Son convicted of looting Brooke Astor's money dies

NEW YORK (AP) - Anthony Marshall's trial was a lens on the lives of the famous and monied, featuring testimony from the likes of Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger.

And it was a window into a sordid tale of greed and intergenerational strife: the son of an elderly philanthropist being accused of taking advantage of her failing mental state.

Marshall, who died Sunday, saw his aristocratic life unravel as he was convicted in 2009 of raiding the fortune of his socialite mother, Brooke Astor. Marshall was 90.

Marshall, a decorated World War II veteran who later became a diplomat and Broadway producer, died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said his attorney, Kenneth Warner. Marshall had had heart and other health problems for years.

Marshall was sentenced to one to three years in prison after he was convicted of exploiting his aged mother's slipping mind to loot her millions. Appeals delayed his incarceration for more than 3 1/2 years, but Marshall ultimately went to prison in June 2013.

He was granted medical parole two months later because of debilitating illness. A parole board asked whether he had regrets about the events leading to his imprisonment.

"Well, regrets, yeah," he said, "naturally."

Born into wealth, Marshall earned a Purple Heart in the battle of Iwo Jima and enjoyed a life of upper-class respectability that was shattered when one of his own sons, Philip Marshall, publicly accused him in 2006 of looting Astor's money while letting her live in squalor. The allegations of physical neglect were never substantiated, but they led to the criminal case over Astor's finances.

Astor was 105 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease when she died in 2007. Years earlier, she had been awarded the nation's highest civilian honor - the Presidential Medal of Freedom - for giving away nearly $200 million to charities and institutions.

Prosecutors said Marshall helped himself to his mother's fortune by means as simple as taking artwork off her walls and as complex as getting her to change her will to give him millions of dollars formerly destined for charity. Witnesses included Walters, Kissinger and other prominent Astor friends.

Marshall's lawyers said he had the legal power to give himself gifts with his mother's money, and he believed she wanted him to have them. Defense lawyers also argued that Astor was lucid and acting out of love when she altered her will to benefit her only child.

Jurors disagreed and found Marshall guilty of grand larceny and scheming to defraud.