By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — Funeral services for Marilyn Dershowitz — the sister-in-law of famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz who was killed in a bike accident over the weekend — will take place Tuesday morning at Riverside Memorial Chapel, according to the funeral home.
Services are scheduled for 11:45 a.m. at the chapel, at 180 W. 76th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues.
Dershowitz, 68, of Tudor City, was riding with her husband on 29th Street on a silver mountain bike around noon Saturday when she was hit by the truck, police said.
"I was ahead," her devastated husband Nathan, told DNAinfo. "She waited for the light and I made the light and was riding slowly. When she didn’t come, I saw her down and people around her.
"She was in bad shape."
Nathan Dershowitz, a lawyer like his Harvard professor brother, said two vehicles were trying to squeeze through a narrow space in the street when the accident happened.
Cops initially said that his wife was riding against traffic, or eastbound, at the time of the crash, but later revealed that their investigation found that she was riding with traffic, or westbound.
According to police, preliminary indications were that the driver of the mail truck appeared to be unaware of the collision. There were no immediate indications of criminality and he had not been charged as of Monday.
His wife, who suffered severe head trauma, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Marilyn Dershowitz, a lawyer, was first appointed a court referee in 1998 after clerking for Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Friedman, according to a published report.
Years later, she acted as the referee in the divorce case between Cordula Bartha and Dr. Nicholas Bartha, the physician who blew up his Upper East Side townhouse in 2006 in a spectacular suicide attempt.
Dershowitz reportedly awarded Bartha's wife $1.2 million in the 2001 split, but let him keep the E. 62nd Street home.
She also acted as the referee in the 2003 divorce case between therapist Kathryn Faughey and her ex-husband, Adam, according to the Daily News.
Faughey was viciously stabbed to death by a crazed David Tarloff at her office on the Upper East Side in 2008.
Most recently, Dershowitz had been doing mediation at the appellate level, her husband said. She reportedly retired to spend more time with her grandchildren.
Dershowitz's death stunned those who knew her.
"She was lovely lady and they were a lovely couple," said Virgil Wilken, 53, a doorman at the victim's building. "She will be sorely missed. She was a big part of the community. She’s very generous to all the staff. She was always happy."
