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The Baby Monitor Diaries
The diaries of Brooke Astor's staff provide harrowing new accounts of the queen of New York philanthropy's tragic story.
When sordid allegations surfaced in July 2006 that Brooke Astor—of all people—had been denied crucial medications and forced, aged 104, to sleep in a ripped nightgown on a filthy couch that reeked of urine, her only son, Anthony Marshall, now 84, became the white-haired poster child for elder abuse.
Since then, loyalists of Marshall and his third wife, Charlene, have floated theories that the couple is a victim of a vicious plot hatched by a disgruntled former employee–Astor’s longtime butler, Chris Ely, whom Marshall fired–and a cabal of powerful New Yorkers interested in controlling assets previously promised by Astor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other cultural institutions.
But the discovery of the Baby Monitor Diaries–a startling trove of 30 journals of alleged abuse, neglect, and cynical manipulation of Brooke Astor during her Alzheimer's-ridden twilight years–does not bode well for the upcoming trial of Marshall and his lawyer, Francis X. Morrissey Jr., in January 2009.
I was dazzled from the moment she descended the stairs, in a stylish leather miniskirt, aged 83.
The handwritten diaries, compiled over a four-year period by nurses who perceived mistreatment of Astor at her Park Avenue apartment and at Holly Hill, her country estate, are featured prominently in Mrs. Astor Regrets (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a new book by Meryl Gordon.
Astor repeatedly insisted that nurses leave her alone, Gordon reports, so a baby monitor was installed at Holly Hill that registered every sound from the room where she slept. On one occasion, a nurse overheard a lawyer discussing documents for Astor to bequeath $5 million to her daughter-in-law, Charlene, whom Astor had never liked.
The diaries include harrowing accounts of how Astor, the erstwhile queen of New York philanthropy, was manipulated by her son and his lawyers. One passage describes how Astor was dragged against her will into a meeting on January 12, 2004, to sign a codicil that bequeathed $60 million directly to her son, thus disinheriting charities that she had championed for decades. On another occasion, a night nurse reported, Astor spoke of dreaming “that someone was trying to kill her.”
“Every time I read the diaries I cried,” Gordon says. “She was so frightened, afraid, and depressed.”
The 18-count indictment by the Manhattan district attorney includes charges that Marshall stole two of his mother’s paintings; awarded himself a $2 million commission on the sale of her favorite Childe Hassam painting, which had been promised to the Metropolitan Museum; and coerced his mother into changing her will to his benefit. Morrissey was indicted on charges of conspiracy and forging Brooke Astor’s name to a codicil that altered Astor’s will to further enrich Marshall.
The book suggests that the dynamic between Marshall and his glamorous mother is infinitely more complex than the headlines first trumpeted by the Daily News in 2006.
“I present Tony as less of a villain than others have,” says Gordon, who thinks that some of the incendiary allegations about Marshall’s conduct initially voiced by his estranged son, Philip Marshall, may be somewhat overblown. “I don’t believe she was living in squalor,” Gordon says.
The central thesis of Mrs. Astor Regrets is that its heroine’s miserable first marriage at the age of 17 to Tony Marshall’s father, John Dyden Kuser, a wealthy Princeton graduate whom she met at a prom, adversely affected her relationship with Tony, and that she could never bond with him. After more than a decade, Astor divorced Kuser, whom she described as a philandering and physically abusive alcoholic. She told friends that Kuser broke her jaw when she was six months pregnant with Anthony, possibly because he suspected that he might not be the child’s father. (As a teenager Tony changed his surname to Marshall when Brooke married Buddie Marshall, who showed little interested in the boy.)
When Astor was honored at a reception at the New York Public Library in 2001, she startled the crowd by tearfully announcing, “I married a terrible man,” referring to Kuser.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
My goodness, I got chills from reading this and plan to run to a bookstore later to pick up this book. How sad that someone so generous had to suffer such awful offspring. I can't think of a harsh enough punishment for them.
The story doesn't say whether the conversations picked up by the baby monitor were tape recorded, or whether Gordon relied on the accounts, written after the fact, of the servants who planted the monitor. If there were actual tape recordings, it would give this story more credibility.
I think the allegations are malicious nonsense and this clique of charity vultures have paid the nurse to write this foul drivel, I've known Marshall for years and he's a kind gentle man. The greed factor is more likely stirred by the charity lawyers: it's a huge racket here in New York and they're all feeding off it
A terrible story but a timeless one rooted in a mother's inability to love her own child. A modern greek tragedy. They are all victims, except for the greedy wife, the chorus urging on the son to get his due. Mrs. Astor was a boon to NYC in her generous civic gifts, but not to her only son who spent a lifetime seeking a love she was incapable of giving.
Annette good. Staff good. Tony bad. More of the same old conventional wisdom. As someone smart said on this same subject, Tell me something I don't know. And "I once met Mrs. Astor" isn't it!
Thank you.
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