A Maine woman who married philanthropist Brooke Astor’s son and later became a central figure in an elder abuse scandal targeting Astor has died.
Charlene Marshall, who was a minister’s wife on Mount Desert Island before she met and married Anthony Marshall, Astor’s only son, was 79 years old. She died this month in Northeast Harbor on MDI, according to the New York Times.
Brooke Astor, who died in 2007 at the age of 105, was a fixture in New York City’s high society for decades and summered in Northeast Harbor, where her Cove End estate overlooked the local yacht club on Gilpatrick Cove. Astor is estimated to have given away more than $200 million in her lifetime, some of it to organizations on MDI.
Charlene Marshall ended up owning Astor’s Northeast Harbor estate — just one from a list of the socialite’s possessions that wound up in her hands, earning her scorn from Anthony Marshall’s grown sons from a prior marriage. Astor’s grandsons and other supporters accused Anthony Marshall of neglecting his ailing mother, who suffered from dementia before she died, and forcing changes to his mother’s will that benefited him and his wife.
The scandal erupted publicly in the mid-2000s, after Astor’s supporters went to authorities to have Anthony Marshall removed as his mother’s guardian. Anthony Marshall, who died in 2014 at the age of 90, was charged and then convicted in New York of conspiracy and grand larceny for plundering his mother’s estate.
While Charlene Marshall was never charged, she was vilified in tabloid reports. Astor’s nurses had called Marshall “Miss Piggy,” and many of Astor’s supporters accused her of being the driving force in her husband’s alleged greed, newspapers reported at the time. Northeast Harbor residents who knew Astor said she never liked her daughter-in-law and was mortified when her son began dating the ex-wife of her summertime pastor.
Alicia Johnson, Astor’s longtime head housekeeper in Northeast Harbor who was laid off by the Marshalls after they took over Astor’s affairs, said Anthony Marshall stole from his mother to give to his wife.
“He did it for her,” Johnson told the Bangor Daily News in 2009. “She’s the one walking the streets with a pocket full of money.”
But friends of the Marshalls credited Charlene in media reports for supporting her husband, who was 20 years older than her, without reserve, both before and after the scandal broke.
Brooke Astor inherited a fortune from her third husband, Vincent Astor, when he died in 1959 and, through the Vincent Astor Foundation, gave away more than $200 million, mostly to organizations in New York but also to College of the Atlantic, Asticou Azalea Garden, Northeast Harbor Library, and to Saint Mary’s and Saint Jude’s Parish, all of which are on MDI.
Marshall was at Cove End when she died on Aug. 6, the New York Times reported. The combined assessed value of the 7,000 square-foot mansion and the 3-acre waterfront parcel it sits on is $2.1 million, according to Mount Desert’s property tax records.