Astor’s son’s greed hard to fathom: prosecutor
Laura Italiano
December 21, 2009
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/astor_son_greed_hard_to_fathom_prosecutor_DALQL8dJmJ562nFePzv7kO
Anthony Marshall’s greed is hard to fathom, prosecutor Joel Seidemann said this morning in asking Brooke Astor’s swindling son be sent to prison for one and a half to four and a half years.

Seidemann also asked not that Marshall not be allowed to remain free pending appeal but said the DA’s office consents to Marhsall remaining free for now and not turning himself until after New Year’s.

“It is the great mystery of this case,” the prosecutor said of Anthony Marshall’s insistence on taking more, more, more of the failing philanthropist’s fortune — despite the riches he already had.

Seidemann spoke at length this morning at the still-ongoing sentencing of Marshall on 13 felonies connected to his attempt to loot more than $60 million from his mother’s estate before her death, at age 105, in 2007.

Even before the swindle, Marshall was due to inherit $23 million in property and cash from his mother. He already enjoyed the $2 million Upper East Side apartment she’d bought him and his wife, Charlene, along with a $450,000 a year salary she paid him for “managing” her affairs.

“How much money does an 85-year-old man need?” Seidemann asked.

“Was $23 million not enough for the defendant? Was that something he couldn’t live with?”

His fear –as he shut down the Westchester estate where she wanted to die, barred friends and family from visiting and literally pulled quarter-million-dollar paintings off her Fifth Avenue apartment walls — was he would not survive his mother.

“And he wanted the money now,” Seidemann said.

What’s the difference between Marshall and “common thief?” the prosecutor asked — answering his own question:

“He stole more and he stole it from his mother and he stole it from her when she was vulnerable.”

Justice Kirke Bartley is expected to turn thumbs down on a defense motion seeking dismissal, in the interest of justice, of the one grand larceny charge carrying a mandatory prison sentence.

That conviction, which requires a minimum of one year upstate, was for Marshall awarding himself more than $2 million in back pay and other perks out of his famous philanthropist mother’s coffers — his self-decreed reward for doing such a good job “managing” her affairs.

Then, after arguments from both sides, Marshall will be sentenced for 13 felonies and a misdemeanor — including charges that he conspired with crooked estates lawyer Francis Morrissey to swindle his Alzheimer’s-addled mother out of more than $60 million.

Marshall faces anywhere from the mandatory minimum of one year prison up to 25 years prison on the top grand larceny charge.

Morrissey himself faces a maximum 7 years today for forging Astor’s signature on a bogus will amendment.

Defense arguments are expected to include a pitch for Marshall to skirt any jail time through some kind of electronic monitoring system.

At the conclusion of the proceedings, Marshall and Morrissey will likely then walk back out of court later this morning, free to work on their appeals.

Once their appeals are filed — assumedly before whatever date Bartley orders them back to court to surrender — Marshall and Morrissey can ask either Bartley or the state Appellate Division to let them remain free pending an appellate decision.

And given the length of the trial and quantity of materials for appellate review — the trial transcript alone is some 17,000 pages — the appeal, and the pair’s continued freedom, could take years.