Cheat Sheet

The New York Post has some startling new details on how charity queen and socialite Brooke Astor's son took advantage of her before her death. In "Mrs. Astor Regrets" by Meryl Gordon, excerpted in the Post, her nurses placed a baby monitor in her room so they could track her movements, which gave her help an ear into her conversations with lawyers as they bullied her into rerouting her fortune from charities to her son's bank account. According to notes from her nurse, the day before Astor changed her will to bequeath $30 million to her son, Astor was suffering "Paranoia, undecipherable words, disoriented after lunch." In a later meeting, in which she left her son an additional $60 million, the Post reports she "was a frightened old woman being dragged down a hallway against her objections to a close-door meeting."