THE HEIR to one of New York’s most dazzling fortunes has been brought before a Manhattan court accused of swindling his mother out of tens of millions of dollars that she had intended to give to charity.
Anthony Marshall (84) leaned on a walking stick in court yesterday as he heard the prosecution describe how he allegedly stole from his aged and vulnerable mother in a plot to enrich himself.
He has pleaded his innocence on all charges.
His mother, Brooke Astor, one of the best-connected of New York’s social elite and known by her hallmark white gloves and pearls, died two years ago aged 105, having reportedly spent the last years of her life in squalid conditions.
Her third and last husband, Vincent Astor, was the head of the famous Anglo-American family that made its fabulous wealth out of the fur trade and property dealing.
After her husband’s death in 1959, she devoted herself and her considerable inheritance to philanthropy, giving away more than $200 million (€154 million), largely to New York causes.
Elizabeth Loewy, prosecuting, told the jury Ms Astor had been known as the “grande dame of New York”. She was a socialite but also a pioneer of feminism who ran her late husband’s estate and philanthropic foundation.
She was “a woman who inherited a great deal of money but decided to do something good for the world and for New York”.
Much of the money was donated to cultural institutions such as the New York Public Library and Metropolitan Museum of Art, which she called her “crown jewels”.
The court heard that from as early as 1997 she displayed symptoms of mental degeneration consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. The prosecution alleges that by 2001, Mr Marshall – a former diplomat and CIA employee turned Broadway impresario – was fully aware of his mother’s deteriorating condition, which was so bad she had trouble completing sentences and could not name George W Bush as the then president. Yet Mr Marshall went ahead and exploited her when she was unable to protect her own interests.
In a will drawn up in 2003, Ms Astor had provided that her son would receive a 14-room Park Avenue apartment and an estate in Westchester with 64 acres, valued together at about $40 million. He would also have received 7 per cent of the income of a trust fund worth more than $60 million – with the remainder going to charity – as well as tens of millions in fine art, sculpture, jewellery and antique furniture. “But that wasn’t good enough for Marshall,” Ms Loewy told the court.
The prosecution alleges that when Ms Astor was almost 102 years old, Mr Marshall, with his co-defendant, a friend and lawyer Francis Morrissey, arranged for her will to be changed so that all the money went to Mr Marshall.
“They stole from her when she was at her most vulnerable. They literally pulled her out of the hands of her nurse and dragged her to a room so that she could change her will,” Ms Loewy said.
The trial, expected to last for several weeks, is likely to bring into full public view the most private details of the lives of a famous American family.
The dispute over Ms Astor’s fortune and the way in which she was treated in her last years has split the family down the middle: the allegations of neglect were first raised by Mr Marshall’s own son, Philip – Ms Astor’s grandson – who accused his father of “elder abuse”.
In a hearing in 2006, he said Mr Marshall was so abusive of his mother that she was sleeping on a filthy couch smelling of dog urine.
The defence is likely to argue that Mr Marshall acted properly and cared for his mother more than anyone else. If convicted of grand larceny, the most serious charge, he faces up to 25 years in prison.
An element of the prosecution case is that Ms Astor and her son were distant from each other. Mr Marshall had courted the wife of a cleric who left her family to marry him – a fact of which Ms Astor disapproved. – ( Guardianservice)