It's difficult to imagine Brooke Astor rifling through the discount bin in white satin gloves. What then would the refined socialite and philanthropist think now that her Park Avenue prize just sold for half-off?
Astor cherished the 15th-floor duplex in one of the city's most coveted co-ops--but then who wouldn't love six terraces and five Read More
"I’m not even angry at those who have done all of this to us. I just feel sorry for them, because they’re so unenlightened. They just don’t know, you know?" 64-year-old Charlene Marshall sighs in her living room. It’s a sad November afternoon, foggy and dim. Her husband wears a blue-striped shirt and red tie Read More
As it turns out, Anthony Marshall does have people who like him. Scores of them, even. Mr. Marshall is expected to submit 75 sympathetic letters to Judge Kirke A. Bartley today, two months after his defense rested without calling a single witness.
Jurors had apparently been curious to see the names he might marshal in his Read More
"What's odd is that a trial is a certain amount like a movie set, it becomes your real life. And I think it's going to be really odd for all of us that it's over," Astor chronicler Meryl Gordon said Friday, a day after the verdict was announced in the trial of Brooke Astor's son, Read More
This morning, heirs on heirs: A.G. Sulzberger wrote one of the Times' articles on yesterday's guilty verdict in the Astor trial ("Despite Verdict, Fate of Astor Fortune is Uncertain").
Another Times article explains how the jurors struggled to relate to the rich, powerful characters of the Astor saga:
Jurors said they had tried Read More
And on the seventh day, Henry Christensen rested.
The late socialite Brooke Astor's former attorney sat for his sixth (and mercifully final) consecutive day on the witness stand as the trial of Ms. Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, wrapped up its sixth week of testimony on Thursday, June Read More
“I do have enough money to buy new frocks, don’t I, Terry?” Brooke Astor had once asked her longtime attorney, Henry “Terry” Christensen.
He thought she was joking.
Mr. Christensen, formerly a partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which represented the wealthy socialite for half a century, had been Ms. Astor’s primary attorney Read More
Wherever Meryl Gordon sets her Baltimore Orioles seat cushion in Judge A. Kirke Bartley Jr.’s courtroom often becomes the center of an orbiting cast of reporters.
Ms. Gordon, 58, author of the 2008 tome Mrs. Astor Regrets, is a one-stop reference on virtually every facet of the case against Anthony Marshall, son of the late socialite Read More
“I like it better the other way," legendary interviewer Barbara Walters said after spending two hours answering questions on Thursday afternoon, May 21—mostly about her close friend, the late Brooke Astor, whose son, Anthony Marshall, stands accused of raiding his mother's estate.
"Give me this!” Ms. Walters joked Read More
“Who is the black fellow who is sitting next me?” Brooke Astor had asked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a dinner at her apartment in January 2002.
“He is Kofi Annan,” Mr. Kissinger replied.
“Is he a distinguished fellow?” Ms. Astor asked.
In fact, the sitting secretary general of the United Nations was Read More
No need for the maitre d' to issue the standard announcement of his arrival.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Loewy did just fine: "The people call Graydon Carter."
At 3:48 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20, the 59-year-old Vanity Fair editor in chief entered a Manhattan courtroom sporting a royal blue blazer with brass buttons, striped shirt, Read More
New York Post: The thing about writing a column like this every day is that you realize, sometimes, the news does not move very fast. We've already talked quite a bit about the Astor trial, which takes up pretty much the entire front page of the Post today. Yesterday's testimony was the stuff we've been Read More
“I’m so bleary, I don’t know,” Naomi Dunn Packard-Koot, the former social secretary to the late philanthropist Brooke Astor, admitted to Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Loewy, near the end of a marathon day of testimony on Thursday, May 14.
Ms. Packard-Koot is the upteenth witness called thus far in the high-profile trial of Read More
“You like being on stage, don’t you?” defense attorney Fred Hafetz asked. “And you want to be center stage in this case, don’t you?”
Naomi Packard-Koot, the former social secretary for the late philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, had calmly chewed her gum all morning, but she nearly rose from her seat at Mr. Read More
In 2002, when Brooke Astor was being fitted for the Oscar de la Renta gown she would wear to her 100th birthday party, the grande dame of Manhattan high society was saying strange things about her son, Anthony Marshall.
“She kept referring to Mr. Marshall as her husband,” Naomi Dunn Packard-Koot, Read More
