An unseemly fight for the Astor family fortune

For nearly four decades until her death at 105 in 2007, Brooke Astor ruled over New York society. With name and fortune inherited from her third husband, Vincent Astor, she played the grande dame to the hilt, lavishing her money on charities and dispensing advice on correct social behaviour.

But a trial that began yesterday in Manhattan State Court threatens to strip the lustre from her highly polished legend, expose the venal ambition, cruelty and petty-mindedness of key social figures and diminish the finely-crafted illusions of high society manners in a summer festival of mud-slinging.

With a cast of witnesses that includes former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, TV hostess Barbara Walters, David Rockefeller, Annette de la Renta, the wife of designer Oscar de la Renta, former United Nations boss Kofi Annan, former head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, and Vanity Fair's editor Graydon Carter - all friends of Brooke Astor - the trial is a top-drawer social event.

According to prosecutors, Anthony Marshall, Mrs Astor's 84-year-old son from her first marriage, aided by his lawyer Francis Morrissey, defrauded her of millions of dollars in cash and art while she slipped into centenarian senility.

Marshall, a marine who fought at Iwo Jima, a CIA officer and former US ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya and Malagasy, faces 18 counts relating to altering his mother's will and looting her $200 million fortune. Both he and Morrissey deny charges that could send them to jail for up to 25 years.

In opening statements yesterday, jurors heard how her son elbowed loyal staff out; how her butler Chris Ely was powerless to stop him from removing pictures from her walls; how he charged his mother for flying a new maid from Antigua to his house in Maine; how his wife Charlene charged her for turning a bedroom into a library and how he requisitioned Mrs Astor's social secretary Miss Myers to work in the theatre production company he had set up on the lower floor of her duplex.

He was primary beneficiary of his mother's will but $40 million in property and a $60 million trust "wasn't enough for Mr Marshall", said prosecutor Elizabeth Loewy. "They stole from her when she was at her most vulnerable."

As her financial adviser - on a $1 million salary - he allegedly spent her cash to buy a 55-foot yacht and pay the captain's $52,000-a-year wages. Marshall allegedly then forced his mother to sign a letter giving him an extra $5 million and added codicils to her will cutting $66 million assigned to charity by half.

In July 2006 - three years before her death - Marshall's son Philip accused his father of mistreating his mother. "Son forces society queen to live on peas and porridge in dilapidated Park Avenue duplex," ran a Daily News headline. The picture he painted of her condition was distressing: the grande dame was suffering from dementia, forced to sleep on a sofa stained with dog pee and was denied correct medical care.

In court yesterday, jurors heard that Marshall refused requests for a child's gate on the landing to stop her from falling down the stairs. Since the accusations against Marshall were first brought, he has consistently maintained his mother did not suffer from Alzheimer's disease and was of sound mind.

Indeed, a doctor who treated Mrs Astor in 2002 said he did not believe she could have been easily tricked. "She was capable of expressing her preferences and was her own person," said Dr Edward Gilmore.

The dismal finale to Mrs Astor's life may be eclipsed by other revelations. Soon after Philip Marshall denounced his father, a judge set up Annette de la Renta as her guardian. However, there are doubts about her suitability for the role.

A forthcoming book, Rogue's Gallery by Michael Gross, about how the wealthy vie for power at the Metropolitan Museum of Art casts a dark shadow over Mrs de la Renta, whose stepfather, the South African mining baron Charles Engelhard, was the model for Ian Fleming's James Bond villain Goldfinger.

Gross's sources say she "was always talking about which pieces of Brooke Astor's jewellery she wished she could have". One source - a supporter of Anthony Marshall - told Gross "she was pushing herself, demanding jewellery, diamonds, emeralds".

When Astor gave her a gold-and-diamond necklace and matching earrings, Gross writes, she did that a day after signing the very codicil redirecting her fortune [to Marshall] that Annette would later challenge".

And there is also the question of Mrs Astor's right to treat the family fortune as her own. This fortune was founded in the fur trade and enlarged through the purchase of vast tracts of New York property, oil interests and newspapers. The German-descended Astors are often known as America's first millionaires. One branch moved to Britain, another stayed in the US.

Traditionally, the Astors passed money through their male heir. In 1959, however, when 67-year-old Vincent Astor died five years into his marriage to Brooke, he left almost nothing to his siblings and everything to his wife.

This comprised $2 million in cash, virtually all of Vincent's property and possessions, and interest from a trust fund that was part of a $127 million estate.

Vincent's brother, John Jacob VI, challenged the will, claiming the decision to leave everything to Mrs Astor was invalid and accusing her of using "improper conduct and undue influence" - in other words, doing what her son is accused of doing to her.

Another relative claimed that the marriage had not been consummated. Neither challenge was convincingly or vigorously pressed.

Undeterred, Mrs Astor embarked on a career as a grand philanthropist, giving away approximately $200 million to the city of New York and to many of its charities.

Dressed in her trademark hat, gloves, and pearls, she acted as a kind of proto-Lady Di, paying frequent visits to the slums of Harlem to see how her money was put to use before retiring for lunch at the Knickerbocker Club.

As well as a philanthropist she was also regarded as a narcissist, obsessed with fashion and her own image. She hired a public relations firm to give the news media regular updates.

"The thing that stunned me was how, so early on, Brooke knew the value of publicity and how to manipulate the press," recalls Frances Kiernan, author of the biography The Last Mrs Astor.

With no legal obligation to look out for her husband's family, she felt no moral obligation either.

Descendants of John Jacob Astor who visited Brooke at her home on the Hudson were typically given a cup of tea and a copy of her memoirs and invited to admire the porcelain polar bears and shown the door. If the subject of money arose, Anthony Marshall told the family that his mother was "too ill to deal with anything".

Not all of the Astors have felt mildly about their situation. One nephew, Ivan Obolensky, now 84, told New York Magazine: "Vincent Astor would be so horrified by this. Poor Brooke, who took all the money and ran - she pushed him to change his will. He was drinking; he was lonely, poor man. Brooke was one of the great adventuresses of her time. This is sad but I'm laughing. You reap what you sow."

Anthony Marshall would also have good reason to dislike his mother, who married three times - first at 16 - in a progressively upward social incline. In her autobiography she confessed to being more concerned with her husbands' wishes than her son's wellbeing.

"Brooke was intellectually curious, socially gregarious, a huge reader but one of the top 10 roles in her life was not being a mother," said a socialite friend.

But Marshall's prosecutors have yet to present a strong motive for his alleged actions since he stood to inherit the bulk of the estate and Mrs Astor, already over 100, could hardly be expected to live a great deal longer.

The prosecution alleges that Mrs Astor never approved of his wife, Charlene. "Anthony Marshall's preoccupation with getting money for Charlene was a motivation for the scheme to defraud," Elizabeth Loewy told the court yesterday.

Others say that she would often change her mind about her will. "That was her declaration of independence," says one friend. "Brooke's intention was that Tony was going to have a certain amount but she was going to give most away ... I don't think Tony is a bad person but you could see the anger. He wanted to be his own person and he could never do that until she was gone."

Judging from yesterday's presentation, prosecutors may be in danger of losing the jury with an overly long, possibly dull case. Even witnesses don't know why they've been called.

"I assume they're going to want to ask my opinion about what I thought her mental state was in the last 10 years of her life," says Graydon Carter, who published her columns on entertaining, flirting and so on. "I feel very privileged. I think it's just an accident."

Perhaps, but in the life of Brooke Astor, once a pretty girl from New Hampshire, there were few accidents.