Anthony D. Marshall, Astor Son Who Was Convicted in Swindle, Dies at 90 - NYTimes

12/1/2014
Anthony D. Marshall, Astor Son Who Was Convicted in Swindle, Dies at 90 - NYTimes.com
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Anthony D. Marshall, Astor Son Who Was

Convicted in Swindle, Dies at 90
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
DEC. 1, 2014
Anthony D. Marshall, the only son of the philanthropist-socialite Brooke

Astor, who with one of her former lawyers was found guilty of criminal
charges that they swindled millions from his mother after she was stricken
with Alzheimers disease, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 90.
Kenneth E. Warner, a lawyer for Mr. Marshall, said he died at
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Mr. Marshall was a United States ambassador to several countries and
an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency as well as an author and a
Tony Award-winning Broadway producer.
But after a lifetime of public service and creative accomplishments, his
life was turned upside down by allegations of mistreatment of his mother
and mismanagement of her affairs. In a six-month trial that captivated New
York with clashing accounts of tawdry greed and filial devotion, a parade of
witnesses who included boldface names from the worlds of society, politics
and finance as well as maids and nurses took turns castigating and
defending Mr. Marshall and the lawyer, Francis X. Morrissey Jr., who did
estate planning for Mrs. Astor.
Concluding 12 days of deliberations on Oct. 8, 2009, a jury in State
Supreme Court in Manhattan convicted Mr. Marshall on 14 of 16 counts,
including first-degree grand larceny for giving himself a $1 million
retroactive raise for managing his mothers finances. Mr. Morrissey was
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found guilty of fraud and conspiracy and of forging Mrs. Astors signature on
an amendment to her will.
The jury found that both men had taken advantage of Mrs. Astors
failing mental health to gain control over her fortune by inducing her to
change her will several years before she died in 2007 at age 105.
In December 2009, Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr., who presided at the
trial, sentenced both men to one to three years in prison, but allowed them
to remain free pending appeals. Mr. Marshalls conviction carried up to 25
years, but legal experts said his age and physical ailments had a bearing on
the sentence.
In March 2013, more than three years after the trial, a state appeals
court affirmed the convictions of Mr. Marshall and Mr. Morrissey on the
major charges, saying that the record amply supports the jurys
determination. The court also rejected a claim that Mr. Marshall should not
be incarcerated because of his advanced age and poor health. In June 2013,
the men began serving their sentences at the Fishkill Correctional Facility,
70 miles north of New York City, which has a medical unit like a skilled
nursing center.
But two months later, the State Parole Board approved Mr. Marshalls
request for medical parole, ruling that he was so sick and frail as to be
eligible for release under the states so-called compassionate release law.
Since the law went into effect in 1992, hundreds of state inmates have been
granted parole. A transcript of his parole hearing disclosed that he had
expressed regret over the case.
Well, regrets, naturally, he was quoted as saying.
If you had to do it all over again, would you have done things
differently? a board member asked.
Quite, Mr. Marshall replied. He declined to explain what had
happened, but he recalled paying back millions to his mothers estate.
LuminariesTestified
In March 2012, a long-pending settlement of questions surrounding the
disposition of Mrs. Astors estate was ratified in Westchester County
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Surrogates Court. Under its terms, Mr. Marshalls inheritance was cut by
more than half, to $14.5 million from $31 million, and his control over
which charities received bequests from the estate, and how those bequests
were used, was stripped away.
The settlement, based on Mrs. Astors 2002 will rather than later
amendments that gave Mr. Marshall broad control, meant that various
universities, libraries, parks and museums would receive millions more, in
keeping with the benefactors legendary generosity, said Eric T.
Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, whose office negotiated
the binding agreement.
In the criminal trial, prosecution witnesses portrayed a confused,
disoriented and sometimes paranoid Mrs. Astor, who forgot the names of
longtime friends, mistook her son for her long-deceased husband and could
not have been lucid on Jan. 12, 2004, when she made him the sole executor
of the bulk of her $180 million estate. Prosecutors said he had been driven
to inflate his inheritance at the urging of his wife, Charlene. Public exposure
of the mental problems of Mrs. Astor in her final years proved painful to her
friends and family.
Defense witnesses, including doctors, lawyers and some members of
Mrs. Astors household staff, testified that her moments of confusion had
been fleeting and that she regularly read newspapers, had tea with friends
and attended cultural events. Some witnesses said she was alert much of the
time and had a loving relationship with her son.
It was one of the most closely followed trials in recent years, with an allstar lineup of witnesses that included many of Mrs. Astors old friends and
philanthropic associates, including Paul LeClerc, then president of the New
York Public Library; Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state;
Annette de la Renta, wife of Oscar de la Renta, the fashion designer;
Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art;
the television personality Barbara Walters; and Mr. Marshalls estranged
twin sons, Alexander and Philip, who testified against him.
The trial, which heard more than 100 witnesses and generated 18,000
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pages of transcripts and voluminous exhibits, was briefly interrupted several

times by Mr. Marshalls medical problems. He had had quadruple bypass
surgery in 2008, and he often appeared to be on the brink of collapse as he
entered and exited the courthouse. In June 2009, he had a stroke in a fall
from a treadmill at home, leaving him with a headache and blurred vision,
and then, in July, he fell in a courthouse bathroom and struck his head.
Mr. Marshall, an investment banker who once sat on the boards of
Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had lived luxuriously
in the shadow of his mother, the doyenne of New York society and widow of
Vincent Astor, who gave away $200 million.
WarringFamilyFactions
But Mr. Marshalls genteel lifestyle with an art-filled Manhattan
apartment, a $5 million estate at Northeast Harbor, Me., a yacht and
stipends of up to $2 million a year for managing his mothers finances was
shattered in July 2006 when his son Philip accused him in a lawsuit of
mistreating Mrs. Astor and depriving her of necessary medical care.
The suit charged that Mr. Marshall had also turned a blind eye to her,
intentionally and repeatedly ignoring her health, safety, personal and
household needs.
With supporting affidavits by Mrs. Astors old friends David Rockefeller
and Mr. Kissinger, the suit asked that Mr. Marshall be removed as his
mothers legal guardian and replaced by Ms. de la Renta and by JPMorgan
Chase Bank.
Mr. Marshall, who called the allegations completely untrue, said he
had overseen expenditures of $2.5 million a year to maintain his mothers
care and life of luxury, and professed to be shocked and deeply hurt by his
sons legal action. The relationship between Mr. Marshall and his son Philip,
a professor at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., had been strained
for decades, friends and relatives said.
The spectacle of a warring family firing allegations of misconduct and
greed led to a court-approved settlement in October 2006, under which Mr.
Marshall agreed to relinquish control over his mothers financial and health
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affairs. Ms. de la Renta was appointed to make decisions affecting Mrs.

Astors personal life, while JPMorgan Chase was authorized to oversee her
millions.
Though Mr. Marshall did not admit wrongdoing, he also was required
to post $1.3 million to cover possible tax penalties and to return artwork and
jewelry.
Under the 2006 settlement, which avoided a costly and sensational civil
trial, questions about Mrs. Astors will were put off until after her death,
although Mr. Marshall and his wife, to cover potential claims, had to post
collateral that included his yacht and Cove End, the Maine estate Mrs. Astor
had signed over to her son in 2003, which he then placed in his wifes name.
Based on a court evaluators report that was not made public, a judge in
December 2006 ruled that claims that Mrs. Astor had been abused were
unsubstantiated. Mrs. Astor, who prosecutors said had received a diagnosis
of Alzheimers-related dementia as early as 2001, died in August 2007.
Three months later, Mr. Marshall and Mr. Morrissey were indicted on
charges of stealing millions in cash and property from Mrs. Astor. (The
indictment did not accuse Mr. Marshall of physically mistreating her.) The
Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said the two men had
forged and falsified documents, stolen works of art and, in 2004, duped Mrs.
Astor into amending her will, leaving her money to her son instead of to
charities. He charged that the two men took advantage of Mrs. Astors
diminished mental capacity to defraud her of millions.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Warner, Mr. Marshalls lawyer, said, In
the end, I hope he is remembered for his integrity and decency, not for the
injustices he suffered.
AuthorandProducer
Mr. Marshall was born Anthony Dryden Kuser in New York City on May
30, 1924, the son of Mrs. Astors first husband, John Dryden Kuser, a New
Jersey politician. His parents were divorced and the boy, called Tony, took
the surname of his mothers second husband, Charles H. Marshall, a
stockbroker. He attended Brooks School in North Andover, Mass. In World
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War II, he became a Marine officer and was wounded at Iwo Jima. He
received a bachelors degree at Brown University in 1950.
He worked for the C.I.A. from 1954 to 1957, helping, by his own
account, to develop the U-2 spy plane. He was the United States consul in
Istanbul in 1958-59 and held a series of ambassadorships to the Malagasy
Republic (1969-71), Trinidad and Tobago (1972-73), Kenya (1973-77) and
the Seychelles (1976-77). He was on the boards of many educational, cultural
and philanthropic organizations, including the Vincent Astor Foundation,
which closed when the last of its assets were given away.
Mr. Marshall wrote seven books, including novels, a volume on African
arts and another on zoos in America. On Broadway, he produced a 2003
revival of Long Days Journey Into Night and I Am My Own Wife, which
ran in 2003 and 2004. Both won Tony Awards. He was also a producer of
Marc Salems Mind Games on Broadway in 2004.
Mr. Marshall was married three times. His first two marriages were to
Elizabeth Cynthia Cryan, in 1947, with whom he had the twin sons,
Alexander and Philip, and to Thelma Hoegnell, in 1962. Both ended in
divorce. In 1992, he married Charlene T. Gilbert.
Besides his wife and his twin sons, Mr. Marshall is survived by three
grandchildren; his wifes three children by a previous marriage, Robert
Gilbert, Inness Hancock and Arden Delacey; and three stepgrandchildren.
2014 The New York Times Company
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Anthony D. Marshall, Astor Son Who Was Convicted in Swindle, Dies at 90 - NYTimes

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12/1/2014

Anthony D. Marshall, Astor Son Who Was

Anthony D. Marshall, the only son of the philanthropist-socialite Brooke

pages of transcripts and voluminous exhibits, was briefly interrupted several

affairs. Ms. de la Renta was appointed to make decisions affecting Mrs.

2014 The New York Times Company

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