“That bitch,” Brooke Astor famously called her daughter-in-law.
“No neck, and no class,” the grande dame of New York society would sniff to friends — certain that the ruddy wife of her only child was making a back-door, dimpled-fisted grab at her diamonds, her cash and even her mantle as a philanthropist.
Yesterday, Astor got payback.
Charlene Marshall — dubbed Miss Piggy by one of Astor’s nurses — walked out of Manhattan Supreme Court in tears.
On her arm was her 20-years-older husband, Anthony, newly convicted of grand larceny and conspiracy for trying to swindle his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother out of more than $60 million in bequests long promised to city charities — all, prosecutors say, to sate his wife’s bottomless greed.
Marshall, 85, now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison, and anywhere up to 25 years as a maximum. And Charlene faces the unhappy prospect of years of Surrogate’s Court battles and millions in legal bills.
She will likely be stripped of the entirety of the Astor fortune she’d hoped to inherit, save for three heavily-tax-encumbered properties, one diamond necklace and two of Astor’s old fur coats. Both coats, incidentally, are a size 6.
“Brooke would say to her, ‘See? See what you’ve done to yourself?’ ” one of Astor’s closest friends, acclaimed Broadway and film producer John Hart, said after yesterdays’ verdict.
“She’d be terribly sorry for Tony. She’d never want to see him go to jail. But she’d remind Charlene that ‘this you brought on yourself. This you’ve done to yourself.’ ”
Anthony Marshall — a former ambassador to Kenya and a decorated Marine veteran of World War II — will be sentenced Dec. 8.
He was convicted of a top charge of grand larceny for using his power of attorney to award himself a $1.4 million retroactive pay increase, out of Astor’s funds, for his work “managing” her finances — essentially hiking his salary for stealing from her.
Marshall was cleared of just two counts. One was relatively minor, an alleged fib on a document. The other was a first-degree grand-larceny charge, that he swindled his mother into thinking she was broke — she was actually worth more than $180 million — so that she’d sell her favorite painting and he could pocket a $2 million commission. Marshall’s co-defendant and estates lawyer, Francis Morrissey, 66, faces up to seven years for his own conviction yesterday for conspiracy and forging Astor’s name on a document.
The Astor disaster leapt into the public view in 2007, Shakespearean in its tragic tale of family betrayal.
That year, Marshall’s son, Philip — alarmed at his father’s treatment of the then-105-year-old Astor — joined forces with two of her most famous and influential friends, Annette de la Renta and David Rockefeller.
The trio was concerned that Marshall was skimping on Astor’s care. Her Park Avenue duplex was getting run-down. The window frames had peeling paint and draft-inducing cracks. The carpets were left uncleaned.
The dining room — where she’d entertained Kofi Annan and Henry Kissinger — was being used as a dog run for her beloved dachshunds to save money on dog-walkers. Dog droppings bedecked the parquet where Ronald Reagan had once dived under the dining room table to search for one of Astor’s errant emeralds, escaped from one of her trademark brooches.
In an accusation that was ultimately never substantiated, the trio even complained that Astor was left to languish on a couch that smelled of dog urine.
The trio’s successful bid to wrest guardianship away from Marshall — and give it to de la Renta — unearthed the fraud, swindling and forgery at the root of the massive, six-month trial that ended yesterday.
Prosecutors called 72 witnesses to describe Astor at her best and worst — including such luminaries as Barbara Walters, Kissinger and de la Renta, all close friends of the philanthropist.
They painted a glowing picture of Astor touring housing projects in her white gloves and perky pill-box hats, and swimming with dolphins at age 90.
Witnesses also rendered harrowing scenes of madness, including one of Astor — already in the throes of dementia at age 99, two years before she supposedly competently signed over her fortune to her son — standing nude and screaming on her stairwell in Maine.
“Who am I?” she screamed. “What’s my name? I don’t know who I am!”
“I hope this brings some consolation and closure for the many people, including my grandmother’s loyal staff, caregivers and friends, who helped when she was so vulnerable and so manipulated,” Philip said in a prepared statement, declining to comment further.
“I sincerely hope these sad circumstances contribute to the recognition of elder abuse and exploitation as a growing national problem,” he added.
Defense lawyers had claimed Astor was lucid when she updated her will in her son’s favor. They insisted he had the legal authority to give himself raises and other perks.
But after 11 days of deliberations, the eight-woman, four-man jury decided otherwise. Just once did the deliberations noticeably falter, on Monday, when one panelist’s arguing so rattled juror No. 8 — Bloomberg News Service legislative researcher Judi DeMarco — that DeMarco asked off the jury.
Justice Kirke Bartley quickly denied the request, a decision that will surely be challenged on appeal by defense lawyers.
Oddly, the Marshalls were already slated to inherit some $30 million — after taxes — from Astor legally, without any swindling whatsoever. The subsequent dirty dealing would have increased the Marshalls’ fortunes by only about $30 million more.
Astor also paid her son a $450,000 salary for handling her finances. In 1999, she bought him and Charlene a $2 million duplex on East 79th Street — for which she paid the monthly maintenance. She even footed his parking fees and dental bills.
“This case is really about a man who could not wait for the money,” prosecutor Joel Seidemann had told jurors in closing arguments. “And about a mother who committed the unforgivable sin of living too long.”
As for Charlene, “She’s planning her second act,” Hart laughed when told of her shouting, “I love my husband” before dashing with him into an elevator.
“The curtain goes down as she shouts, ‘I love my husband,’ and you know that’s just the end of Act 1,” joked Hart, who produced “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” with Matthew Broderick; “Guys and Dolls,” with Nathan Lane; and “Hamlet;” with Ralph Fiennes.
“She’ll visit the jail for a few weeks, but then she’s moving on,” he quipped.
“Hey,” he added. ” She’s still young.”
Additional reporting by Jessica Simeone, Carolyn Salazar and Douglas Montero