Brooke Astor's Tony Award-Winning No Good Con Artist Son Is Dead
Anthony D. Marshall, a Tony award-winning, one-time CIA operative best known for trying to swindle millions of dollars from his ailing heiress mother, Brooke Astor, died Monday. He was 90 and a terrible son.
Marshall was convicted on criminal charges in 2009 after a court found he had worked with his mother's attorney to steal artwork from Astor, who was suffering from Alzheimers, forge her signature on various documents, and amend her will disposing of her $180 million estate without her knowledge.
(Under the original terms of Astor's will, which a court later honored, Marshall received only a paltry $14.5 million—the rest went to charities.)
The trial was a who's who of New York—Henry Kissinger, Oscar de la Renta's wife Annette, Barbara Walters, and former Met Director Phillipe de Montebello were all called as witnesses. After three years of freedom to perpetuate other frauds, Marshall ended up getting sentenced to up to three years in prison, but served only two months before he was released on medical parole in 2013.
When Marshall wasn't looting his mother's estate, the Times reports, he worked as the United States consul in Istanbul and served as an ambassador to Kenya, the Malagasy Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Seychelles. Before that, he worked in the C.I.A., where "by his own account," he helped to develop the U-2 spy plane.
He also wrote seven books, married three women, and fathered two sons—one of whom would go on to sue him for elder abuse.
[image via AP]