Witness: Elderly Brooke Astor Wasn't All There

Chronicler of high society Louis Auchincloss testified yesterday in the trial of famed philanthropist Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall. Auchincloss, who had been friends with Astor for 60 years, supported the prosecution's argument that Astor was senile in her later years. The NY Times reports Auchincloss cited a 2001 lunch where Astor didn't recall him—"It was a great shock to me because she didn’t know me. She knew she ought to know me"—as well as a 1998 discussion where Astor claimed to know Edith Wharton, "This was astonishing to me. I’d written a biography of Edith Wharton. She had told me, which I knew to be true, that she’d never met Edith Wharton. She could have, but I happened to know she hadn’t." The prosecution contends that Astor was not of sound mind when Marshall and a lawyer had her sign a codicil to her will in 2004, which gave Marshall $60 million outright, instead of getting a percentage of trust money.