Among the many well-heeled who were excluded were Billy Joel, Cher, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith - all felt the wrath of The Dakota's self-defined Darwinian selection process. The board of The Dakota had, over recent years, become almost notorious in New York real estate circles for being amongst the most discriminating/selective in terms of their approval process.
For years, he was one of only two African-American residents at the legendary co-op (the other being legendary singer Roberta Flack. Fletcher had lived in New York City's swanky locale since the early '90s. And, as final confirmation of his arrival in the echelons of finance, Fletcher bought an apartment in The Dakota, the Central Park residence for the ultra-rich that would probably, to this day, remain semi-anonymous had it not had John Lennon as a resident and been the site of this shooting in 1980.