Long before she was tricked into signing her fortune over to her son, Brooke Astor was so addled by Alzheimers' disease, she had to use her own autobiography to remember details of her life, prosecutors argued today.
Assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann said son Anthony Marshall and his lawyers abused Astor's declining mental health to trick her into signing over her millions.
“Every part of her life was dealt with by someone else because she was just incapable of doing it,” Seidemann said.
He called Marshall and lawyer Francis Morrissey “two morally-depraved individuals” who “preyed on a physically and mentally ill 101-year-old woman.”
Astor had become so mentally frail that she had delusions she was financially destitute, and could not perform simple math equations, he said. Physically, she was practically deaf and was incontinent during car rides.
Marshall and lawyer Francis Morrissey are charged with colluding to get Astor to give up control of her estate to her son on Jan. 12, 2004. Their lawyers say Astor had full control of her mental faculties.
Seidemann pointed to Astor’s failing score in a test of her mental capacity, in which the famous socialite and philanthropist could not recall and recite three elementary words after a one-minute period.
Based on that, there was no way she could have remembered the terms of lengthy financial documents. The contents of her will would have baffled her in her late golden years, Seidemann said.
