Brooke Astor’s son Anthony Marshall was found guilty today by a Manhattan jury of plundering his mother’s fortune to the tune of more than $60 million.
The jury assembled in Manhattan Supreme Court convicted Marshall of 16 out of the 18 counts against him, including conspiracy and scheming to defraud.
The verdict included conviciton of the top charge against him — first-degree grand larceny, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 25 years — for using his power of attorney to award himself a $1.4 million retroactive salary increase out of his mother’s fortune.
It clears him, however, of a second first-degree grand larceny charging he swindled his mother into thinking she was broke so he could sell her favorite painting for $10 million and pocket a $2 million commission.
“I’m stunned by the verdict,” said Marshall’s lawyer Frederick Hafetz. “We are greatly disappointed in it, and we will definitely appeal.”
Marshall, 85, will be sentenced on Dec. 8.
His co-defendant, estates lawyer Francis Morrissey, was convicted of forgery and conspiracy. He faces up to seven years behind bars.
Marshall, a decorated Marine and former ambassador to Kenya, remained stoic as his fate was revealed.
But his younger wife of 20 years, Charlene — who prosecutors blamed for goading her husband into wresting the extra cash from his mother — trembled visibly throughout the reading of the 18-count verdict.
Afterwards, she went up to Marshall and put her arm on his shoulder in a bid to console him.
As the couple got into an elevator, Marshall’s wife shouted, “I love my husband,” before he left the building.
Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley allowed the two to remain free pending their sentencing.
Manhattan prosecutors had accused Marshall and Morrissey of conspiring to swindle the Alzheimer’s-afflicted Astor out of tens of millions bequests and gifts.
Defense lawyers claimed Astor was lucid when she bequeathed the money to her only child and that he had legal power to give himself gifts while she was alive. She was keenly focused on her will and loved her son enough to want to give him the money.
Astor’s last will, created Jan. 30, 2002, left millions of dollars to her favorite charities. Subsequent amendments in 2003 and 2004 gave the money-grubbing Marshall most of her estate.
The alleged swindles ranged in size from a $2 million commission Marshall collected after selling her favorite painting — on the pretext that she was too broke to buy dresses, a charge he has now been cleared of — down to using her funds to pay his yacht captain $50,000 in salary, a charge for which he has been found guilty.
The eight-woman, four-man jury reached its verdict after 11 days of deliberations. The trial began with jury selection back in late March, and continued through some 19 weeks of testimony by two defense witnesses and 72 prosecution witnesses — including Astor friends Henry Kissenger and Barbara Walters.