On Sept. 11, 2001, Brooke Astor sat in her Park Avenue apartment, so mentally deteriorated from Alzheimer's she called her social club to make regular lunch plans, aloof and unaware of the state of terror that gripped the city, prosecutors said Friday.
"There is Mrs. Astor on that day being totally oblivious to the awful tragedy that had befallen the city she so loved," said assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann, in his second day of summations.
"That is two and a half years before any of the events subject to the charges here."
Astor's son Anthony Marshall and attorney Francis Morrissey are charged with taking advantage of the elderly philanthropist's condition to wrest control of her nearly $200 million estate.
By the time Astor died in 2007, at the age of 105, her dementia had degraded her to a feeble mental state, prosecutors said.
On another occasion in 2001, Astor was walking home with a friend and could not remember where she lived. The friend, Catherine Dunn, resorted to asking doormen in the vicinity of Astor’s Upper East Side neighborhood if they knew where Astor resided, Seidemann said.
"I kept thinking how am I going to get her home?” Dunn testified earlier in the 20-week trial. "I think she was embarrassed by it … he didn’t know where she lived, she just didn’t know."
The defense argued last week that Astor was still socially adept and spent her time lunching with friends, shopping and even speaking at engagements.
Seidemann said Astor's social graces were the result of two dozen assistants tending to her every need.
“Social graces are almost automatic,” Seidemann said.
