Dignitaries mingle with gardeners. A butler and a home-health aide bump elbows with a UN ambassador and a museum director.
The witness list for the Brooke Astor swindle trial was released yesterday — a strata-mixing, 98-name who’s who of those closest to the socialite philanthropist in her final years, no matter if they clinked a champagne glass with her or emptied her bedpan.
Alphabetized, it starts with Kofi Annan — the former UN ambassador who was her fond friend — and ends with Captain Robert Zielinski, who steered the yacht that Astor’s only child, Anthony Marshall, funded allegedly with her swindled millions.
In between it’s chock full of world-class celebrities, though of the kind more likely to grace Town & Country than Page Six.
Among them are former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and wife Nancy, banker and patriarch David Rockefeller, socialite Annette de la Renta and TV personality Barbara Walters.
The list also includes Lord William Waldorf, Astor’s nephew by marriage, author and friend Louis Auchincloss, former Metropolitan Museum head Philippe de Montebello, and Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library.
Almost all of these caviar-circuit sorts will be called to testify — or at least mentioned — by Manhattan prosecutors as they try to prove the 84-year-old Marshall masterminded an extraordinary, and extraordinarily shabby, scheme.
As his mother succumbed to Alzheimer’s, Marshall succumbed to greed, prosecutors say — tricking her into selling property by telling her she was out of money, leaning on her to amend her will in his favor and, ultimately, getting his lawyer to forge changes to the will outright.
All told, Marshall and lawyer and co-defendant Francis X. Morrissey conspired to steal property and cash worth between $5 million and $6 million, and tried to steal more than $50 million on top of that from her estate, money intended for her favorite charities, including the Metropolitan Museum and the New York Public Library, prosecutors allege.
The charges against them include conspiracy, grand larceny, falsifying business records and forgery.
Marshall and Morrissey insist that all changes to her will were made by Astor intentionally, during moments of lucidity, because she loved her son and wanted to make him happy.
“This will be a really unusual cast of characters showing up,” said court observer Meryl Gordon, author of the recently released book, “Mrs. Astor Regrets.”
“They’re really setting the scene for the life she had,” Gordon said. “It seems to convey that the prosecution really wants to show what Mrs. Astor meant to the city.”
So far, just five jurors have been selected — the Manhattan Supreme Court trial requires 12, along with four or six alternates. Even a couple of prospective jurors admitted they were a bit agog at the witness list.
“If you were to bring Henry Kissinger and Kofi Annan and Barbara Walters in here, I think the whole thing is very interesting,” said one prospective juror — a 40-something high-school math teacher.
“I admit I’m star-struck,” the teacher said. “I think the whole thing is surreal, I’m being honest with you.” He ultimately wasn’t chosen.