The People vs. Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrissey - The Help Strikes Back

Anthony Marshall, Brooke Astor's son, is accused of swindling his mother's estate and Francis Morrissey of helping him do so by forging her signature on a codicil to her will.
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Lia Opris, who was hired as one of Brooke Astor's maids in 2003, was back home in Romania recovering from a car accident around 2007 when Prince Paul-Philippe of Hohenzollern came calling, and not for the first time. Royalty apparently isn't what it used to be. Especially in the former Communist Bloc. Because Ms. Opris told the Romanian prince, who was visiting on his friend Francis Morrissey's behalf to attempt to persuade her to contact Mr. Morrissey's lawyers, to go away.

The reason Mr. Morrissey, a Manhattan trust and estates lawyer, was pulling out the princely firepower, trying to impress a mere commoner, became apparent in court yesterday when Ms. Opris came to say damaging things about Mr. Morrissey, 66.

Anthony Marshall, Brooke Astor's son, is accused of swindling his mother's estate and Francis Morrissey of helping him do so by forging her signature on a codicil to her will, the last in a succession of will changes that moved ever more of her $180 million estate into Tony's column at the expense of her beloved charities.

On earlier wills and codicils the Alzheimer's-inflicted and increasingly frail grand dame's signature is faint. In one document, giving her son sole power attorney over her affairs and taking it away from Henry Christensen, a lawyer who had been co-executor of his mother's estate for 15 years, she could hardly manage to print her initials on the lines intended for them. But on the third codicil, which increased the new executors' -- Mr. Morrissey and Charlene Marshall's -- fees, her signature is as bold and confident as a U.S. congressman taking full advantage of his franking privileges to blanket his district with mail.

Ms. Opris, an elegant white haired woman with a warm smile, was called in to Mrs. Astor's Park Avenue study on March 3, 2004 to witness her sign the codicil in dispute. "She didn't sign right away," the former maid remembered in accented English. "She took some time for thinking. She looked like she was having an inner debate it seemed to me, trying to make a decision. She was looking down at the page."

The prosecution contends that Mrs. Astor, who had a fear of men in dark suits, ostensibly because whenever they showed up she was spirited behind closed doors to sign documents she didn't understand, literally had to be dragged into the drawing room of her Park Avenue apartment that afternoon, according to a nurse who will testify later in the trial. But sign she eventually did. And Ms. Opris distinctly recalled that her signature looked nothing like the forceful one that came to reside on the official document.

"I'm positive," she told the jury. "That signature was not placed at the bottom of the page. It was somewhere in the middle of the page. The letters were bigger. They were kind of pale, as if the pen was running out of ink. I thought to myself the letters might fade."

Ms. Opris also recalled that after Mrs. Astor signed both she and Erica Meyer, Mrs. Astor's social secretary, who has yet to testify, signed below on the same page. But on the document that Mr. Marshall and Mr. Morrissey represent to be the authentic one the ladies' signatures appear on a separate page.

As Ms. Opris testified, Mr. Morrissey, seated at the end of far end of the defense table and facing a maximum of seven years in prison if convicted, looked increasingly glum. However, his spirits may have been marginally revived on cross examination when his lawyer, Thomas Puccio, suggested the maid might have been confusing her recollections of witnessing the third codicil with an earlier codicil she also witnessed. In that codicil Mrs. Astor's signature is frail and positioned higher on the page, and her and Ms. Meyer's signatures are on the same page as hers. "I said I think I signed that paper with Mrs. Astor's signature on it," she said uncertainly.

This is the second time in recent days that one of Brooke Astor's employees has come back to bite her son on the ass -- proving that perhaps the first rule of estate planning, especially if you're going to engage in alleged hanky panky, is not alienating the household staff, at which Mr. Marshall and his wife Charlene seemed to have a singular flair. In emotional testimony last week, Marciano Amaral, Mrs. Astor's devoted Portuguese chauffeur who Mr. Marshall fired, testified among other things that her employer told him she was losing her mind, though never enough to revisit her feelings towards her detested daughter-in-law. "She used to say, 'I don't want this woman to wear my jewelry because she doesn't have a neck to wear my jewelry,'" Mr. Amaral remembered.

On cross-examination, Fred Hafetz, Tony Marshall's attorney, wondered whether Mr. Amaral, who said Mrs. Astor confided to him that she'd remembered him in her will and that he could stay in his rent free apartment even after she was gone, had a grudge against his client. Mr. Marshall also kicked him out of the one-bedroom East 72nd Street apartment where he lived, giving him 45 days' notice. Mr. Marshall apparently wanted the apartment for Charlene's son -- testimony from the co-op building's president that Judge A. Kirke Bartley Jr. refused to allow the jury to hear.

But as has happened time and again at this trial -- which started in April and now seems as if it will last through most of the summer -- Mr. Hafetz may have done his client more harm than good.

"You had a really cushy job," Mr. Hafetz charged. "You were getting $60,000 a year, often working less than three hours a day, and you got an apartment."

Mr. Amaral countered that he stayed on because of his devotion to Mrs. Astor. In fact, after he was fired he got a chauffeur's job with another wealthy family that now pays him $90,000 a year and includes room and board.

Indeed, Mr. Amaral said he didn't hate Tony Marshall, he felt sorry for him. Mr. Hafetz failed to prevent him from explaining why.

"He couldn't wait," he said, his voice cracking. "He couldn't wait."

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