我們來記住這個臉， 這位大哥 與 大嫂將老母的錢財用詐術手段騙到手，還讓老母晚景受到糟糕的醫療待遇，美國真是個先進的法治國家，美國對這一對沒心肝的大哥大嫂定罪，將給他們25年刑期!

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騙走老媽數千萬美元　美故慈善家之子遭定罪

（法新社紐約8日電） 美國已故女慈善家艾斯特（Brooke Astor）的兒子馬歇爾（Anthony Marshall），被控利用母親晚年失智時詐取數千萬美元，這宗紐約近年最受矚目的社會案件今天宣判，陪審團判定85歲的馬歇爾有罪，他面臨高達25年刑期。

身價億萬的艾斯特女士2007年以高齡105歲去世，生前捐出大約2億美元給紐約諸多慈善機構。馬歇爾被控於母親過世前生病時竊取和共謀竊取數千萬美元，經過馬拉松審判，在美國許多社會名流出庭作證後，陪審團經過12天長考，作出有罪判決。

艾斯特家族是美國最著名和富有的家族之一，馬歇爾是艾斯特女士和第二任丈夫的獨生子。今天宣布判決時法庭座無虛席，到庭聆判的馬歇爾聽到被控的重大竊盜罪和共謀等罪名都成立時，面無表情。

不過，馬歇爾離開法庭時終於流露情緒，他撐著拐杖抓住妻子夏琳（Charlene）的手擠過成群記者時，眼眶滿是淚水。辯護律師表示，他們將會上訴。

檢方說，馬歇爾面臨高達25年刑期，但要到12月8日法官才會宣布刑期。目前交保在外的馬歇爾仍將暫保自由之身。

馬歇爾被控利用母親老年失智症日漸嚴重時，騙她修改遺囑，取得6000萬美元原要用於慈善工作的財產。（譯者：中央社林治平）

Brooke Astor 1902 - 2007

Updated: Oct. 8, 2009

Brooke Astor, who died on Aug. 13 at age 105, reigned over New York society for decades, eschewing pretension and devoting much of her time to charitable causes. She was known as New York City’s unofficial first lady, establishing her presence in both the luxury apartments of Fifth Avenue and the tenements of East Harlem, using her inherited millions to help the less fortunate.

Mrs. Astor’s money came from her third husband, Vincent Astor, who was heir to the fur and real estate fortune of John Jacob Astor and who when he died left about $60 million to her personally, and an equal amount for a foundation “for the alleviation of human suffering.” She decided that because most of the fortune had been made in New York, it should be spent in New York, and her grants supported museums and libraries, homes for the elderly, churches and other institutions and programs. She enjoyed quoting the leading character in Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker,” saying, “Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around.”

A very loud public battle among her family members over her care and her riches began in 2006. A grandson, Philip Marshall, accused her only son, Anthony D. Marshall, of neglecting her care and exploiting her to enrich himself and his wife, Charlene. Her son denied the accusations. The dispute went on for months, until the parties announced a settlement, avoiding a court fight. But later criminal charges were filed against Mr. Marshall, charging him with fraud, grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and falsifying business records -- all surrounding his mother's fortune. On Oct 8, 2009 Mr. Marshall was found guilty of one of two first-degree grand larceny charges, the most serious he faced.

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Mrs. Astor's final years were recounted in intimate and sometimes embarrassing detail during the trial of her son. Mr. Marshall and Francis X. Morrissey Jr., a lawyer who worked on Mrs. Astor's estate, were accused of taking advantage of Mrs. Astor, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, to trick her into changing her will and funnel tens of millions of dollars their way.

Prosecutors called 72 witnesses during more than five months of testimony and arguments. Many of the witnesses painted a picture of a mentally frail Mrs. Astor who could not remember the names of close friends such as David Rockefeller, and who sometimes even confused her son for her husband. One of Mrs. Astor's nurses, who began working for her when she was 101, testified that she had to clean Mrs. Astor after she used the bathroom, dress her, coax her into eating and sing children songs to her such as "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?"

But the trial, which started with opening arguments on April 27, also served to recall Mrs. Astor's brashness, irreverent humor and energy that belied her age.

Several witnesses testified of Mrs. Astor's disdain for her daughter-in-law, Charlene Marshall. Mrs. Astor's audiologist testified that Mrs. Astor once told him she would rather spend Christmas with her dachshunds, Boysie and Girlsie, than with Mrs. Marshall, referring to her with the explicit word for a female dog.

John Dobkin, a friend of Mrs. Astor's, testified that after a woman at church asked Mrs. Astor if she was a lesbian, she responded, "No my dear, I'm an Episcopalian."

But Mrs. Astor's bright personality gave way to paranoia in her later years, witnesses testified.

Brooke Astor, 2002, at 100 years old.   (Photo: Chester Higgins Jr.)

Anthony Marshall and his wife, Charlene, live in a sunny apartment on East 79th Street, lushly decorated with a grand piano and a wall of books. Last fall, long before the accusations that Anthony was abusing his mother, philanthropist Brooke Astor, I interviewed the couple with the goal of writing about Astor, who was 103 at the time and reportedly in ill health.

In our phone conversation, Marshall had promised to discuss his mother, but he had changed his mind once I arrived. After serving iced tea, he announced, “I really don’t want to talk about my mother. She can’t talk for herself, so I don’t think I should talk for her. Maybe you should have your drink and go.” Instead, he offered an ­alternative. “I thought that maybe you wanted to talk to me about my life,” he said, “which I would be delighted to do.”

Yet over the next 40 minutes, Marshall proceeded to talk quite a bit about his mother—or at least talk around her, with a complex mixture of pique and pride. His dachshund Pichou lay at his feet. And his wife sat by his side, raising roadblocks whenever the conversation turned to her ­mother-in-law.

“I’ve had a very independent life,” Marshall began. He’s a courtly man with plummy upper-class diction. But even as he cited his accomplishments (enlisting in the Marine Corps and being wounded at Iwo Jima, a stint at the State Department, ambassadorships in Kenya and Trinidad, brokerage work and international consulting, writing seven books), all roads led to Brooke. Marshall said he put aside his own career back in 1979 to focus on managing her money. “I was very glad to do it, because once I got into it, I discovered that things were being mismanaged badly. Very badly.” He portrayed himself as a dutiful son, but he couldn’t resist a bit of upmanship: “I’m on the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. My mother was never on that.”

I noted that the Marshalls were not major players in Upper East Side society, and he replied, “You’re right. My mother loved people. I love people but on a different basis. My mother had”—he corrected himself—“has lots of friends, although a lot of them are dying off.” The Marshalls have become theatrical producers in recent years, in partnership with David Richenthal, backing the Tony Award–winning show I Am My Own Wife. When I remarked that the couple are not regulars in the New York Times society photos, Charlene snapped, “No. We’re not by choice.”

Marshall is the child of Brooke Astor’s first marriage, at age 17, to John Dryden Kuser, a wealthy New Jersey man she has described as an alcoholic, womanizing wife beater. After they divorced, she fell for stockbroker Charles “Buddie” Marshall, who left his family for her, and when they married, Marshall adopted Anthony. That act prompted Kuser to sue his own son to get back child-support money. Astor wrote about that court battle, which her son won: “I rather agreed with the judge­—people who fight over money never seem to me to deserve to have any!” Eleven months after Buddie Marshall died in 1952, Brooke married Vincent Astor—a pairing arranged by Vincent’s wife, who had promised to find him a replacement before she divorced him.

As we spoke, Marshall, unprompted, began to reminisce about the one family member who gave him unconditional love: his maternal grandfather, Major General John Henry Russell. “My grandfather was the compass of my life. Still is, although he died in 1947. He was a wonderful person. I spent a lot of time with him. He wrote me a great deal, gave me very good advice,” said Marshall, who named his boat after his grandfather. “He never dictated, never said, ‘You must do this, you must do that.’ ”

I asked whether his mother and step­fathers were similarly supportive. Charlene interrupted, saying, “You don’t want to get into that.” Marshall echoed her. “No, that’s too close.”

In the tabloids, the Astor saga has been framed as a tale of elder abuse, a legendary philanthropist deprived of proper care in her final years. And certainly it’s good to know that Brooke Astor—an iconic figure in New York society—will ­likely live her last days in comfort, surrounded by the fresh flowers she loves. But the story of the Astor lawsuit is also something simpler and sadder, a tale of parental neglect, repeated generations over. Brooke Astor is a magnificent benefactor and a legendary hostess, but she was, by her own account, a lousy mother. Marshall has little relationship with his own son Philip. For that matter, Vincent Astor, the one who left Brooke all the money, was neglected by his mother, Ava Astor—in one infamous story, he was left in a dressing-room closet to cry until a butler found him hours later.

from:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/brooke_astor/index.html

Brooke Astor

AKA Roberta Brooke Russell

Born: 30-Mar-1902
Birthplace: Portsmouth, NH
Died: 13-Aug-2007
Location of death: Briarcliff Manor, NY
Cause of death: Pneumonia
Remains: Buried, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, NY

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Philanthropist, Socialite

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Heiress, philanthropist

Philanthropist Brooke Astor was born in New Hampshire and raised in Waikiki, Panama, Peking, and Mexico. Her father was John Henry Russell Jr., a military officer who became Commandant of the US Marine Corps.

She dropped out of high school to marry her first serious boyfriend, J. Dryden Kuser, when she was 17. He was descended from founders of South Jersey Gas and Electric and the Prudential Life Insurance Company, but he drank heavily, beat her, cheated on her, and announced after a year of marriage that he no longer loved her. A dutiful wife, she did not file for divorce until after he won election to the New Jersey Senate in 1930.

Her second marriage was to stockbroker Charles Marshall, a man of more modest means and kinder temperament. During World War II she worked as a nurse tending to veterans, and when the war ended, unlike most married women of her time she decided to work. She wrote for House And Garden magazine, and eventually became an editor there. She was married to Marshall for two decades, until his death.

Her third husband was Vincent Astor, who inherited great wealth when his father died aboard the Titanic in 1912. He owned Newsweek, the Hotel St. Regis, and many millions in real estate, as well as vast holdings in the automobile, shipping, and air transportation industries. The family's ancestry -- and fortune -- traces back to John Jacob Astor, America's richest man by his death in 1848, who accumulated his millions trading fur, tea and real estate. The family name is reflected in Manhattan's Astor Place, the Waldorf-Astoria, etc.

Vincent Astor reportedly once told his wife that when he died, she would have "a hell of a good time" giving away his fortune. He died of a heart attack in 1959, and over the next four decades she did indeed give it all away. "Money is like manure," she often said. "It should be spread around." Astor gave millions to the Bronx Zoo, International Rescue Committee, the Fresh Air Fund, Lighthouse for the Blind, the Maternity Center Association, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library, among other recipients, large and small. All told, she gave away about $195 million.

Toward the end of her life Astor suffered from Alzheimer's disease, and in 2006 she became the subject of a lawsuit alleging elder abuse. Her grandson claimed that Astor's son, Anthony Dryden Marshall, forced her to sleep on a urine-drenched couch, kept her beloved dogs locked in a separate room, replaced her name-brand face cream with petroleum jelly, and switched her prescriptions to lower-cost generic drugs. A court appointed Oscar de la Renta's wife Annette, a close friend of Astor, to act as her temporary guardian, and assigned corporate giant JPMorgan Chase to oversee her assets. A Morgan Chase audit later raised questions about $14-million in cash, property and stocks that Anthony Dryden Marshall received from Astor, who may not have realized what she was signing. She was 105 when she died.

from :http://www.nndb.com/people/173/000057002/

今天收到一封信 給大家讀一讀省思一下

當我們有一天也到了八十歲，開始健康走下坡，

不動產都登記到兒孫名下時:

《資深熟男的遺憾-》