[Baltimore Sun] Charlene Marshall, central figure in a celebrity scandal, dies
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Charlene Marshall, who played a central role in a high-profile civil suit and subsequent criminal trial in which her husband, Anthony, was convicted of defrauding his mother, wealthy socialite Brooke Astor, died Aug. 6 at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine. She was 79.
A representative from St. Jude’s Episcopal Church in Seal Harbor, Maine, where her funeral was held, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
The Astor case had all the makings of a New York celebrity scandal: an ailing matriarch beloved by the city’s elite for her social and philanthropic largess; an only son who had long lived in his mother’s shadow; a nine-figure inheritance; and a will that had been rewritten more than 45 times.
At issue was whether Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, had conspired with a lawyer, Francis Morrissey Jr., to revise the will to direct more money to himself, along the way forcing his mother, who had dementia and died at 105 in 2007, to slash her expenses to keep her fortune intact.
But the heart of the case was the presence of Charlene Marshall. She was neither named in the suit nor charged with the crime, but in some ways she was the one on trial.
She and her husband, a decorated Marine and a former ambassador to several countries, married after they both left failing marriages in the late 1980s. That was a scandal in itself in the small town of Northeast Harbor, Maine, where the Astors had a summer home and where Charlene Marshall’s former husband was the minister at Astor’s church.
First during the 2006 civil suit brought against Anthony Marshall by his son Philip, accusing him of elder abuse, and later during the criminal trial in 2009, lawyers and reporters painted Charlene Marshall in the worst possible light — as a gold digger, as a participant in the supposed abuse and as the primary drive behind her husband’s actions.
“Anthony Marshall’s preoccupation for getting money for Charlene was actually motivation for the scheme to defraud,” Elizabeth Loewy, an assistant district attorney, said during the trial.
Things got worse in the papers: Reporters, especially those from The New York Post, picked up on Astor’s rumored dislike for her daughter-in-law, including unflattering descriptions of her body, fashion sense and lack of social standing among the moneyed elite. Those rumors were underlined by a retinue of witnesses, including maids, butlers and a list of famous names long enough to fill the tabloid’s Page 6 for a month.
“Charlene Marshall has not been charged with a crime — unless it’s illegal to be unpopular,” the rival Daily News wrote.
None of the allegations were ever proved. But because Charlene Marshall was not charged and was not called to testify, she had no opportunity to rebut them. Instead she sat in the audience behind her husband, day after day, sometimes with tears in her eyes.
“Oh, I’ve been very introspective,” she told The New York Observer soon after her husband was found guilty and received a sentence of one to three years in prison. “What did I do wrong? What part have I played in this? What’s in me that has caused this reaction from others?”
The Marshalls insisted on their innocence; it was one reason, their friends said, that Anthony Marshall never negotiated a plea deal (though, as others pointed out, that would have most likely cut out his chances of any inheritance).
Anthony Marshall entered the Downstate Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York, in 2013 but, suffering from Parkinson’s and congestive heart failure, was released after eight weeks on medical parole. He retained a sizable sum of his mother’s fortune, including her summer home in Maine, and the couple went to live there after the trial. He died in 2014.
The trial left a rift in New York society, splitting those who believed the couple had taken advantage of Astor’s dementia and those who believed that they (especially Charlene Marshall) had themselves been abused by a social elite whose defense of Astor was in large part motivated by self-interest.
“No one is as bad as their worst headline, and Charlene was no exception,” Alexander Hoyt, a literary agent who advised the couple, said in an interview. “Charlene was a very good wife who stood by her man.”
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Charlene Detwiler Tyler was born July 28, 1945, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Marguerite and Charles Taylor. Her father was an insurance actuary. Although her family was solidly middle class, it had illustrious roots, counting President John Tyler and painter George Inness among its ancestors.
She married Paul Gilbert, an Episcopal minister, in 1968. After living briefly in New Jersey, they settled on Mount Desert Island, in Maine, where he joined the clergy at St. Mary’s-by-the Sea church in the town of Northeast Harbor. Astor was among its tight-knit congregation.
Anthony Marshall was Astor’s only son, from her first marriage, to J. Dryden Kuser; he later took the surname of her second husband, Charles Marshall, who died in 1952. A year later, she married Vincent Astor, heir to the fortune of John Jacob Astor. He died in 1959.
The Marshalls met in Maine; though later news media accounts accused her of stalking him and seducing him into leaving his wife, the couple later said that both their marriages had been falling apart. She left Gilbert in 1989 and married Marshall in 1992.
Charlene Marshall is survived by her children from her first marriage, Arden Delacey, Robert Gilbert and Inness Hancock, as well as several grandchildren.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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