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Brook Astor and So Long Estrangement
Trial of Anthony Marshall
The long Awaited Verdict of the Anothony Marshall Trial
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Anthony Marshall had bitter tears in his eyes as the jury pronounced the frail, 85-year-old son of Brooke Astor guilty of plundering his mother's fortune.
It was hard to watch. Marshall sat stunned, and had to be helped up by his red-faced wife, Charlene, who shouted to reporters, "I love my husband!"
It was she - a woman of humble origins and grand designs - who motivated him to steal from his philanthropist mother as she descended into the hell of Alzheimer's.
But, of course, this whole sordid saga was the ultimate "Upstairs, Downstairs" story.
Astor's nurses and chauffeur, her butler and her maids, witnessed the chicanery, and told about it in Judge Kirke Bartley's courtroom at 100 Centre St., 90 blocks and worlds away from Astor's Park Ave. aerie.
And a New York jury of teachers, cooks, designers and the unemployed listened intently and decided Marshall had swindled his helpless mother.
Yes, prosecutors Elizabeth Loewy, Joel Seidemann and Peirce Moser brought in bold-faced names - Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Graydon Carter - to say Astor's mind faded away long before her body.
That, in Astor's words, she was "going gaga" as Marshall began ladling her $185 million fortune into his trough.
But it was "little people," as Leona Helsmley derisively described them, who brought him down and set him on a path that could end behind the stone walls of places like Sing Sing or Dannemora.
Housekeeper Angela Moore said that on the same day in 2004 that Marshall and his pal Francis Morrissey had Astor sign a will change shifting $60 million to Marshall, Astor had a paranoid fantasy that they were hiding under her bed. Moore also saw the Marshalls walk out of the house with a $500,000 painting in a shopping bag.
Bookkeeper Lourdes Hilario said Marshall gave himself a $920,000 raise - the exact price tag of his new yacht.
Butler Chris Ely testified that Marshall refused to allow Astor to go to her beloved estate along the Hudson, where in nature, she felt close to God.
Nurse Pearline Noble, who called Charlene "Miss Piggy," said Astor was "disoriented" the day she changed her will to boost Morrissey's fees.
After waiting so long, the Iwo Jima vet made an end-of-life grab for what he thought he deserved. But the jurors, after five months out of their own lives, decided Marshall had committed crimes. Fourteen of them.
It's sad that Charlene, in the words of her friend, artist Richard Osterweil, was likely "the only one who ever really loved him for who he was."
It seems Brooke Astor, for all the millions she gave New York, didn't give her only child what he'd always sought - approval.
She was an ambivalent mother at best. In her memoirs "Patchwork Child" and "Footprints," Astor said Tony was conceived in an act she "didn't participate in willingly" when she was the teen bride of rich but abusive Husband No. 1, Dryden Kuser.
When rich Husband No. 2 Buddie Marshall thought the nanny was spoiling him, she sent Anthony off to boarding school at age 10. "He was a wretched student," she wrote.
When she landed moneybags Husband No. 3, Vincent Astor, she wrote, "I saw very little of Tony. I concentrated on Vincent."
I spoke with Astor once, in the 1990s, at her beloved main library, sitting like a rare orchid in a chiffon hat and crepe de chine suit. She was still coquettish, and her accent was out of a '20s society movie.
I was struck by her blue-gray eyes, which still had dance in them. I've thought often of those eyes, and wondered what she'd think if she could see how her fascinating life, like a colorful, transporting balloon, had landed.
In "Patchwork Child," which is not in circulation at the library to which she gave $25 million, she wrote, "Life is a lonely game to be played alone." It's a pity she didn't realize that's true only when it's about money, and not love.
jmolloy@nydailynews.com
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During the long months of testimony in the Astor trial, as the courtroom emptied of spectators and the headlines shrunk, prosecutors and other professionals involved in elder abuse cases were still paying close attention. In fact, some were biting their fingernails, especially as the jury’s deliberations grew heated and stretched to 12 days.
“I’ve been very worried about it,” confessed Lori Stiegel, senior attorney at the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging. If the prosecutors, including the head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s pioneering elder abuse unit, had failed to win a conviction, she said, “it could have been perceived as reinforcing the notion that these cases are just too difficult to bring and that juries will have trouble understanding the issues.”
Around the country, a growing number of district attorneys’ offices — Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Brooklyn — have set up elder abuse units on the theory that specialization can help them uncover and fight these particularly thorny cases. (Manhattan’s unit, dating to 1992, is among the oldest.)
Those prosecutors “had to be pretty nervous about this trial,” said Thomas Hafemeister, a University of Virginia law professor who researches elder abuse and law enforcement. “If there’d been a verdict for the defendant, you’d see people more hesitant about going down this path.”
But the weary jurors did not just convict Anthony Marshall, 85, the late philanthropist Brooke Astor’s only child, of defrauding her of millions of dollars and conspiring to amend her will years after she’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Significantly, they also found him guilty on 14 of 16 charges, “a huge victory,” said Craig Reaves, past president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. (A co-defendant, estate lawyer Francis X. Morrisey Jr., was also convicted on multiple counts, including forgery.) A more mixed verdict, with the jury convicting on some charges but acquitting on many others, might have sent a less forceful message.
The implication now? “It will help prosecutors understand that yes, they can successfully bring these complex and challenging cases — and this one was extremely complex and challenging,” Ms. Stiegel said. “Most financial exploitation cases, you don’t need to spend five months in court and call Henry Kissinger.” (Mr. Kissinger was called to testify in the trial.)
Financial exploitation robs the elderly of an estimated $2.6 billion (PDF)each year, according to a study published earlier this year by the Metlife Mature Market Institute, Virginia Tech and the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse. Like all forms of elder abuse and neglect, the crime is believed to be substantially underreported.
And it’s particularly tough to prosecute. When adult protective services caseworkers suspect financial abuse and approach prosecutors, “they routinely get rebuffed,” Mr. Hafemeister said. “The prosecutors say they’re too difficult to try.”
It’s not hard to see why. Unlike cases of physical abuse, where injuries might provide evidence of a crime and bring the matter to a physician’s or social worker’s attention, financial exploitation leaves no visible scars. The victim may be too physically frail or mentally impaired to make a persuasive witness — if the victim is alive at all.
“The percentage of these cases that occur within families is very high, about 90 percent,” said Joy Solomon, a former prosecutor, now director of the first shelter for elder abuse victims at the Hebrew Home in the Bronx. “You may have a victim who doesn’t want to involve the criminal justice system” in what’s seen as a family problem.
The Astor verdict, Ms. Solomon continued, is “a win for those of us in the criminal justice world trying to support prosecutions of these cases.”
Mr. Reaves went further: “This may be the impetus to get the Elder Justice Act passed by Congress,” he said. First introduced six years ago, the act includes federal money for training and support for elder abuse prosecution. Re-introduced several times, always with both Democratic and Republican support, “it slowly gains sponsors, but it never gets anywhere,” Mr. Reaves said. Maybe now it will.
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.” Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before. Adults over age 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population, and most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs. That burden falls to their baby boomer children, 77 million strong, who are flummoxed by the technicalities of eldercare, turned upside down by the changed architecture of their families, struggling to balance work and caregiving, and depleting their own retirement savings in the process. In The New Old Age, we explore this unprecedented intergenerational challenge. While founding blogger Jane Gross is on leave, at work on a book, we'll be posting contributions from a variety of writers. You can reach the editors at newoldage@nytimes.com. Remember the Astor trial? The ongoing case raised questions about whether noted philanthropist Brooke Astor, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, understood what she was doing when she changed her will in 2004, diverting millions that had long been promised to charities to her son, Anthony Marshall. Allegations also arose that her son and a co-defendant — charged with conspiracy, fraud, larceny and forgery — manipulated a confused centenarian into parting with her treasured $10 million painting. The trial has lasted 18 weeks, twice as long as the judge originally estimated, but closing arguments finally began in a downtown Manhattan courtroom today. They’re expected to continue through Wednesday. Headlines heralded the trial’s start last spring. Spectators, eager to see celebrity witnesses like Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger and intrigued by the backstage glimpses into the life of a New York icon, crowded the courtroom. Those of us who pay attention to issues affecting older Americans were fascinated, too, as alleged financial exploitation of the elderly — an abuse that also plays out among ordinary families in ordinary towns — got a national spotlight. Then came a parade of more than 70 prosecution witnesses: Mrs. Astor’s famous friends, her doctor, home nurses and aides, housekeepers and maids, lawyers and handwriting experts, her two grandsons testifying against their father. Summer arrived and ebbed, jurors were seen dozing or rolling their eyes, the courtroom grew emptier. We paid more attention to health care reform dramas, Iran’s election and Jaycee Dugard than to the question of what Brooke Astor, who died in 2007 at 105, truly wanted to do with her $180 million estate, and her lucidity or lack thereof. But the issues the trial raises still matter. All forms of elder abuse are substantially underreported, experts say, and financial abuse — less apt to leave visible scars — is particularly difficult to investigate and prosecute. Caregivers often worry that strangers may scam their elderly relatives, when family members themselves appear the more common culprits. And uncertainty about whether an old person is legally competent, and competent to do what, will surely intensify as lives lengthen and dementia rates climb. Mrs. Astor devoted her attention, and her fortune, to many causes; preventing elder abuse was never one of them. Maybe it will inadvertently benefit, nonetheless. When her grandson, Philip Marshall, filed a lawsuit in 2006 seeking guardianship of his ailing grandmother, he didn’t expect that criminal indictments would follow or that his family would undergo extended legal wrangling. But as he told me via e-mail: “I’m glad it can help inform a conversation, beyond Brooke.” Useful information, tools, and links to organizations around the Web.
About The New Old Age
Brooke Astor’s Lasting Legacy
By PAULA SPAN
Resources on Aging and Caregiving
This just in: Anthony Marshall has been convicted of stealing from his mother, legendary New York socialite Brooke Astor.
After a months-long trial that has transfixed New York haute society, Marshall was convicted of one count of grand larceny, the most serious charge he faced. Here’s a Times piece on the verdict.
Jurors convicted Marshall of giving himself an unauthorized raise of about $1 million for managing his mother’s finances.
Astor, who died in 2007 at the age of 105, suffered from Alzheimer’s late in life. Marshall and Astor’s lawyer, Francis Morrissey Jr., have been accused of exploiting Astor’s ailments to trick her into directing millions of dollars their way. Her will was changed in 2004, so that her estate was assigned outright to Marshall in 2004.
The trial began in March. Recently, a juror claimed she felt physically threatened by another juror – a dispute that threatened to derail the trial.
Barring an appeal, the Times reports, the 85-year-old Marshall faces anywhere from 1 to 25 years behind bars.
Morrissey, meanwhile, was convicted of forgery charges.
After the verdict, judge J. Kirk Bartley Jr. told the panel: “How does a judge thank jurors who have served since March? You have acted in the finest tradition of the American court of law.”
Brooke Astor's grandson says Charlene Marshall used his dad as a "human shield" in a relentless campaign to fleece the beloved philanthropist out of millions.
In his first interview since Anthony Marshall was convicted of defrauding Astor, Philip Marshall said Friday his wicked stepmother - not his father - should be facing jail .
"Charlene has stood behind my father the whole way - but using him as human shield," Marshall told the Daily News. "As much to support him as to have him take the shots. It was all about money."
Sitting in a kitchen that smelled of breakfast muffins with his wife, Nan, Marshall said seeing the look on his shocked father's face after the conviction broke his heart.
"It was so sad seeing him" on television, he said. "I have a really hard time seeing photographs of him, much less seeing that moment. I just feel really bad for him. Maybe now he knows he did something wrong."
Philip Marshall said he does not want his 85-year-old father to go to prison for up to 25 years. "But I equally believe that what he did to my grandmother was unfair and criminal," he said.
Nor does Marshall regret filing the elder abuse charges against his dad that ended in Anthony Marshall's conviction Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
"As weird as it is, you have to do the right thing," he said.
In any event, Marshall said talking to his dad about the squalid conditions Astor was living in was futile.
"Speaking with my father wouldn't have mattered because Charlene was in charge," he said.
Wearing a soul patch beard and a gray shirt over a black T-shirt, Marshall, 56, appeared to choke up when asked if he thought he'd ever see his father again.
"I don't know," he said. "That is a weird concept. Wow, wow."
Pulling himself together, Marshall said he and his twin brother, Alec, feel "really, really sorry" for their dad.
"If he reached out, I would be there," Marshall said. "I know my brother would be there."
Asked if there was anything he'd like to say to Charlene, whom he called a "sugar-coated poison pill," Marshall did not hesitate: "How could you do this to my grandmother and my father?" "Charlene should have been indicted and convicted," he added. Though Charlene Marshall was not charged with a crime, prosecutors in the epic trial of her husband and his lawyer pal, Francis Morrissey, said her greed drove Marshall to mug his mother while she was too addled by Alzheimer's to resist.
Neither could be reached for comment.
Speaking in a sprawling shingle home that sits across the street from a quiet Massachusetts beach, Marshall said his father still has time to right some wrongs. Marshall, a college professor, said he wants his pop not to raise any objections in an upcoming surrogate court hearing to have Astor's 1997 will recognized as final. Marshall, who stands to inherit $1 million out of a fortune estimated at nearly $200 million, said that will mean millions for the New York charities that Astor supported. "He'd still get millions," he said of his convicted father. "Charlene would still get millions." Harkening back to the wrenching moment when he had to face his father in court, Marshall said, "I really had a hard time looking over at my father." "I glared at Charlene a bit," he said. During the interview, Marshall said little about Morrissey, who was convicted of forging Astor's signature on a will amendment that effectively gave Marshall control over his mother's millions. He faces up to seven years in prison. "Francis Morrissey didn't betray Brooke," he said. "Francis didn't know Brooke." Marshall had harsh words for Astor's longtime lawyer, Henry Christensen, saying he failed to protect his grandmother, who died two years ago at age 105.
Christensen, Marshall said, "totally betrayed my grandmother when she was most vulnerable - and then he billed her."
mgrace@nydailynews.com
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http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Astor/brooke-astor-son-anthony-marshall-guilty-fraud-larceny/story?id=8629431
The defendant, his wife, the lawyers, the friends, the matriarch and the money.
Brooke Astor's son Anthony Marshall was convicted of tricking his late mother out of millions, Co-defendant Francis Morrissey, Astor's estate lawyer, was found guilty on all six counts of Philip, Tony and Charlene Marshall Speak Exclusively to "20/20" Friday at 10 p.m. ET The trial brought to light what prosecutors say was a tragic end for the New York City socialite, her own family.Marshall, who could spend a minimum of one year and up to 25 in prison, Marshall was found not guilty on charges of larceny, relating to the controversial sale of Astor's prized Childe Hassam painting, and falsifying business records. Prosecutors asked for bail to be raised from $100,000 to a $5 million bond for each defendant, "I hope this brings some consolation and closure for the many people, including my "20/20" spoke exclusively to Marshall, his wife Charlene and son Philip in the weeks before the verdict. Philip, who testified against his father for the prosecution, told "20/20" while he The daughter of a socially ambitious southern belle, Brooke Astor was not born rich but she socialite Minnie Cushing, who wanted a divorce and, in essence, handpicked Brooke as For Brooke Astor, who was in a financial bind after the death of her second husband, Charles Marshall, in 1952, the tremendously wealthy Vincent Astor provided the financial security and status to bring stability to the life of the bereaved widow. But was it a marriage of c she referred to as "a perfectly terrible man." "She implied that Tony was the product of When Buddie died and Brooke married millionaire Vincent Astor, Tony Marshall was sidelined Vincent Astor died in 1959, leaving Brooke a $120 million fortune; half in a trust for her to the library or $20 million," friend and film producer John Hart said. "She got Bill Blass to give In a 1993 ABC News interview with Walters, Astor highlighted her charity as her life's defining work. "When you get right down to it, the thing about my life that has been marvelous has been the Gillies said, "She empathized with people. That was one of her wonderful qualities. "It won't exist," Astor said. "It goes with me. Do you think that's selfish? It's all going to be given Although Marshall had distinguished himself in many ways -- fighting at Iwo Jima, becoming a Astor was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in December 2000. In March 2002, deception that brought the family to criminal court in a trial that lasted six months and left her son facing prison charges. Watch "20/20" FRIDAY at 10 p.m. ET for more of the exclusive interview with Tony, Charlene and Philip Marshall. ABC News' Eric Strauss contributed to this report. May 11, 2009 Brooke Astor Trial Verdict Latest in Long Family Drama May 11, 2009 
Brooke Astor Trial Verdict Latest in Long Family Drama
In one of the most prominent cases of elder abuse and fraud,
jurors reached a verdict in the trial of late philanthropist Brooke Astor's son,
jury convicted 85-year-old Anthony Marshall on 14 criminal counts, including
fraud and grand larceny.(AP Photos)
Brooke Astor is seen at the Merchant's House Museum in New York in May 1997, when she presented $1...
(Serge Levy/AP Photo)
(Serge Levy/AP Photo)Brooke Astor Trial Verdict Latest in Long Family Drama
Before Trial and Fight Over Fortune, Brooke Astor Reigned Over New York City
and changing her will while the New York City socialite was incompetent and suffering
fromAlzheimer's in her final years. After more than five months in criminal court,
jurors convicted 85-year-old Marshall of 14 criminal counts, including fraud and grand larceny.
conspiracy, scheming to defraud and forgery. The verdict comes as a surprise, after reports
of upset jury members and a possible mistrial swirled, as the jury entered their 12th day of
deliberation. The jury said that the verdict was reached unanimously. Astor was the epitome of
high society in New York and a respected philanthropist donating about $200 million to
city landmarks such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library.
She died in August 2007 at the age of 105.
whose mental state had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer recognize
faced the judge and then the jury as the verdict was read. His wife Charlene Marshall,
who was cast as the villain in her husband's trial, sat silently.
His sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 8.
but Justice Bartley Jr. ruled that the current bail was sufficient.
grandmother's loyal staff, caregivers and friends, who helped when she was so vulnerable
and so manipulated," Astor's grandson, Philip Marshall, said in a statement.
When Philip filed for guardianship of Astor in 2006, accusing his father of neglect,
some of the allegations caught the eye of prosecutors, who charged Tony Marshall, 85,
on criminal counts of larceny and scheming to defraud. Marshall claims the charges of
elder abuse were unsubstantiated. In October 2006, he settled the charges, returning some
money, jewelry and artwork, and relinquishing control over his mother's finances.
never wanted a public trial, it has cast a spotlight on an epidemic of elder abuse.
"[Brooke] didn't choose this. ...Certainly she wouldn't like what's happening, but look what
it's doing, in terms of addressing an incredible cause," he said. "And I think what the result
of what we're in the fray of now, and how this will extend beyond Brooke, is really personally very
important, about how this will inform the greater discussion of elder justice."
The Astor case has cast a spotlight on an epidemic of elder abuse.
Up to 2 million Americans, age 65 and older, have been victims of abuse or neglect by their
caregivers, according to the National Center on Elder Abuse, and 60 percent of those cases
are by a family member. If this could happen to one of the richest women in the world, couldn't
it happen to anyone? But the verdict is just the latest chapter in a long family drama.
"You rarely see a famous family like this falling apart in public," said Meryl Gordon, author of
the biography, "Mrs. Astor Regrets." "I kept thinking whatever happened here,
it started a long time ago."Brooke Astor: Icon's Rise to Riches
did marry well. In 1953 she married Vincent Astor, whose father, American millionaire
John Jacob Astor, died on the Titanic in 1912. Her courtship with her third husband Vincent
was somewhat of a precursor of the scandals to come. Vincent was then married to
her replacement. "Vincent wouldn't give her a divorce until he found someone else," biographer
Gordon said. "Minnie was shopping for a replacement wife. And they invited Brooke to the country,
for the weekend, and Vincent apparently proposed on the spot."
Astor Marriage: Convenience or Love?
onvenience or did she love Astor? "She seems to have married him because she was panicked,
and he provided a level of security and also a sort of social entree that ... she had been
in society, but not of that high of an echelon," Gordon said. Brooke Astor tried to make it a
happy marriage, entertaining Vincent by singing and playing the piano for him, but he was
both a difficult and jealous man. And Vincent Astor wasn't the only man in Brooke's life.
She had one son -- Anthony or Tony -- with whom some say she had always had a strained
relationship. It was one that continued after her death, with a public battle for her fortune and
a criminal case of elder abuse. Tony's father was Dryden Kuser, Brooke's first husband, whom
marital rape," Gordon said. "That Dryden Kuser had beaten her up and broken her jaw when
she was pregnant with Tony. You really get the sense that was one of the reasons she never
really bonded with Tony."Brooke Astor's second marriage to stock broker
Charles "Buddie" Marshall was a happy one. Her son took Marshall's name although there
still seemed to be little room for him in his mother's life. "She seemed to be perfectly happy to
go off for several months and travel and then she would suddenly
remember her maternal responsibilities and be thrilled to see him again," Gordon said.
once again. David Patrick Columbia, co-founder of newyorksocialdiary.com, said there was an
animosity between Vincent Astor and Tony Marshall, which came to a head
"when Vincent Astor came into the room on a Sunday morning and saw Tony sitting in his
suit and his tie talking to his mother, who was having breakfast in bed. "Vincent Astor said,
'Get that man out of this house right now. I never want to see him again and if he does
come back here and I do see him again, you're going to leave, too,'" Columbia
said. "And, from there, he left. And Tony did not speak to his mother until Vincent Astor died."
Gordon said that Vincent Astor may have been threatened by Tony's role in Brooke's life.
"I think Vincent Astor felt very threatened by anyone being close to Brooke," she said.
"That he really wanted her only for himself."
Astor Inherits $120 Million Fortune
personally and half in the Vincent Astor Foundation, which Brooke would run. "Brooke,
in a sense, came to life after her husband had died," ABC News' Barbara Walters said.
"He left her all this money for a foundation and, you know, who was more popular than someone
who's willing to give money to charity?" Brooke Astor took control of the foundation in 1961.
She focused on giving to New York City-based charities, giving back to the place where the
Astor's made their fortune, funding major institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the New York City Zoo and the New York Public Library."It wasn't just that Brooke gave $10 million
10 million. You know, she got Annette de la Renta -- a host of people to follow in her footsteps."
Biographer Gordon said, "The foundation gave her a sense of identity. It gave her a purpose
in life. It made her feel like she was doing something more than wearing pretty dresses and
going out on the town." Charity: Life's Defining Work
foundation," she said.Her work continued the Astors' historic legacy, as a family that left an
indelible mark on New York -- from charitable donations, to landmarks like the historic
Astoria Hotel, built by John Jacob Astor, which later merged with the Waldorf Hotel,
the St. Regis Hotel and more.Brooke Astor gave to smaller hand-picked charities. Linda Gillies,
who was director of the now-defunct Astor Foundation, said Astor was deeply involved.
"She wanted to see the people who ran the project," Gillies said. "And she wanted to see
the people who benefited from the project. She didn't care about the trustees or local politicians.
She wanted to see the people who did the work. We never give to anything we haven't
investigated thoroughly ..."
There was also a personal dimension to her charity work and her character:
After meeting a homeless woman in a shelter, Astor was so touched by her story that she gave
her one of her own coats. "She [the homeless woman] was left with these enormous debts and
absolutely not one penny, so she was out on the streets," Brooke Astor said once during an
interview for a documentary about her. "I felt terribly, terribly sorry for her ... and I thought
how lucky I am."
That immediately she understood them and communicated with them and sometimes it ...
it was emotional." But the emotional bond she had with philanthropy seemed often lacking
when it came to her own son. And, in 1997, when she decided she was too old to run the
Vincent Astor Foundation, she decided to close it rather than hand it off to her son, Tony Marshall.'Not An Astor': Tortured Mother-Son Relationship
away. I mean it's not going to be ... you see my son, he's not an Astor." Not an Astor.
It's a phrase that Brooke Astor would often repeat about her son, Anthony Marshall.
In 1997 she closed the Vincent Astor Foundation rather than giving it Marshall.
"She kind of dangled it in front of him for many years and, then, ultimately decided that he
was not an Astor," Gordon said. "This was an Astor Foundation, and she didn't want to hand
it over to him."
CIA officer, ambassador, author, Broadway theater producer and businessman, who for years
managed his mother's personal fortune -- he was never really part of Astor's social circle.
"He was her son, she loved him, but I don't think she found his company exciting," Walters of
ABC News said when asked about their relationship. Aside from the foundation, Astor still had
a personal fortune worth tens of millions of dollars. But, according to her will, she also wanted
most of that money to go to charity. "As the money was made in New York City, I wanted to give
it all back to New York City and I have given it practically all," she told Walters during an interview
on "Nightline." "I just have a little bit left to still give and leave in my will."
at her 100th birthday party, she told Lord William Astor, her distant cousin, that she was afraid
she wouldn't remember anyone's name. "She could stand up and perform, which she did, and
she was great," he told ABC News. "But she, it was a real effort." In her final years,
she was plagued by confusion and disorientation that left her vulnerable to the alleged
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/the-tricky-question-of-competence/
Socialite Brooke Astor was losing ground cognitively, a procession of friends testified last week in a Manhattan courtroom. She no longer recognized people she’d been close to for decades. She wandered. Hosting a dinner party for the former secretary general of the United Nations, she had to ask another guest — Henry Kissinger, as it happened — who “that man” Kofi Annan was. She was unable to draw a clock face accurately, according to the geriatrician who diagnosed her Alzheimer’s disease.
But was the elegant philanthropist competent to make significant changes to her will at age 101? Her son Anthony D. Marshall, 84, and estate lawyer Francis X. Morrissey Jr., 66, stand accused of diverting tens of millions of dollars from her estate, and that legal question lies at the heart of their fraud and conspiracy trial. Questions of competence, however, are not always simple to answer, even after a dementia diagnosis, experts say.
“If the prosecutor can show that when she signed these codicils, she didn’t have capacity, then it’s over,” said Craig Reaves, president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. But, he added, “Capacity is fluid.” Much depends on whether Mrs. Astor truly grasped the consequences of her actions “on that day and in that moment.”
As their families know, Alzheimer’s sufferers may experience days of comparative lucidity alternating with days of bewilderment. Cognitive ability “may even vary throughout the day,” said Dr. Ronald C. Petersen, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic who chairs the medical and scientific advisory board of the Alzheimer’s Association. “A person might be relatively sharp in the morning and by evening be quite confused.”
Caregivers are familiar with the late-day agitation called “sundowning.” Medications, disrupted sleep, social stimulation and even a minor cold can affect these diurnal cycles. Though a variety of doctors are expected to testify during the two-month trial, they may shed little light on whether Mrs. Astor had, in legalspeak, “testamentary capacity” on a particular January afternoon in 2004, when she altered her will.
Even if Mrs. Astor were capable of making irreverent comments as she signed the disputed documents — as a defense attorney claimed in his opening statement — she may nevertheless have been unable to grasp the ramifications of her signature, experts note. Conversely, a person unable to reproduce a clock may still have had the capacity, particularly in the earlier stages of dementia, to decide to leave assets to a relative rather than to charities.
“The clock face doesn’t tell you that much,” said Dr. Laurel Coleman, a geriatrician who practices in Augusta, Me. Recently, for example, she saw a patient with Alzheimer’s who was only in her 60’s. The woman’s memory had deteriorated substantially; she couldn’t recall what book she was reading. “Did she have the capacity to be an accountant? No,” said Dr. Coleman. “But she was articulate about her struggles and her limitations, and I would’ve definitely said she had the capacity to make big decisions — like, about a will.”
The bar for establishing testamentary capacity is set fairly low. The person in question needs to have a general understanding of her assets, know to whom bequests are normally left, and be able to state what she wants to do and explain why.
Complicating the competency question in the Astor trial, however, is the charge that her son and attorney conspired to deceive Mrs. Astor. According to Meryl Gordon’s carefully researched book “Ms. Astor Regrets,” she told several friends and relatives that Mr. Marshall had told her a cherished Childe Hassam painting had to be sold because she needed money. It’s the $10 million sale of that painting, for which Mr. Marshall received a 20 percent commission from the gallery that bought it, that prompted an additional indictment for grand larceny.
Mrs. Astor’s trust was worth $60 million at the time, apart from her real estate holdings, antiques, artworks and jewelry. (Her friend Louis Auchincloss said that Mrs. Astor “never went out at night with less than a million dollars around her neck.”)
So the prosecution will argue that “even if she did have decision-making capacity, her decisions were warped by misinformation,” said Thomas Hafemeister, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Increasingly, estate and elder law attorneys want a record that demonstrates competence. “If I have a client I think is on the edge, especially if I think someone might be challenging or contesting the distribution, I’ll often videotape the entire proceeding,” said Mr. Reaves. On camera, he talks with his client and ascertains that he or she comprehends the matter at hand.
If there were a videotape showing that Mrs. Astor fully understood what she was about to do on the day she altered her will, he added, “There wouldn’t be a trial.”
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions,” to be published next month by Grand Central Publishing.
Update 3:28 5/11/2009: Our colleagues at City Room have posted a video snippet, shown in the courtroom last week, of Mrs. Astor at her 100th birthday celebration in 2002.
Outside the courtroom where socialite Brooke Astor’s son and former attorney are on trial for conspiracy and scheming to defraud her estate, a witness stopped to talk to a columnist for the New York Post. Betsy Gotbaum, New York City’s public advocate and Mrs. Astor’s close friend, had just testified to Mrs. Astor’s mental decline, which prosecutors say left her unable to understand the changes to her will that benefited her son, Anthony Marshall, 84. Whatever his culpability, Ms. Gotbaum said, “She wouldn’t want him to go to jail.” It’s a sentiment that experts often hear in cases of alleged financial exploitation. One reason the crime proves difficult to detect and prosecute is that so often “the abuser is someone the elder has loved and trusted,” said Thomas Hafemeister, a University of Virginia law professor studying financial elder abuse. Who wants to see a loved one — even one who may be ripping you off — in handcuffs? As with other forms of elder abuse, basic facts about financial exploitation — even how widely it occurs and to whom — remain elusive. Experts think all varieties are substantially underreported, and financial manipulation, unlike broken bones or bruises, can happen almost invisibly. But in elder abuse cases substantiated by adult protective agencies in 11 states, the most common abusers weren’t strangers, but sons and daughters,the National Center on Elder Abuse has found (PDF). A recent report on financial abuse from the Metlife Mature Market Institute (PDF) also points to family, along with “trusted professionals,” as the primary predators. Which complicates everything. Family dynamics represent “a major cause of underreporting,” said Joy Solomon, who heads the Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention at the Hebrew Home in the Bronx. A former prosecutor, Ms. Solomon has seen “the denial, the shame and the guilt — ‘If I was a better mother, my son would never have done this.’” The parallels with domestic violence cases are striking. This is a crime, Ms. Solomon said, in which the victim may feel greater humiliation than the criminal. So even when a third party, a lawyer or financial advisor or another family member, does notice suspicious behavior, victims often vigorously deny that they are victims, either because they don’t want to acknowledge their incapacities as they age or because they want to protect their exploiters. Or both. Take the case of the dueling daughters that Craig Reaves, president of theNational Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, encountered in his practice a few years back. A long-estranged daughter had re-entered the life of Mr. Reaves’s elderly client, who had dementia and who suddenly wanted to change estate plans, often a red flag. Concerned about manipulation, Mr. Reaves questioned his client closely, but the man resisted any suggestion of exploitation. “He said, ‘This is what I want to do,’” Mr. Reaves recalled. “He enjoyed being with her. She was treating him very, very nicely.” Yet she also was trying to append her name to her father’s assets. Ultimately another daughter asked a court to appoint a neutral guardian (as a grandson did in the Astor case) for their father. In other situations, a troubled child — perhaps with drug or alcohol problems, or untreated mental illness — moves back into the parent’s home with ugly results. “The parent likes having family there as she gets older and more vulnerable,” said Mr. Hafemeister, who has interviewed dozens of victims and caregivers in Virginia. But, financially dependent on the parent, “the child may resent the situation” and start skimming from Social Security payments, pocketing money intended to pay the electric bill, or charging pricey items to the parent’s Visa card. Sometimes, Mr. Hafemeister has found, the parent even tacitly accepts such theft. “It can be hard to determine who’s contributing to this, they’re so enmeshed,” he said. Outside investigators are often unwelcome — even though it’s common for financially exploited seniors to also suffer physical abuse or neglect. In fact, enforced social isolation — having access to friends and other family cut off while growing more psychologically dependent on the person with control — is in itself a warning that a vulnerable person may be at risk. “You skew the person’s reality,” Mr. Reaves said. “That makes it easier to say, ‘And oh, by the way, sign this.’”Amid Financial Abuse, a Blind Spot for Family
By PAULA SPAN
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions,” to be published next month by Grand Central Publishing.
Comments of the Moment
“ Euthanasia will be the White Album of the two-thousand-teens. Do not go gently, fellow (and sister) baby-boomers.”
Dying With 'Discernment'“ As a retired hospice nurse, i can validate the beauty and effectiveness of palliative care....As an ex-ICU nurse, i can tell you that we not only waste incredible amounts of money on futile care, we torture our dying patients.”
Dying With 'Discernment'“ Happiness is a byproduct of service. People who do something, anything, for other people have a greater chance for happiness than those who don't.”
What Makes Us Happy
October 10
Guilty verdicts in the Astor trial may lift barriers to the prosecution of elder abuse, legal observers said.
October 08
(4)
The son of legendary socialite Brooke Astor was convicted on Thursday of stealing from her in the final years of her life.
October 08
(3)
Characters in Anna Deavere Smith's new show reflect on many issues faced by aging parents and their children.
October 02
(9)
The Times launches an online meeting place for readers wishing to discuss health care.
Anthony D. Marshall arriving on Monday at court, where the jury considering the case against him and a co-defendant deliberated for a ninth day.
After receiving two notes from the jury around lunchtime on Monday and consulting with the lawyers in the case, Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr.summoned the jurors into the courtroom in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. He told them he understood that after a five-month trial, “emotions may run high.”
But he implored them to “let the touchstone of your deliberations be respect and civility.”
Justice Bartley sealed the notes that the jury sent out and the transcript from the bench conference he had with the lawyers. But during the bench conference, the lawyers and the judge were overheard discussing a juror who apparently felt threatened by the atmosphere in the jury room.
It was unclear which juror they were referring to. But during a rereading of testimony Monday morning — and again while the judge implored the jury to keep deliberating later in the afternoon — Juror No. 8, a 39-year-old legal analyst for the Bloomberg L.P., was pallid, with wet and puffy eyes. Her cheeks and nose were red. A male juror sitting next to her handed her a red handkerchief that she used to wipe her eyes.
The judge may confer with jurors who believe they can no longer serve. It did not appear that Justice Bartley had spoken to the juror who felt threatened Monday.
If a juror is ruled unable to serve, Justice Bartley will be forced to declare a mistrial, meaning that the more than 19 weeks of testimony and arguments will have been in vain.
Justice Bartley reminded the jurors that a verdict needed to be unanimous.
“I’m not asking any juror to violate his or her conscience, or abandon his or her best judgment,” he said.
“This is a job, I feel in my heart of hearts, that you can accomplish,” he later added.
Frederick P. Hafetz, one of the lawyers for Mrs. Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall, objected to what the judge told the jury, saying that it seemed to suggest to the jurors that they had to reach a verdict. But Justice Bartley did not amend his instructions.
The judge clearly was trying to defuse any jury tension. As he released the panel shortly after 4 p.m., about an hour earlier than usual, he added to the message he usually delivers at the end of each day. In addition to telling them to “get home safely and enjoy the evening,” he also told them to relax.
The jurors are determining whether Mr. Marshall and Francis X. Morrissey Jr., a lawyer who did estate planning for Mrs. Astor, took advantage of her deterioration from Alzheimer’s disease to funnel tens of millions of dollars their way. The most serious charges that Mr. Marshall faces are two counts of first-degree grand larceny — one for selling a Childe Hassam painting of his mother’s for $10 million and keeping a $2 million commission on the sale; the other for giving himself a retroactive salary increase, as his mother’s financial manager, of about $1 million.
The jury’s stalling point seems to be on the charge involving the retroactive salary increase.
On Monday morning, the jury requested a rereading of testimony from Henry Christensen III, who was Mrs. Astor’s longtime lawyer. The testimony related to calculations of Mr. Marshall’s salary and his use of the Vincent Astor Trust, which Mrs. Astor designated for charity, in determining his salary.
The request followed several from previous days that also related to the pay raise. On Sept. 25, the jurors asked to hear the testimony from Stephen Cohen, Mrs. Astor’s accountant, about a conversation he had with Mr. Marshall about the raise. Last Wednesday, the jury asked to see two checks — one for $910,000 and the other for $10,000 — that Mr. Marshall wrote to buy a yacht. Prosecutors contend that Mr. Marshall granted himself the raise so he could buy the yacht. And last Thursday, the panel asked to review all exhibits regarding the compensation and salary that Mr. Marshall received for his work as Mrs. Astor’s financial manager.
It appears, at least from one question, that the jury may be far from reaching a verdict: A juror asked the judge if she could leave early on Friday because she had a flight to catch.
NEW YORK — A jury trying to decide whether Brooke Astor's son and lawyer looted the socialite's estate resumed its deliberation Tuesday, one day after a juror complained she felt threatened during heated discussions.
Judge A. Kirke Bartley unsealed a note jurors had sent Monday that said a member of the panel felt "personally threatened" by another juror's comments and, "with regards to her personal safety, she wishes to be dismissed."
The note did not identify the jurors, all of whom returned Tuesday. One of the jury's eight women had appeared tearful in the courtroom Monday as Bartley said to keep deliberating despite the request.
The defense on Tuesday asked for a mistrial in light of the jury tensions.
"Any defendant has a right to be judged by a jury that is dispassionate, objective, and fair," lawyer John Cuti wrote in a letter to Bartley. "If a conscientious member of a jury is so intimidated by the conduct of her peers in the jury room that the she fears for her own physical safety, it is asking too much for that juror to remain true to her oath to decide the case based on her honestly held views."
Bartley denied the request but instructed the jurors that they are not required to reach a verdict.
Astor was suffering from Alzheimer's when she died in 2007 at 105. Her son, Anthony Marshall, and estate lawyer Francis Morrissey are charged with looting her nearly $200 million fortune.
Prosecutors say Marshall stole from his disoriented mother during her life, and he and Morrissey induced her to change her will to leave her son millions of dollars long destined for charity.
Defense lawyers say Marshall had legal authority to give himself gifts with his mother's money, and she knew what she was doing when she changed her will.
Jurors on Tuesday appeared to be continuing to chip away at the complex case. They sent the court a raft of detailed questions concerning Astor's tax records and Marshall's salary and power-of-attorney arrangement for managing her financial affairs.
They went home for the night with no further signs of animosity. Deliberations were to resume Wednesday.
Marshall, 85, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted; Morrissey, 66, faces up to seven years.
Astor was known for decades as the grande dame of New York society and gave millions to institutions such as the New York Public Library, Carnegie Hall and other causes.
NEW YORK — Jurors in the epic criminal case about philanthropist Brooke Astor's fortune seemed to have hit a breaking point.
With deliberations in their eighth full day, one member felt so threatened by a fellow juror's comments that she asked to be dismissed. One appeared to be crying in the courtroom.
Three days later, the same jurors unhesitatingly rendered a unanimous verdict, convicting Astor's son and an estate lawyer of plundering the frail socialite's wealth.
A dramatic turnaround? As fraught as the Astor jury seemed, it wasn't the first to founder on tensions but ultimately deliver a verdict. Appeals courts have upheld convictions that came after jurors expressed fears of being assaulted by fellow panel members or locked themselves in a bathroom to get away from deliberations.
Still, some legal experts say the apparent jury-room fireworks in the Astor case could be fertile ground for an expected appeal — ground that defense lawyers may have prepared in an unsuccessful mistrial request. For now, attorneys for Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, and lawyer Francis X. Morrissey Jr. aren't saying whether they plan to pursue one.
As for the jurors, several downplay the friction as they look back on the five-month courtroom drama, in which such star witnesses as Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters helped provide an often sad and intimate look at a society legend. If emotions sometimes ran high, the group generally was congenial, methodical and committed, they said.
"I felt lucky to be on a jury with 11 people who were intelligent and truly fair," said juror Ilona Gale, a city HIV prevention worker.
It's hardly startling that 12 strangers' effort to decide questions of guilt can be fractious — see Exhibit A, the jury-room classic "12 Angry Men."
In fact, jurors often say afterward that they felt threatened, said Los Angeles-based jury consultant Philip K. Anthony. His firm, DecisionQuest, has interviewed more than 10,000 civil and criminal court jurors after their service.
Some have told him they were so rattled by fellow jurors that they asked others — or court bailiffs — to walk them to their cars. Others expressed concern about fellow jurors finding out where they lived.
"I've had jurors tell me another juror told them, 'When the trial's over, I'm going to meet you outside, and we'll have it out on this,'" Anthony said.
It's less common for jurors to report their apprehensions to the court during the trial, but there are a number of examples.
Just last month, a New York federal judge gave a jury a day off to cool down after one member said others threw a chair and threatened to "beat me up" while deliberating on whether the osteoporosis drug Fosamax caused painful jaw bone destruction. The civil trial ended in a hung jury; the plaintiff's lawyer has said he expects a retrial.
A federal jury weighing a campaign-related mail-fraud case against a former Kentucky state senator and his wife in 2004 continued deliberating after one female juror said she would "kick the backside" of another juror. The guilty verdicts were later thrown out for unrelated reasons.
As in the Astor trial, juries often are asked to work through clashes and do, said New York Law School professor Randolph Jonakait, author of "The American Jury System," published by Yale University Press.
Some courts have stepped in, however. A judge in Niagara Falls, N.Y., declared a mistrial in a murder case in 2001 after a juror said a colleague might have choked another jury member and suggested black jurors were being pressured to change their votes. The defendant, accused of killing a man on behalf of the victim's wife, was later acquitted.
Some appeals courts also have shown concern about jury strife. A New York appellate court overturned a Bronx man's 1984 attempted rape conviction because a juror holding out for acquittal said another jury member "came at me with her fists" before being restrained by others. Appeals judges, noting that the trial court didn't respond to the juror's alarm, called the guilty verdict "the result of coercion" and ordered a new trial.
Defense lawyers in the Astor case raised the specter of coercion as they pressed for a mistrial after hearing Monday that one unidentified juror felt "personally threatened" by another's comments.
If she was the same juror in tears in the courtroom, "one must have grave doubts about whether she can continue to follow her own conscience, or whether she instead will choose her own safety over the rights of the defendants and simply succumb to intimidation and change her views," one of Marshall's lawyers, John Cuti, wrote to the court.
Judge A. Kirke Bartley denied defense bids for a mistrial or an inquiry into the juror's ability to continue. Instead, he told the panel to keep deliberating, with "respect and civility."
If defense lawyers try to make juror tensions an issue in their appeal, they will confront a legal system that is generally reluctant to scrutinize deliberations, except when they may have been improperly swayed by outsiders, legal experts said.
But a claim that a juror was frightened could be an exception, Fordham University School of Law professor Jim Cohen said.
Thaddeus Hoffmeister, a University of Dayton School of Law professor whose research focuses on juries, said any claim would depend on what actually happened in the jury room.
"Is it going to rise to that level (of being seen as coercive)? Only those people in that room know," he said.
Astor juror Barbara Tomanelli won't discuss any conflicts that erupted during deliberations. She describes the process as thorough and patient, with jurors hunting through reams of notes, raising hands to speak and meticulously working through the 18 charges on a blackboard and a flip chart.
When a divide persisted, the group would review testimony, move on to another count or take a walk, she said.
Yes, it was grueling, but fascinating, and "I was very proud of the fact that we did it," the retired executive assistant said. After it was all done, "we were able to ... sit around and have beers together. And that ought to tell you something."
Associated Press writer Karen Matthews and researcher Susan James contributed to this report
ROBERT KALFUSOctober 7, 2009 One juror publicly burst into tears. Another wanted out after a "heated argument" led her to fear for her safety. Defense lawyers are screaming, "Mistrial!" Six months after the court proceeding began -- and 2½ weeks into deliberations -- the multimillion-dollar Brooke Astor swindle trial appears to be teetering on the edge of collapse, or at least deadlock. Yesterday, the ever-patient trial judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley, released a dramatic jury note that revealed just how close the trial has come to hitting the shoals.
One female juror -- no one but the jurors themselves know who -- was so afraid for her safety that she wanted out.
"Due to heated argument," the note read, "a juror feels personally threatened by comments made by another juror. With regards to her personal safety, she wishes to be dismissed anonymously."
Lawyers for Anthony Marshall -- who's charged with conspiring with a crooked estates lawyer to swindle his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother out of more than $60 million -- immediately demanded a mistrial, arguing that the trial could not proceed if a juror feared for her safety.
Bartley denied the mistrial request.
And in response to the alarming note, he has for two days now urged the panel to keep civil and keep deliberating. So far, thanks in part to the judge's humor and encouragement, the panel appears to be holding together.
The judge has encouraged jurors to take as many breaks and walks as they wish. His offers that they get "snacks" to break the tension has become a running joke.
"I trust you've enjoyed the pizza?" Bartley quipped yesterday when the panel made a post-lunch appearance. They were looking for still more guidance on the law surrounding a $1.4 million retroactive salary increase Marshall granted himself out of Astor's funds, using his power-of-attorney, for managing her finances.
The salary increase has been an evident deliberations sticking point, the topic of repeated juror notes since late last week.
All eyes are especially on Juror No. 8, a lawyer who works for Bloomberg News service. She was in tears toward day's end Monday, leading audience members to suspect she might be the juror who feared for her safety. Yesterday, she and her fellow jurors appeared exhausted.
"There is just an awful amount of information," said one former Astor juror, who was released before deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Jurors heard 19 weeks of testimony by 74 witnesses, all but two of whom were presented by the prosecution. Forgery experts expounded on the loops in Astor's handwriting for about seven days. Marshall's co-defendant, estates lawyer Francis Morrissey, is charged with forging Astor's signature.
Some counts in the indictment appear to be overkill -- such as those charging Marshall with grand larceny for spending $50,000 of his mother's money to pay the salary of his yacht captain, the released juror said.
Other counts charging that Marshall lied about certain dollar amounts in letters and financial forms are tough to prove, the released juror said.
"Who's to say if he just made a mistake?" she said.
Still, "I would hate to see them with a hung jury," she said. "I just feel it's so glaringly obvious that the son is guilty -- that it's time for him to reap what he's sown."
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/05/21/2009-05-21_you_call_this_a_family.html What kind of family has to make appointments through secretaries to see each other? If you said "The Astors," you totally understand this unbelievable mess playing itself out in Manhattan Supreme Court. I sure don't. So, here we have defense lawyer Ken Warner asking Philip Marshall why he visited his grandmother, Brooke Astor, shortly after 9/11, but not his father,Anthony Marshall. "I did not have an appointment to visit my father," Philip said. Seems get-togethers with his father had to be scheduled weeks in advance. What is he, a dentist? Guess there wasn't much dropping in on ol' Dad with a six-pack on game day. Philip, star witness and instigator of his 84-year-old father's indictment on charges of looting Astor's $185 million estate, said that from the time he was 12, he and his twin brother saw their father about three times a year. "It was kind of formal," Philip said of his relationship with his father after his parents split up. Even for WASPspeak, that's a stunning understatement. As they grew into adults, the twins responded in kind, seldom visiting him. They would visit their famous grandmother only occasionally as well, and yes, they needed an appointment. Philip has said that when he showed up on Park Ave. not expecting to see her, he was mortified to be wearing shorts. Most grandmothers wouldn't care if their grandkids wore drop-crotch pants and skinny tees, as long as they showed up. All this made spectators grateful for what they have. "I call my grandmother every day," one young woman said proudly. "I used to do that, but I haven't in awhile," said another. "I think I'm gonna call her later." The inner workings of Brooke Astor's family have opened like a pomegranate in this trial for all the world to see. The estrangement, er, "formality," even goes back to Astor when Anthony was a child. Every family has problems, but lots of money takes the place of love sometimes. Astor was a teenage bride, but the kind who would have breakfast in bed and see Tony for a few minutes before she went out with friends. By 26, she was on to a second rich husband, Buddie Marshall. "I decided that Tony was getting spoiled and should go to boarding school," Astor wrote in her memoir, "Footprints." "I remember when I told Buddie. We were swimming [in Italy] at the time." So, Anthony Marshall was shipped off to boarding school at age 8 and, Astor wrote, "Buddie and I then went down to Florida for 10 days of shooting [grouse]. Anthony was "lonely" at school for the next 10 years. Louis Auchincloss tells the story of Astor crying on the train home after a visit. But after a cocktail "all that was forgotten." Tony Marshall tried to get his mother's attention and approval all his life, but never did, even after quadrupling her money. "She was a dominant force, and now [his wife] Charlene is a ... dominant force," Philip Marshall told us Wednesday. Marshall believes the desire to provide for Charlene caused his father to swindle Astor, a woman who was so generous to New York City, who owned huge estates on the Hudson and in Maine, who lived in a Park Ave. duplex and who headed this Family From Hell. Now that she's gone, Charlene and Tony Marshall thought it would be enough for Alec and Philip to get $1 million each. Not bad, except that from a $185 million pot, I guess the brothers thought it was pretty chintzy. Coming from a family where my mother sometimes had Lipton soup so we kids could have more, I don't get these people. You know what? Keep the money, I'd rather have the love.
Hermann for News
Anthony Marshall, with wife, Charlene, glares at his estranged son, Philip, outside courtroom.
Astor 'family' continues to amaze during Anthony Marshall trial
My friend Diane Fener, an attorney in Virginia Beach, Va., maintains a busy schedule when she travels to New England to see her parents.
“I make the circuit,” she said. She visits her mother, who for two years has lived in the dementia unit of an assisted living facility in Rhode Island. She visits her father in his apartment about a half-hour away in Massachusetts. And his second wife, Ms. Fener’s stepmother, in a nearby nursing home; she, too, has dementia. And the man who was her mother’s second husband for nearly 20 years.
“Four stops,” Ms. Fener said. “I don’t get as much time with each of them as I’d like.”
This is the aftermath of a spike in the divorce rate that struck in the 1970s. States liberalized their divorce laws, working women became less inclined to remain in unsatisfying marriages, the cultural stigma of divorce faded — and 30 years later, the grown children of these broken marriages are dealing with the unanticipated consequences.
“It adds another layer of complexity to an already complex and emotional situation,” said Suzanne Mintz, president of the National Family Caregivers Association.
U.S. Census Bureau data shows how much more common this scenario has become than in decades past. In 1960, about 4 percent of people over 60 were currently divorced or separated; by 2000, the proportion had climbed to more than 9 percent of men and 10 percent of women.
A higher proportion of the 60-plus population is currently married now, in part because lengthening lifespans mean that fewer become widowed (PDF). But many of those are second or third marriages, according to census data: among men over 50 who’d ever been divorced, almost 56 percent were married in 2004, as were 40 percent of ever-divorced women.
Which can create some thorny situations.
Years after parents split, their children may wind up helping to sustain two households instead of one, and those households can be across town or across the country. Further, unmarried women (whether single, widowed or divorced) face significantly higher poverty rates in middle and old age, according to a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (PDF) that AARP published last year. Read more…
I’m intrigued, as a moviegoer, to see how Hollywood and other popcult generators respond to our aging population. Will we see doddering stereotypes on the screen? Or condescendingly portrayed (read: adorable) old people? Or reality, in all its shades and tints?
A year ago, Jane Gross posted geriatrician Dennis McCullough’s favorite films about aging from his book, “My Mother, Your Mother.” And she compiled an expanded movie list incorporating readers’ nominations.
This summer I nominate “Gotta Dance,” a documentary chronicling the formation of the New Jersey Nets NETSational Seniors, the first NBA dance team whose members are all over 60. Director Dori Berinstein follows these folks from their auditions through their training sessions to their exultant performances before 19,000 or so people at half a dozen Nets games and the media blitz that followed. Check out this amateur video of one performance.
When it came to a theater near me (for screenings in your area, check the movie’s Web site), I watched with a certain initial resistance. Almost half the dancers — a dozen women and one brave man — are in their early 60s. Is it so remarkable for people at that age to learn a few brief hip-hop routines? It happens in my fitness class every day. Been to a Bruce Springsteen concert lately? He turns 60 next month.
But the movie won me over. We’re not always in the mood for “Away from Her,” the beautiful, heartbreaking film in which Julie Christie slowly loses her mind. “Gotta Dance” is energetic, fun — a hoot, basically. Anyone else seen it?
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said on Wednesday that end-of-life care, fast becoming a hot-button issue, will not be addressed in health care legislation emerging from the committee.
In a prepared statement, Sen. Grassley said, “Maybe others can defend a bill like the Pelosi bill that leaves major issues open to interpretation, but I can’t.”
The New York Times and other news media have lately been full of poll results on the reaction of the elderly to President Obama’s plans for a health care overhaul. Uniformly, the numbers show that the elderly, compared to other age groups, are worried about proposals to address the unsustainable increases in Medicare costs, to conduct effectiveness research on what medical care works and what doesn’t, and to reimburse doctors for routine end-of-life counseling.
Many of the elderly think they have something to lose if anything about Medicare changes and that the ideas currently dominating the news will more likely hurt than help them.
These reports routinely characterize the elderly as those ages 65 and over. Yet to a great degree, the spiraling costs of health care in this country are being driven by a far more select group: those 85 and older. And contrary to what the polls say, it’s not clear that the old-old, with the wisdom borne of perhaps too much experience with the health care system and its excesses, are as opposed to these changes as the 60-somethings or 70-somethings. Indeed, we don’t really know what the old-old think at all.
On one level, polling everyone over 65 as a group makes sense, given the fact that they mostly receive health care the same way — via Medicare. And the Census Bureau has long used a standard set of age cohorts, the oldest being the 65-and-over set. But when talking of the elderly these days, that is a ridiculously broad grouping, an artifact of a time when people rarely lived into their 80s, 90s and beyond.
Now, the 85-and-over set, effectively a generation unto itself, is the fastest growing age group in the United States, as well as its most costly consumers of health care, a trend likely to accelerate for decades as the baby boomers now in their 50s and 60s grow older. Read more…
When my parents were in their 50s — the age I am now — my father told me not to do for them what they had done for their parents: become their caregiver when they were old.
Years of responding to the needs of four elderly parents had taken a toll, especially on my mother. To protect me from a similar fate, my father told me that if the time came that he and my mother could no longer live alone, I should find a retirement community or nursing home for them far enough away to keep family visits to a minimum. Caring for an aging parent, my father insisted, is a duty best discharged from afar.
What my father didn’t understand is that whether one lives next door or across the country, the responsibility for elderly parents never goes away. Caring from afar is no easier than being there. It is simply different. On-site hands-on caregivers are like day laborers who do the actual physical work. Distant caregivers are like off-site managers who coordinate services and delegate responsibilities. Both have their roles and points of high stress.
At least, that’s what I tell myself. And if it weren’t for the guilt I feel, it would be true.
My father was spared what he regarded as the indignities of old age when he died suddenly from an aneurysm, five days shy of his 77th birthday. My mother, two years younger and destined to live six years longer, was not one of those women who enjoyed widowhood. She had emphysema, osteoporosis and a condition psychiatrists call “complicated bereavement,” a prolonged depression following the loss of a loved one. She was also geographically isolated in a small town in Kansas, five and a half hours by car from Denver, where my older brother lived. From Los Angeles, where I lived with my husband and two young children, it was two and half hours by plane, followed by six hours in a car. Read more…
The patient showed symptoms of severe depression. She hallucinated, seeing her dead father across her room. Her family was having trouble taking care of her.
Dr. Cornelia Cremens, the psychiatrist who saw the woman at Massachusetts General Hospital, suggested an evaluation at McLean Hospital — which as everyone in Boston (and anyone who read “Girl, Interrupted”) knows is a psychiatric facility.
“I could never go there,” the woman objected, appalled. “If anybody found out, I’d be stigmatized for the rest of my life.”
She was 98.
“People in general are reluctant to see a psychiatrist,” Dr. Cremens said, “but old people even more so.”
A generational divide yawns here. “Part of it comes from the culture that developed during the Depression: the strongest survived,” Dr. Cremens said. Her elderly patients think they should be able to fix themselves with determination and bootstraps, not with antidepressants.
“Nobody would tell you to walk on a broken leg, but if you’re depressed, people tell you to buck up,” Dr. Cremens said. “They think it’s better to hide it and not talk about it.” Read more…
Remember the Astor trial? The ongoing case raised questions about whether noted philanthropist Brooke Astor, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, understood what she was doing when she changed her will in 2004, diverting millions that had long been promised to charities to her son, Anthony Marshall. Allegations also arose that her son and a co-defendant — charged with conspiracy, fraud, larceny and forgery — manipulated a confused centenarian into parting with her treasured $10 million painting.
The trial has lasted 18 weeks, twice as long as the judge originally estimated, but closing arguments finally began in a downtown Manhattan courtroom today. They’re expected to continue through Wednesday.
Headlines heralded the trial’s start last spring. Spectators, eager to see celebrity witnesses like Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger and intrigued by the backstage glimpses into the life of a New York icon, crowded the courtroom.
Those of us who pay attention to issues affecting older Americans were fascinated, too, as alleged financial exploitation of the elderly — an abuse that also plays out among ordinary families in ordinary towns — got a national spotlight. Read more…
Anthony Marshall, the son of the late socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor, has spent months in a Manhattan courtroom hearing himself portrayed in stark contrasts. Either he is a devoted son whose mother wanted to bestow on him an even bigger share of her estate than he would already have received, or he is a “depraved” exploiter, in the words of prosecutors, who used an elderly woman with dementia “as his own little piggy bank, his own A.T.M.”
Like the rest of the Astor trial, which began in April, closing arguments took longer than forecast, at one point becoming so contentious that Mr. Marshall, 85, trembled and leaned on a railing behind his chair for support.
But after instructions from the judge, the case will quite likely go to the jury today. Deliberations will proceed relatively quickly, predicted Thomas Hafemeister, a University of Virginia Law School professor who studies elder abuse and also decision-making by jurors. “I think there will be a lot of internal peer pressure to quickly reach a verdict so that they can all go home,” Professor Hafemeister said in an e-mail message. “By most accounts, this has been a very lengthy and pretty tedious trial that the jurors are probably very eager to see end.”
One would not, however, call the closing statements tedious. Defense lawyers for Mr. Marshall and his co-defendant, the estate lawyer Francis X. Morrissey Jr., 66, emphasized testimony that Mrs. Astor was lucid when she signed the 2004 codicils that increased her son’s $20 million to $23 million inheritance to nearly $60 million.
“Make no mistake about it, Brooke Astor loved her only son, Tony Marshall,” his lawyer said, adding later that Mrs. Astor had already been generous to the charities that previously dominated her will.
The prosecutor, Joel J. Seidemann, on the other hand, attacked Mr. Marshall as a greedy predator. “This was a man who could not wait for the money,” Mr. Seidemann said. “He waited and waited with the undertaker’s shovel in his hand for his mother to die.”
Meryl Gordon, author of “Mrs. Astor Regrets,” has been among those watching the courtroom drama unfold. “It has been a fascinating spectacle,” Ms. Gordon said via e-mail. “A graduate seminar in the ravages of Alzheimer’s, a sad tale of mother-son family dysfunction, a window into the world of New York society.”
Tuesday, May 19th 2009, Brooke Astor caused Prince Charles some royal embarrassment when she welcomed his girlfriend to New York high society by declaring, "You're keeping this mistress business in the family." "Your grandmother would be proud of you," Astor told Camilla Parker Bowlesat the 1999 luncheon, former New York Public Library honcho Vartan Gregorian testified yesterday at the fraud trial of Astor's son, Anthony Marshall. Gregorian said Parker Bowles took Astor's cringeworthy - and uncharacteristically uncouth - crack in stride. "She laughed, graciously," he said. Parker Bowles' great-grandmother was Alice Keppel, a mistress of Charles' great-great-grandfather Edward VII. Parker Bowles, who has since married Charles, was blamed for breaking up his marriage to Princess Diana. Today, the battle of New York's blue bloods could take a nasty turn when Marshall's estranged sons, Alec and Philip, testify against their dad. Gregorian was yet another upper-crust New Yorker prosecutors put on the stand to support charges that Marshall and lawyer Francis Morrissey took advantage of Astor's Alzheimer's to plunder her $185 million fortune. Kicking off week four of the trial, Gregorian said Astor did not recognize actorMichael Douglas at the Parker Bowles luncheon and dissed his soon-to-be wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. "Who is this woman?" Astor said, Gregorian testified. "She's wearing the wrong dress for this occasion." Gregorian said Astor said that "right in front of her." "Catherine Zeta-Jones pretended she didn't hear," he said. In the years before she died in 2007 at age 105, the society queen was in her own world, Gregorian said - and even the Sept. 11 attacks "did not register" with her at all. Astor loved her son, "but also was disappointed that his enterprises had not succeeded," he added. Asked about Marshall's third wife, Charlene, whom prosecutors have called a greedy social climber, Gregorian said, "Mrs. Astor never liked any of Mr. Marshall's wives." Prosecutors also showed video footage of a shaky Astor telling an embarrassed audience at a library awards dinner her parents made her marry "a perfectly terrible man" at age 16 - and never told her the facts of life. "In those days, I thought if a man kissed you, a ... baby popped out of you." In the same speech, which Astor gave shortly before she turned 100, she also told the audience: "I am almost 90 years old, just two weeks from being 90 years old." Marshall, 84, and Morrissey, 66, deny swindling Astor and insist she was lucid when she rewrote her will in January 2004 to give her son an extra $60 million.
Rountree/AP
Prince Charles
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Tuesday, May 19th 2009,
Brooke Astor's grandsons accused their pop of ripping her off and letting her live in a Park Avenue pigsty Tuesday in a long-awaited battle of New York blue bloods.
"The apartment was dirty," Philip Marshall testified as his father, Anthony, glared from across the Manhattan courtroom.
"And I'm trying to be polite. Very, very, dirty."
The younger Marshall's voice cracked as he described how "terrified" and disoriented his "Gagi" was when he stopped by Astor's apartment in March 2004 with his wife and kids.
"I said, 'Gagi, it is Philip and Nan and Winslow and Sophie,' and she still looked terrified," he testified.
The grandson said he told Astor, "We are family, we love you" and gently rubbed her back.
"At which point she relaxed and squeezed my hand and started crying," he said.
After Marshall finished for the day and walked out of the courtroom with twin brother Alec, who testified earlier, his father and stepmother Charlene stood up and shook their heads sadly.
Philip Marshall, whose charges of elder abuse led to prosecutors filing swindling charges against his father and attorney Francis Morrissey, faces a fierce cross-examination when he returns to the stand today.
The jury will not get to hear how the grandson was appointed Astor's guardian after his dad was booted - or dirty details like how the society queen lived amid piles of dog poop.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley barred prosecutors from bringing that up.
Anthony Marshall, 84, and Morrissey, 66, are accused of taking advantage of Astor's Alzheimer's to plunder her $185 million fortune. She died two years ago at age 105.
Prosecutors have put a parade of Astor's upper-crust pals and loyal employees on the stand to attest to her senility when she rewrote her will in January 2004 to give her son an extra $60 million.
But this was the first time Anthony Marshall had to face family in the courtroom, and his eyes reddened when Alec, a 56-year-old Westchester photographer, took the stand.
Alec Marshall said that when he and his brother visited at her palatial Westchester estate in 2001 or 2002, she offered out of the blue to give it to them.
"At that point, I knew it was too late for any changes to her will," he said.
A year later, Alec Marshall said, he had tea with Astor.
"She said to me, 'I'm happy,' and then she asked me my name," he said.
During the lunch break, Anthony Marshall had to be consoled by his wife, who cradled his head in her arms. But when Philip took the stand and described visiting Astor's apartment in 2006, his father was dry-eyed and shooting daggers.
"It was not the way my grandmother typically would have lived," Philip Marshall said. "It was just not maintained to her standards."
Some of the windows were wide open and a few of the panes were cracked, he testified.
The Rhode Island college professor said that after his father married Charlene he found it harder and harder to see his grandmother.
He said the first time he learned that Astor's will had been tinkered with was June 24, 2004, when he called on his dad to find out what she was leaving him.
"Charlene did most of the talking," he said. "Charlene said that my grandmother had given my brother and myself $10,000, but my father had managed to change that to $1 million each."
Marshall said he was surprised. "I said thanks," he said.
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Anthony Marshall arriving at court on Wed. May 13, 2009 for his trial for allegedly swindling his mother, legendary philanthropist Brooke Astor
Wednesday, May 13th 2009, A longtime friend of Brooke Astor testified Wednesday that the socialite was deeply disappointed in her only son, Anthony Marshall. "She said, 'I wish Tony had made something of himself instead of waiting for the money,'" James Watt said at the fraud trial of Marshall and his alleged accomplice, Francis Morrissey. Watt was was chairman of the Asian Art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Astor was a trustee. He said he continued to have tea with the socialite long after she stopped coming to board meetings - and chose his attire very carefully. "I always wore a light suit because I knew she was scared of people in dark suits," said Watt, 72. This appeared to be a reference to Morrissey and other lawyers Marshall allegedly took to his Alzheimer's-addled mother to help him plunder her $185 million fortune. Marshall, 84, and Morrissey, 66, deny ripping off Astor and insist she was lucid when she updated her wills to reroute $60 million Astor set aside for the Met and other New York institutions to her son. Watt took the stand a day after Marshall's wife, Charlene, had a courtroom meltdown when prosecutors painted her as a money-grubbing meanie terrified of being cut out of Astor's will. Marshall shook Watt's hand at Manhattan Supreme Court and Charlene gave him a big hug, but the warm greeting did not appear to sweeten Watt's testimony. Watt said that starting in 2001, Astor began referring to herself as "newly poor." In the years that followed, she spent more and more time alone as long time loyal staffers like her chauffeur disappeared, he said. Watt said Marshall "would always be courteous and polite to his mother," but there didn't seem to be much warmth there. "It didn't seem to me like the normal behavior between a son and a mother," he said. Watt's testimony matched that of a dozen other prosecution witnesses who said that Astor, in the decade before she died in 2007 at age 105, could no longer recognize dear friends she'd known for years. Prosecutors claim Marshall conned his mother into thinking she was going broke so he could sell off prized possessions she'd earmarked for the Met, such as her beloved Childe Hassam painting. They contend Marshall was pressured by his greedy wife into robbing his mom, but have not charged Charlene with a crime.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/05/13/2009-05-13_when_did_the_brooke_astor_trial_become_all_about_her.html Updated Wednesday, May 13th 2009, 3:07 AM It was hard to watch Charlene Marshall losing it in court. She threw her arms up and her head back, as if to God. Her eyes bugged. She jumped up and slammed her purse on the bench. With her husband, Tony, who is accused of allegedly swindling his socialite mother Brooke Astor, sitting several rows up, reporters easily heard her stage-whisper, "Did you see that? She walked right by, laughing at me!" This was aimed at Birgit Darby, Mrs. Astor's former social secretary. Darby had testified in deposition about an f-word-laced phone call in which Charlene ended with, "If he dies, I get nothing!" Oh, boy, everyone said. Charlene is losing it. Great story. You would have thought she'd learned her lesson when photos of her breaking down in tears outside court made the front page last week. She's not charged with anything, but Charlene is being tried in the press as an unindicted co-conspirator. Miss Piggy is her default name and she's been caricatured as positively porcine. She's guilty of being overweight, and as one socialite after another takes the stand - with their boy-like bodies and helmet bouffants - who can be blamed for equating girth with greed. And did the prosecutor really have to refer to Charlene as the "elephant in the room"? A reality check was in order, so I spoke with Samuel Peabody, who met Tony Marshall when he was 14 - 70 years ago. Sam and his wife Judith are the coolest socialites in New York. They not only write the checks to help poor people without the publicity photos or their names emblazoned across buildings, but they "walk the walk." Judy Peabody has taken daily, hands-on care of AIDS patients since the 80s. And Sam has done more for the city's minority children than anyone, when the couple could just golf and lunch and travel if they wanted to. His ancestor arrived here on the boat that followed the Mayflower and became the first governor - when Massachusetts was still a Bay Colony. Put it this way: Like Brooke Astor, Sam Peabody also had one of the invaluableChilde Hassam flag paintings. But next to it is his favorite picture of his mother - in jail for daring to eat with black people in the South in 1964. "[Charlene] is an extremely compassionate woman," Peabody said. "She's active at St. James Church. She brings Communion to shut-ins ... She listens. She helps people in pain ... She's not a golddigger at all." Charlene calmed down in the afternoon, when artist Richard Osterweil, another friend, sat next to her and held her hand. "Charlene is really a lovely person," he said. Maybe more friends should show up. She's there to support her husband, but if she keeps losing it, she's going to become a - pardon the expression - big liability. jmolloy@nydailynews.com
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Charlene Marshall leaves court on Tuesday.When did the Brooke Astor trial become all about Charlene Marshall?
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Anthony Marshall (r.), son of the late Brooke Astor, and his wife Charlene Marshall arrive at Manhattan Supreme Court.
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Brooke Astor ate at the Knickerbocker Club for years, sitting in the same table, but later in life she didn't recognize it, says Patsy Preston.
Updated Tuesday, May 12th 2009, 4:43 PM
Brooke Astor's daughter-in-law yelped and threw up her arms in frustration Tuesday when prosecutors painted her as a money-grubbing meanie who feared she'd be axed from the socialite's will.
The outburst came as prosecutor Elizabeth Loewy tried to get the judge presiding over the fraud trial of Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, to let jurors hear an angry statement his wife, Charlene, made about Astor.
"She's f-----g killing him, she's f-----g killing him," Charlene Marshall screamed over the phone to Astor's secretary, Birgit Darby in 2002, five years before the Astor died.
"And if he dies before she dies I get nothing."
The "she" was Astor. The "he" was Marshall, who is on trial for swindling his mother.
Prosecutor Joel Seidemann said the jury should hear the statement because, he said, Charlene's greed made her the "elephant in the room."
Her face beet red, Charlene Marshall was not mollified when Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley barred it, saying she was not charged with a crime.
"It doesn't matter, it is out," Charlene told her husband.
Outside the courtroom, Darby said Charlene laid into her because Astor insisted on wintering in Florida like she did every year. "They didn't want to spend the money," she said.
Darby said the Marshalls were clearly not happy to see her on the stand.
"He never looked at me," she said. "She glared at me the whole time. If eyes were daggers I would be completely eviscerated."
Charlene's snit aside, Bartley's ruling was a blow to prosecutors, who contend that Marshall was trying to slake his wife's lust for money when he and lawyerFrancis Morrissey plundered Astor's $185 million fortune.
Numerous prosecution witnesses have testified that Astor loathed Charlene. Darby testified that the socialite referred to her daughter-in-law as "that woman."
Darby, 47, was employed by Astor from September 2001 to February 2002, but said the Marshalls "made it clear I'd be working for them."
Among other things, Darby said she was ordered to tell them "of any expenditures if [Astor] went shopping."
Asked about Astor's beloved Childe Hassam painting, which had been destined for the Met before Marshall sold it to a gallery for $10 million, Darby said he made sure his mother was not around when he brought "a gentleman by to look at the painting."
Darby testified that after Astor defied the Marshalls and went to Florida, she was told the old lady had an accident and "she would not need a social secretary ... going forward."
"I never found out if she'd had an accident or not," she said.
Marshall, 84, and Morrissey, 66, deny ripping off Astor and insist she was lucid when she agreed to part with the painting in 2002 and updated her will two years later.
That update rerouted $60 million Astor had set aside for charity to her son.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/05/11/2009-05-11_brooke_astors_former_social_secretary_jolee_hirsch_fennebresque.html
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Jolee Hirsch Fennebresque, the former personal secretary to the late Brooke Astor, arrives at Manhattan Supreme Court.
Monday, May 11th 2009, 1:57 PM
Brooke Astor's former social secretary said she worked for the socialite five days a week for four years, but the socialite barely recognized her at her 100th birthday bash.
"To me she looked overwhelmed, a little bit fragile and weary," Jolee Hirsch Fennebresque testified Monday. "She looked pretty blank."
Fennebresque worked for Astor from 1997 to 2001. The birthday party was in 2002.
Prosecutors put Fennebresque on the stand to support charges that Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, and his pal Francis Morrissey, took advantage of the socialite's senility to plunder her $185 million fortune.
The testimony from Astor's ex-aide came after defense lawyers aired video from the socialite's birthday bash which showed the supposedly doddering dowager delivering a witty, lucid, two-minute speech that left everyone laughing.
Fennebresque, 35, said in Manhattan Supreme Court that Astor and her son had a "tense" relationship.
"At times it was good and fine and other times there was a tension," she said. "(Astor) would roll her eyes, or something like that" after Marshall was gone, she said.
Fennebresque, who left Astor to work for First Lady Laura Bush, said Marshall's wife, Charlene, rarely visited.
"I think they had a difficult relationship with each other, so often it was tense," she said.
Astor's former aide also said she noticed her boss was losing it well before Marshall told her in 2000 his mother was suffering from Alzheimer's.
"She couldn't remember people, it frustrated her," she said. "She was definitely weaker when I was leaving."
The last time she saw Astor was in 2004.
"It wasn't so good," she said. "It made me sad because she really didn't remember me."
That is significant because Marshall and Morrissey insist Astor was lucid when she updated her will in January 2004 to give her son $60 million she set aside for the Met and other charities.
Marshall, 84, and Morrissey, 66, deny ripping Astor off.
Earlier, an aide to David Rockefeller testified that Astor was too far gone to help plan her 100th birthday bash - but that her sense of humor was still intact.
Alice Victor said that when she asked Astor who she'd like to put on the 100-name guest list, she answered, "How about 99 men?"
When asked for names, Astor could only come up with about six.
Astor was 105 when she died in 2007
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Sunday, May 10th 2009, 12:19 AM
The letters of Brooke Astor to her friend Annette de la Renta express the kind of sentiment a mother expresses to a child, an intimate relationship between the late grande dame of New York society and her glittery protégée.
The letters, many of them handwritten, are often in the form of thank-you notes - in one case for a fur rug that de la Renta gave Astor as a Christmas gift - but another was an apology for Astor's bizarre behavior during an incident inCentral Park.
The missives reveal that Astor considered de la Renta as close as a daughter - and perhaps closer to her than her only child, Anthony Marshall.
"Dearest darling Annette," Astor wrote a note dated only "Monday night" to the wife of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
"I am off to England to-morrow at 6 a.m! but I cannot go without letting you know how much you mean to me. You are my beloved star, shinning [sic] so brightly in my life."
The adoring two-page note goes on: "I am so proud of you - I wish that I were your mother."
Twenty-two letters written by Astor to de la Renta, who was nearly 40 years her junior and whose mother was a wealthy contemporary of Astor's, were entered into evidence by prosecutors at the trial of Astor's son.
Marshall, 84, along with a lawyer pal, 66-year-old Francis Morrissey, is charged with swindling his Alzheimer-addled mother out of $60 million in 2004 by duping her into signing over money from her estate that had been earmarked for charity. Astor died at age 105 in 2007.
De la Renta - who was appointed Astor's guardian over Marshall after he was accused of neglecting Astor's care in a related 2006 civil case - testified against him last week and read several of the letters aloud to the jury.
Entering a third week of testimony, the blockbuster, blue-blood trial - it's expected to last two months - continues Monday, with one of Astor's social secretaries taking the witness stand against Marshall.
The prosecution says that before Astor was stricken by dementia, she'd left the bulk of her $185 million fortune to charity, with Marshall receiving a generous income for life.
But Astor left nothing for Marshall's wife, Charlene, if she survived him - and that, prosecutors said, offered motivation for the theft.
The prosecution hopes to back its claim of the mother-son divide by showing Marshall was supplanted in Astor's affections.
"Darling Annette," she writes in another undated note. "I called you this a.m. because I was feeling rather depressed and wanted to hear your voice."
With one note, written Nov. 11, 2002, prosecutors aim to corroborate a story de la Renta told on the witness stand about odd behavior by Astor in Central Park when Astor, out of the blue, shouted at de la Renta, "I knew I should have listened to that man, he told me you weren't my friend."
On the stand, de la Renta portrayed the incident as a dementia-induced hallucination - proof that Astor was no longer competent to sign wills as the prosecution charges.
Later that day, Astor wrote a note sent along with an expensive pearl lariat necklace gift as an apology to de la Renta.
"It was utterly, terribly stupid of me to have ever thought that you did not love me as a mother almost," Astor said, adding that she should not listen to "foolish people."
Defense lawyers jumped on the last letter, saying it was clear and lucid - and offering that if Astor was so demented de la Renta would not have accepted the expensive gift.
NEW YORK — Jurors in the epic criminal case about philanthropist Brooke Astor's fortune seemed to have hit a breaking point.
With deliberations in their eighth full day, one member felt so threatened by a fellow juror's comments that she asked to be dismissed. One appeared to be crying in the courtroom.
Three days later, the same jurors unhesitatingly rendered a unanimous verdict, convicting Astor's son and an estate lawyer of plundering the frail socialite's wealth.
A dramatic turnaround? As fraught as the Astor jury seemed, it wasn't the first to founder on tensions but ultimately deliver a verdict. Appeals courts have upheld convictions that came after jurors expressed fears of being assaulted by fellow panel members or locked themselves in a bathroom to get away from deliberations.
Still, some legal experts say the apparent jury-room fireworks in the Astor case could be fertile ground for an expected appeal — ground that defense lawyers may have prepared in an unsuccessful mistrial request. For now, attorneys for Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, and lawyer Francis X. Morrissey Jr. aren't saying whether they plan to pursue one.
As for the jurors, several downplay the friction as they look back on the five-month courtroom drama, in which such star witnesses as Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters helped provide an often sad and intimate look at a society legend. If emotions sometimes ran high, the group generally was congenial, methodical and committed, they said.
"I felt lucky to be on a jury with 11 people who were intelligent and truly fair," said juror Ilona Gale, a city HIV prevention worker.
It's hardly startling that 12 strangers' effort to decide questions of guilt can be fractious — see Exhibit A, the jury-room classic "12 Angry Men."
In fact, jurors often say afterward that they felt threatened, said Los Angeles-based jury consultant Philip K. Anthony. His firm, DecisionQuest, has interviewed more than 10,000 civil and criminal court jurors after their service.
Some have told him they were so rattled by fellow jurors that they asked others — or court bailiffs — to walk them to their cars. Others expressed concern about fellow jurors finding out where they lived.
"I've had jurors tell me another juror told them, 'When the trial's over, I'm going to meet you outside, and we'll have it out on this,'" Anthony said.
It's less common for jurors to report their apprehensions to the court during the trial, but there are a number of examples.
Just last month, a New York federal judge gave a jury a day off to cool down after one member said others threw a chair and threatened to "beat me up" while deliberating on whether the osteoporosis drug Fosamax caused painful jaw bone destruction. The civil trial ended in a hung jury; the plaintiff's lawyer has said he expects a retrial.
A federal jury weighing a campaign-related mail-fraud case against a former Kentucky state senator and his wife in 2004 continued deliberating after one female juror said she would "kick the backside" of another juror. The guilty verdicts were later thrown out for unrelated reasons.
As in the Astor trial, juries often are asked to work through clashes and do, said New York Law School professor Randolph Jonakait, author of "The American Jury System," published by Yale University Press.
Some courts have stepped in, however. A judge in Niagara Falls, N.Y., declared a mistrial in a murder case in 2001 after a juror said a colleague might have choked another jury member and suggested black jurors were being pressured to change their votes. The defendant, accused of killing a man on behalf of the victim's wife, was later acquitted.
Some appeals courts also have shown concern about jury strife. A New York appellate court overturned a Bronx man's 1984 attempted rape conviction because a juror holding out for acquittal said another jury member "came at me with her fists" before being restrained by others. Appeals judges, noting that the trial court didn't respond to the juror's alarm, called the guilty verdict "the result of coercion" and ordered a new trial.
Defense lawyers in the Astor case raised the specter of coercion as they pressed for a mistrial after hearing Monday that one unidentified juror felt "personally threatened" by another's comments.
If she was the same juror in tears in the courtroom, "one must have grave doubts about whether she can continue to follow her own conscience, or whether she instead will choose her own safety over the rights of the defendants and simply succumb to intimidation and change her views," one of Marshall's lawyers, John Cuti, wrote to the court.
Judge A. Kirke Bartley denied defense bids for a mistrial or an inquiry into the juror's ability to continue. Instead, he told the panel to keep deliberating, with "respect and civility."
If defense lawyers try to make juror tensions an issue in their appeal, they will confront a legal system that is generally reluctant to scrutinize deliberations, except when they may have been improperly swayed by outsiders, legal experts said.
But a claim that a juror was frightened could be an exception, Fordham University School of Law professor Jim Cohen said.
Thaddeus Hoffmeister, a University of Dayton School of Law professor whose research focuses on juries, said any claim would depend on what actually happened in the jury room.
"Is it going to rise to that level (of being seen as coercive)? Only those people in that room know," he said.
Astor juror Barbara Tomanelli won't discuss any conflicts that erupted during deliberations. She describes the process as thorough and patient, with jurors hunting through reams of notes, raising hands to speak and meticulously working through the 18 charges on a blackboard and a flip chart.
When a divide persisted, the group would review testimony, move on to another count or take a walk, she said.
Yes, it was grueling, but fascinating, and "I was very proud of the fact that we did it," the retired executive assistant said. After it was all done, "we were able to ... sit around and have beers together. And that ought to tell you something."
Associated Press writer Karen Matthews and researcher Susan James contributed to this report.
BY KERRY WILLS AND CORKY SIEMASZKO DAILY NEWS WRITERS Friday, October 9th 2009
Showalter for News
Astor jury foreman Kristina Jezycki.
Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrisey weren't the only losers in the epic Brooke Astor trial, so was the jury forewoman.
Kristina Jezycki said her catering business was kayoed by the six-month-long trial which ended Thursday when the jury convicted Marshall and Morrissey of defrauding the beloved philanthropist.
Jezycki said she's going to try and get her business, The Culinary Advisory Network, back up and running.
"That business has slowed," she said. "I have a lot of corporate clients who I served during the daytime.
I will cater with select clients, the ones who hung in with me through this." Jezycki, 43, said she's also planning to launch a line of fancy chef's salts that she'll call "Artistic Taste."
Still, said Jezycki, "it was an honor to be part of something Mrs. Astor was a part of."
Jezycki provided a window into the deliberations which appeared to be fraught with tension when one juror - a 46-year-old lawyer at the media company Bloomberg News - told the judge she wanted off the panel because another juror "personally threatened" her. "Frustrations ran high many times in the deliberation room," Jezycki admitted. In this instance, she said, "people misread things." "I think she was just very tired and misread the overall tone in the room," Jezycki said. "She's a delightful person. After all that testimony, we were all a bit sensitive." Jezycki declined to identify the quarreling jurors, but added, "They were best friends the next day." As to evidence, Jezycki said the big question they wrestled with was this: When did Astor lose the ability to understand the changes that were made to her wills? "We went through many letters, many documents to see if there was a pattern of when she went into a later stage (of Alzheimer's) and relied more heavily on Mr. Marshall's decisions," Jezycki said. Jezycki said they suspicious of the letters between Morrissey andWarren Whitaker, a lawyer Marshall hired for his mom, which suggested that the senile socialite had most of her marbles. "It seemed like (Marshall) was paving a paper trail," he said. "It showed there was an effort to cover his tracks." While the jury was fairly sure Marshall was influenced by his wife, Charlene, Jezycki said she was put off by prosecutors' attempts to "trash" the Marshalls. "Name calling, comments about Charlene, comments about Tony Marshall were parts that irritated me," she said. "I just found it almost childish." Unaware Marshall had been stripped of guardianship of his mother amid accusations of elder abuse, Jezycki said her impression from the testimony was that Astor's son "did a good job of taking care of his mother." Jezycki also said she found it difficult to convict Marshall. "It's difficult to have a World War II veteran in this position," she said. "I have always respected my elders, so I find it very difficult to handle." Jezycki said several jurors met for a beer at a Greenwich Villagebar after the verdict, but there was little revelry.
"It was a somber moment, just looking at the aspects of the trial, the two defendants, the sadness of it all," she said.
Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/10/09/2009-10-09_jury_forewoman.html#ixzz0TeaLEpS4
Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/10/09/2009-10-09_jury_forewoman.html#ixzz0Tea2czF5
