<p>From today’s New York Times</p>
<p>Charlene Marshall’s decision to marry Anthony D. Marshall, the only son of the New York socialite Brooke Astor, lifted her into a stratosphere that few people have ever known. But it has also pulled her into an untenable position: a central figure in the trial of her husband.
On Oct. 8, 2009 Mr. Marshall was found guilty of 14 of the 16 counts against him, including one of two first-degree grand larceny charges, the most serious he faced. Jurors convicted him of giving himself an unauthorized raise of about $1 million for managing his mother’s finances. Prosecutors contended that Mrs. Astor’s Alzheimer’s had advanced so far that there was no way she could have consented to this raise and other financial decisions that benefited Mr. Marshall.
Elizabeth Loewy, a prosecutor, said that Mr. Marshall defrauded his mother, who died in 2007 at age 105, because of his “preoccupation for getting money for Charlene.” Mr. Marshall, a Broadway producer and former diplomat who also worked for the C.I.A. for several years, married Charlene, his third wife, in 1992.
Charlene Tyler, born in Charleston, S.C., came from a well-respected, if not wealthy, family that claims President John Tyler as an ancestor. The second of five children, she was the daughter of a former Miss Charleston and an insurance salesman. She was known as respectful and gregarious, involved with the church from a young age. She attended Ashley Hall, a well-known prep school for girls, many from the upper reaches of Charleston society.
Ms. Marshall married her first husband, the Rev. Paul Gilbert, in Charleston, in 1968. A few years after serving at a church in New Jersey, Mr. Gilbert became pastor of St. Mary’s by the Sea in Northeast Harbor, Maine.
Ms. Marshall did not live like the affluent summer residents the church served, among them Mrs. Astor and her son. When she showed up at Cove End at 7 a.m. one day in the late 1980s to meet Mr. Marshall for a walk, the staff at Mrs. Astor’s home became alarmed, said Sandra Graves, 65, an assistant cook at the estate.
And Mrs. Astor was not happy when she found out her son was courting her pastor’s wife, she said. “She was very angry,” Ms. Graves said.
John Dobkin, a friend of Mrs. Astor’s, testified that as he once sat with her on the patio at Cove End, Mrs. Astor pointed toward the road and said, “That’s where Charlene would walk back and forth day after day trying to get Tony’s attention.”
Even Mr. Marshall’s lawyers have conceded that Mrs. Astor was not fond of her daughter-in-law (Mr. Marshall’s third wife), though they contend Mrs. Astor eventually realized Ms. Marshall made her son happy and that that - not trickery or forgery - was why she changed her will in her final years to restore her son’s inheritance, about $60 million.
Ms. Marshall, who is nearly 20 years younger than her spouse, sat mostly stone faced as prosecutors have invited witness after witness to talk about her. As she sat in the second row of the courtroom gallery day after day, she heard herself referred to as Miss Piggy; as a social climber who left her husband and their three children; and as the daughter-in-law Mrs. Astor never wanted.</p>