Charlene Marshall, daughter-in-law of socialite Brooke Astor caught up in scandal over her will

Brooke Astor called her ‘Miss Piggy’ and she was portrayed in court as a gold-digger who persuaded her husband to swindle his mother

Charlene Marshall, who has died aged 79, was the third wife of Anthony Marshall, the only son and heir of New York socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor, who became a social outcast after being convicted in 2009 of taking advantage of his elderly mother’s dementia to swindle her out of millions of dollars.
Anthony Marshall was in the dock, but it was Charlene, the former wife of an Episcopalian minister, who was painted by some elements of the popular press as the real villain of the piece.
Anthony (who took the surname of his mother’s second husband) was the product of Brooke Astor’s miserable first marriage to Dryden Kuser, an abusive alcoholic. Her wealth, however, came from her third husband, the real-estate and fur heir Vincent Astor who died in 1959. 
Brooke had little time for her son, whom she characterised as “boring”, packing him off to boarding school and summer camps. In fact Anthony did reasonably well, distinguishing himself as a Marine Corps officer at the Battle of Iwo Jima, before joining the CIA, spending a few years on Wall Street and serving as a diplomat. 
Despite his mother’s indifference, Anthony managed to establish some kind of relationship with her and in 1979 she turned to him to manage her money. But 10 years later he embarked on an affair with Charlene Gilbert, wife of the minister at St Mary’s- by-the-Sea in Northeast Harbor, where his mother worshipped during summers at her estate in Maine. They married in 1992.
Her mother-in-law clearly found Charlene repulsive. She called her “Miss Piggy” and “that bitch”, complaining: “She has no class and no neck.” In the 2009 court case her chauffeur recalled her saying: “I don’t want that woman to wear my jewellery because she doesn’t have the neck to wear my jewellery. Why did my son have to marry that woman? He can just sleep with her.”
Anthony had a clear incentive to lay his hands on as much of his mother’s fortune as possible before one or other of them died. Although he was her heir, he could only inherit if he outlived her. Should he predecease her – by 2000 he had already suffered several heart attacks – the bulk of her fortune would go to charities. 
Charlene, in this case, was destined to receive nothing but a necklace, a pair of earrings and two second-hand fur coats made for her size 6 mother-in-law and therefore unlikely to stretch over her more generously proportioned figure.
By the turn of the century Brooke Astor was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and as her condition deteriorated, suspicions arose about her son’s management of her affairs.
Her staff became alarmed when, in 2002, Anthony persuaded her to sell a painting destined for the Metropolitan Museum of Art to a dealer for $10 million; his commission was $2 million. He then fired her lawyers and hired a friend, estates lawyer Francis Morrissey. 
In 2003 and 2004, Brooke Astor’s will was amended with three codicils. Under the first she made over the whole of her Maine property to her son, who promptly passed it on to Charlene; under the second, she made him a gift of $ 5m to provide him with “enough money to ensure Charlene’s comfort assuming she survives you”; under the third she authorised the transfer of some $30m to a new Anthony Marshall Fund.
In the meantime Marshall bought himself a $920,000 yacht and launched himself on Broadway, producing a revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2003) and I Am My Own Wife (2004), both of which won Tony awards. Charlene turned up at the ceremonies wearing famous items from her mother-in-law’s jewellery box.
But in 2006 Phillip Marshall, a university professor and one of Anthony’s twin sons from his first marriage, filed a guardianship lawsuit, backed by Annette de la Renta (wife of the designer), David Rockefeller and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, accusing his father of allowing Brooke Astor to live in squalor and mismanaging her millions.
His father, he claimed, had “turned a blind eye, intentionally and repeatedly, ignoring her health, safety, personal and household needs, while enriching himself with millions of dollars”. Brooke Astor had been kept a virtual prisoner in her “dirty and dilapidated” Manhattan apartment, cut off from friends, servants and her beloved dachshunds  and “forced to sleep in the TV room in torn nightgowns on a filthy couch that smells, probably from dog urine” as her bedroom was so cold.
Marshall grudgingly agreed to cede guardianship to Annette de la Renta and he and Charlene, while admitting no wrongdoing, returned $11 million worth of cash, jewellery and art.
But by then the Manhattan district attorney was looking into allegations that Brooke Astor’s signature on the third codicil to her will had been forged.
Brooke Astor died in August 2007 aged 105. Three months later Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrissey were formally arraigned to face a total of 18 indictments in the New York Supreme Court.
The trial, which opened in March 2009, kept New York agog as a parade of America’s great and good, along with Marshall’s two sons and former servants of Brooke Astor, trooped into the witness box to testify for the prosecution.
Charlene was never charged, but found herself portrayed by prosecutors and the press as a social-climbing gold-digger who had persuaded her husband to take advantage of his elderly parent. “Anthony Marshall’s preoccupation with getting money for Charlene was a motivation for the scheme to defraud,” the court was told.
In October 2009 the jury convicted Marshall on 14 of 16 counts, including first-degree grand larceny, and in December he was sentenced to one to three years in prison. He began serving his sentence in June 2013, but was granted parole two months later because of his deteriorating health.
Charlene cut a demure, sometimes tearful, figure in court, looking the part, as one onlooker put it, “of the minister’s wife of 21 years she had been in 1989 when she ran off with Tony”. Resolute that neither she nor her husband had done anything wrong, she was deeply upset by her monstering in the press. “What did I do wrong? she asked The New York Observer. “What part have I played in this? What’s in me that has caused this reaction from others?”
Following her husband’s conviction, the couple lived a low-profile life. Charlene, who had been a lay minister at St James’s church on Madison Avenue, had to cut back on her involvement to care for him.
When he died in 2014, 15 months after his release, he left the entirety of his estimated $14.5 million estate to Charlene and her three children, cutting his two sons out completely.
Charlene Detwiler Tyler was born on July 28 1945 in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father was an insurance actuary. She married Paul Gilbert, an Episcopalian minister, in 1968. They had three children and eventually settled on Mount Desert Island, Maine, where he joined the clergy at St Mary’s-by-the Sea church, Northeast Harbor. 
Charlene Marshall’s children survive her.
Charlene Marshall, born July 28 1945, died August 6 2024