Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann gave his closing remarks in the trial against Anthony Marshall for felony larceny today, and the words he used for the 86-year-old philanthropist were scathing. Marshall, who is accused of forcing his Alzheimer’s-addled mother, Brooke Astor, into willing him more of her millions in her twilight years, has had to sit through weeks of damning testimony against him by Astor’s friends and employees, and even his own sons. But nothing made him physically shake the way Seidemann’s fiery words did, according to the Times. “Each of these 70 witnesses provides a piece of the puzzle that adds up to one compelling and disturbing picture,” he said. “And that picture is that these defendants, two morally depraved individuals, preyed on a physically and mentally ill 101-year-old woman to steal millions of dollars — dollars that she had intended to go to help the lives of ordinary New Yorkers.” At one point, Seidemann produced a chart to compare the amounts of money Marshall spent on himself even as he cut down his frail mother’s expenses. “Money is no object where it satisfies Tony Marshall’s need,” he said. “Where it satisfies Brooke Astor’s need, then we become fiscally tight and we pinch that penny.” According to the Assistant D.A., Marshall thought of Astor as “as his own little piggy bank; as his own ATM,” and “could not wait” for her millions. “He waited and waited with the undertaker’s shovel in hand for his mother to die.”
Astor Trial Ending With Heated Words [City Room/NYT]
