Ordinary New Yorkers to decide the fate of socialite Brooke Astor’s son
Joanna Molloy
March 31, 2009
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/31/2009-03-31_ordinary_new_yorkers_to_decide_the_fate_.html
It was Brooks Brothers meets Old Navy Monday in Courtroom 1526 in Manhattan’s Criminal Courts building.
Anthony Marshall, the poor-little-rich-boy son of Brooke Astor wore a gray suit, light blue shirt, tasseled loafers and his U.S. Marines tie for the first day of his trial on charges of looting his late mother’s $200 million estate.
His wife, Charlene, wore an understated outfit accented with Belgian slippers and a jacquard scarf and pearl earrings.
They were in stark contrast to the 100 prospective jurors paraded into Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley’s courtroom wearing jeans and Kangol caps, hoodies and sneakers the size of bread loaves.
Call it Old Money meets New Money. Or No Money.
Of these ordinary New Yorkers, 12 will decide the fate of Marshall, 84, and co-defendant Francis Morrissey, who are charged with changing Astor’s will when she was no longer mentally competent.
Sitting at the defense table, Marshall turned around only once to look at those who will judge him. After all, it is impolite to stare. And he probably thought they wouldn’t understand him anyway.
His gaze traveled to the American flag behind the bench. Marshall fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima, where the most iconic picture of the flag was taken.
Even that wasn’t good enough for his mother, who had sent him off to boarding school at age 6, when one of her three rich husbands, Buddy Marshall, didn’t want him around.
Her third husband, and the source of her great wealth, Vincent Astor, “had no use for him,” according to Meryl Gordon, author of the definitive book on the case, “Mrs. Astor Regrets.”
Brooke Astor had a great public image, showboating around New York in a big hat giving away millions to cultural institutions. Yet she was downright cheap with Marshall, her only son, and his twin boys.
She lived in vast estates on the Hudson and in Maine when not in her palatial Park Ave. home. The Marshalls live in a second-floor apartment near Lexington Ave. – definitely not the right zip code.
Astor’s clothes, Gordon writes, “were couture – she spent $25,000 twice a year” at just one Manhattan dressmaker, “but she restricted her gifts to her grandsons to just $10,000 a year.”
At one point, she considered giving a cottage on her Maine estate – not the mansion, mind you – to one grandson, Philip. Before she died in 2007 at age 105, she suddenly decided Anthony could have the whole spread.
He, in turn, gave it to Charlene. Then Philip complained that Brooke was not being well cared for under Marshall’s guardianship. Then came a civil suit and the indictment.
Brooke Astor’s parsimony with her family left plenty of money to fight over.
Very old money indeed.
If Marshall were to look out the courthouse windows, he would see the vast stretches of waterfront property once owned by John Jacob Astor, who amassed the first family fortune starting when Thomas Jefferson was President.
Down a few blocks in what is now City Hall Park, Astor built the first luxury hotel, counting Davy Crockett and Charles Dickens among its guests.
Across the street, Marshall would see the seal of the City of New York, with its beavers symbolizing the fur trade which made John Jacob Astor the richest man in America when he died in 1848 with $20 million.
Carved at the entrance of 100 Centre St., Marshall would see the words, “Be just and fear not. Every place is safe to him who lives in justice.”
In a couple of months, when this trial is over, we’ll know if Tony Marshall in his crisp suit had anything to fear from the people in the jeans and Kangol caps.
Judge tells potential jurors in trial of philanthropist Brooke Astor’s son to put away BlackBerrys
Melissa Grace
March 31, 2009
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/31/2009-03-31_judge_tells_potential_jurors_in_trial_of.html
There will be no Twittering in the courtroom.
As jury selection in the blockbuster trial of famed philanthropist Brooke Astor’s son opened Monday, a Manhattan judge told 200 potential jurors to put away their BlackBerrys.
“I understand there is a temptation to review [news] stories,” Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley said as he ordered panel members to stay away from their computers. “You are not to conduct research…particularly on the Internet.”
“Blogging, BlackBerrys, whatever,” are prohibited, he said in the nearly 10-minute lecture.
“There have been reports from all over about jurors Twittering and blogging,” said Ken Warner, a lawyer for Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, who is charged with looting his mother’s fortune.
Warner was referring to the popular instant social-networking Web site Twitter. With easy access to the Internet, jurors around the country are increasingly turning to the medium to satisfy their curiosity about a case they are sitting on – and that is resulting in costly mistrials.
Marshall, 84, and once-disbarred lawyer Francis Morrissey, 66, are charged with looting the Alzheimer-stricken Astor’s estate by coercing her to update her will. Marshall arrived in court clutching a cane and his wife’s hand.
Of 200 original prospective jurors, 30 people who said they could serve for as long as three months – the trial could last that long – were kept for further questioning.
It could take two weeks to pick a jury.
Prosecutors want to drill lawyer of Brooke Astor’s son on past misdeeds
Melissa Grace
March 26, 2009
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/26/2009-03-26_prosecutors_want_to_drill_lawyer_of_broo.html
Prosecutors hope a lawyer charged with helping Brooke Astor’s son loot her $200 million fortune takes the witness stand at trial so they can grill him about past clients.
In the event Francis Morrissey testifies in his own defense in the blockbuster trial, set to start Monday, prosecutors on Wednesday asked a judge to let them confront him about past misdeeds.
Morrissey got himself named sole beneficiary of wealthy Park Avenue socialite Elizabeth Von Knapitsch’s will before the 91-year-old Alzheimer’s disease sufferer died, leaving $15 million, prosecutors said. He later kept half after a settlement with her survivors.
Morrissey also has been accused of improperly billing an oil company more than $900,000 in legal fees in the 1980s. He once told a board considering reinstating his law license that “something evil was inside me … I have to face it,” Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Loewy recounted in court Wednesday.
Morrissey, 66, and Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, 84, are accused of stealing much of the beloved philanthropist’s estate by getting Astor to update her will long after she became mentally incompetent.
Prosecutors asked for the legal ammunition in hopes of discrediting Morrissey by showing he has swindled the elderly in “dozens of such cases” and lied under oath.
Morrissey’s defense attorney, Thomas Puccio, denied his client ever fibbed under oath or stole from the elderly and asked the judge to bar the line of questioning.
“There was a selective reading of the record by Ms. Loewy,” Puccio said after court, his dapper client waiting silently in a chauffeured car. “If he admitted he committed perjury, I don’t think he would have been reinstated.”
Marshall, a former ambassador and Marine who recently underwent heart-bypass surgery, did not appear in court. He has no previous run-ins with the law, prosecutors said.
Estate of Denial® provides news, analysis and commentary on abusive practices occurring in probate courts and via probate instruments (wills, trusts, guardianships, powers of attorney). We provide original perspective to educate the public regarding this growing threat to both individual freedoms and property rights.
