Robert Foisie

After graduating from WPI and Cornell University, Robert Foisie worked as an engineer and later became president of Hartford-based Matik Inc., a distributor for European manufacturers, and owned a Swiss packaging company. More recently, he has invested in golf and ski resorts in Vermont, including Haystack Mountain in Wilmington, a venture in which he lost $18 million, according to divorce documents. Robert and Janet Foisie, who is 81 and lives in Long Boat Key, Fla., divorced in 2011 after 50 years of marriage. Robert Foisie lives in Florida, where he owns The Legacy, a private golf and tennis club in Port St. Lucie, but several of his acquaintances told the Globe he may now be residing in Antigua. Foisie, 82, offered a former East Boston man a $20,000 down payment to murder his son or find someone else to do the job, according to allegations in a legal petition by his children that reached Nevada’s highest court. Foisie did so, legal filings allege, because he was angry that his son and daughter removed him as manager of a family investment company. The children and their mother have made other dramatic allegations about Foisie, a West Hartford native, in multiple lawsuits in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nevada. A 1956 graduate, he is the university’s single largest patron, having donated $63 million to Worchester Polytechnic Institute over his lifetime.