Brooke Astor’s daughter-in-law cruelly scolded the socialite for wrecking her vacation as the 101-year-old lay writhing in pain after breaking her hip, Astor’s ex-housekeeper told jurors yesterday.
In some of the most damning testimony yet in the swindle trial of Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, housekeeper Angela Moore vividly testified that Marshall’s wife, Charlene, dressed down her ailing mother-in-law at New York Hospital in June 2003.
“Mrs. Marshall came over to the bed and said, ‘We had to cancel our trip to London, all because of you!’ ” Moore told rapt Manhattan Supreme Court jurors.
“She [Astor] didn’t say anything. She looked over to me and moved her head side to side.”
Marshall, 85, and his co-defendant, estates lawyer Francis Morrissey, 66, are charged with defrauding Astor by forcing the Alzheimer’s-stricken philanthropist to change her will in 2003 and 2004.
Prosecutors claimed Marshall looted his mom’s estate of millions of dollars at the urging of Charlene — whom Astor’s nurse referred to as “Miss Piggy.”
Defense lawyers lost a bitter fight, outside the presence of jurors, to keep Moore off the witness stand to describe the day Astor broke her hip.
Moore lashed out at Marshall’s lawyer, Frederick Hafetz, when he suggested that either Charlene’s vacation remark was a joke or the housekeeper had misunderstood her.
“I know what I said, and I’m sticking to that!” the graying, petite Moore shot back in a thick Irish brogue.
Paul LeClerc, president and CEO of the New York Public Library, later testified for the prosecution and painted a pained, sad portrait of Astor’s mental decline.
LeClerc described a November 2003 visit to Astor’s Park Avenue home, when he brought her an animal picture book. He said that much like a little child, Astor would point to a photo and name the animal as he flipped pages.
“I don’t think she knew who I was,” said a downcast LeClerc, a pallbearer at Astor’s funeral in 2007 when she died at 105.
LeClerc also remembered his last visit at Astor’s home on March 31, 2004 — a meeting he said Anthony Marshall counseled against.
“He discouraged me from doing so. He said it wasn’t worth doing because she wouldn’t know who I was,” said LeClerc, adding that his visit with Astor lasted just 15 minutes. “It was a brief meeting because we really couldn’t talk to each other.”
LeClerc’s testimony wrapped up the trial’s 12th week. Judge Kirke Bartley told jurors he expected testimony to last until the third week of August, with closing arguments after Labor Day.
Additional reporting by Jessica Simeone