Post.
Six times, Ms. Epley just sent the word “squatter,” once spelled “squater,” as well as a longer post accusing the mayor of intimidation.
“You calling us names is intimation (sic),” the text from Ms. Epley reads. A Facebook post of hers that day begins with “Jesse Warren is the biggest liar in the world!!!”
This isn’t the first time Ms. Epley lashed out at Mr. Warren. After he summarily removed her son from the village’s planning board in 2019, Ms. Epley penned a harsh missive to the mayor.
Last summer, when the mayor predicted he’d be evicted, the patriarch of the Epley family said he didn’t care who the tenant was in the $1.5 million investment property on David Whites Lane.
But just days after an election last week that saw Mr. Epley’s son Zach defeated for a Southampton Village Board seat by candidates supported by the mayor, Mr. Warren received a 90-day notice of non-renewal of his lease.
The mayor’s “nasty” behavior during the campaign prompted the family’s change of heart, Zach Epley said at the time. Speaking of the alleged harassment on social media Saturday, he wrote, “We want Jesse out and off of our property because he is not a good person. We want to be landlords to decent people who do things for this community.”
Asked last fall about assertions that he followed opponents during the campaign, the mayor declined to respond. This week, he doubled down stating, “The mere suggestion is asinine.”
From the outset, there has been bad blood between the Epley family and Mr. Warren. He ousted Epley loyalist Michael Irving in 2019, then was dismissive when a cadre of former mayors tried to offer advice. That bad blood began to bubble last summer when Mr. Warren accused the Epley family of buying the house where he lives just so they could evict him and threaten his seat at the head of the Village Board of Trustees table.
The Epleys adamantly decried a New York Post story, sympathetic to the mayor, that detailed Mr. Warren’s eviction worry. In a letter and statements to The Express News Group, Mark Epley said he had no interest in evicting his tenant. He and his son Zach, who was running for village board, refuted as ridiculous the assertion that the family bought the house just so they could control Mr. Warren. Rather, they explained that they owned other houses on David White’s Lane and were looking to cobble parcels together for future homes for members of their extended family.
There’s currently an eviction moratorium in New York State. Not surprisingly, the Epleys and Mayor Warren disagree on its applicability in this situation.
