by Meryl Gordon
Dedman went to Beth Israel to try to see Huguette. Arriving at the third floor, Dedman asked for Huguette and a hospital employee inquired, “Who are you to her?” (“That’s as far as I got,” he wrote. “I wasn’t going to barge into her room, and won’t divulge the name of the hospital.”)
The reporter took on the role of advocate in the story by listing the legal steps that a bank, Huguette’s family members, or total strangers could take to investigate her affairs, such as contacting Adult Protective Services or filing a guardianship petition. He helpfully offered questions that they could put to Huguette.
Dedman wrote his stories in a tone that suggested he could not imagine Huguette reading the articles or having them read to her, referring to her as an “old lady” five times in such passages as, “Who protects an old lady who secluded herself from the world, limiting her life to a single room, playing dress-up with her dolls and watching cartoons?”
As other reporters turned up at Beth Israel, trying to get into Huguette’s room, a security guard was posted outside to rebuff intruders. Her name was changed to a pseudonym, Harriet Chase, in the hospital computer system. The New York Post blared: NY’S HERMIT HEIRESS & HER SAD SECRETS—CENTURY OF MYSTERIES. Huguette had spent her life trying to avoid attention, but now her divorce, her love for dolls, and her personality quirks were being dished up to a voyeuristic public. She had identified with the unassuming cricket in her favorite fable, but now she had been transformed into the colorful butterfly torn apart by the media.
Huguette’s inner circle agonized and decided that the lucid 104-year-old needed to know what was being said about her. Irving Kamsler met with Huguette to tell her about the articles. “She was upset, she did not want to be in the newspapers,” Kamsler recalls. He had printed out the series and believes that he left her a copy.
On August 25, the Post ominously reported that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office had launched a criminal investigation into Huguette’s welfare and fortune. The D.A.’s office had received a tip, but Dedman’s stories added fuel to the fire. That same day, Gerald Gray, Huguette’s great-nephew and a California social worker who specialized in treating torture victims, submitted a request to New York Adult Protective Services for an investigation. Bock and Kamsler went to the hospital to tell Huguette about the D.A.’s legal inquiry, informing her that she would have to answer questions and they would have to hire lawyers for themselves. They asked her to pay their legal fees, and she agreed to pick up the bill.
As the chief of the district attorney’s elder abuse unit, Elizabeth Loewy had developed a national reputation as a champion for the elderly after winning the conviction in 2009 of Anthony Marshall for stealing from his mother, Brooke Astor, who suffered from dementia. Ever since then, Loewy had experienced a sharp jump in new cases. The Astor case encouraged more people to report suspected abuse.
After alerting hospital executives that she would be coming and brushing up on her French, Loewy went to see Huguette, bringing along a genial detective, Donald Kennedy, who had worked with her on the Astor case. She met Dr. Newman at his office, and he escorted the prosecutor and detective to Huguette’s room. Hadassah was on duty, but Loewy asked the nurse and Dr. Newman to leave the room so that she could have a private conversation.
Loewy took a low-key approach, trying to first ascertain whether the hard-of-hearing centenarian was able to hold a conversation—she was—and then asking whether she was doing well. Sitting up in bed, Huguette responded thoughtfully to each question, conveying that she knew about the allegations but that she was fine and that no one had threatened her in any way. She did not appear to be confused or sad.
Even though the family was aware that the D.A. was investigating, they felt pressure to act. On September 1, Bill Dedman sent an e-mail to Gerald Gray:
I’m told on good authority that Irving Kamsler was over at the hospital yesterday trying to get Huguette to sign a will.
It’s not the place of the police or the DA to, in effect, put a new regime in place to keep a convicted felon from continuing to visit her. But speaking frankly, I have to let you know that this is going on, and to ask, when will the family step up to file a guardianship petition. Is there not, at this point, more than enough smoke?
I realize there’s more than enough that I don’t know, but this raises questions.
This email was later produced in discovery during the legal battle over Huguette’s will. On Friday, September 3, Carla, Ian, and Karine filed legal papers in Manhattan requesting that a guardian be appointed to protect Huguette from potential financial abuse, the same initial step that had been taken in the Astor case. “Her mental abilities are uncertain,” the petition stated, “but on information and belief as a result of her physical condition, she has limited ability to understand and manage her financial affairs…”
Wallace Bock called the trio “nothing more than officious interlopers” in his legal response and insisted that Huguette was not mentally incapacitated. A week later, Supreme Court Justice Laura Visitacion-Lewis turned down the guardianship request, ruling that the relatives were acting on “hearsay, conclusory, and speculative assertions.”
Huguette was disturbed that her relatives were trying to hijack her life. “It was the first time I ever saw her angry,” Chris Sattler recalls. She was convinced that her relatives were motivated by greed. “Why do they want my money?” she asked Chris. Adds Wallace Bock, “She was not the type of person who starts screaming and ranting and raving. She’d show her displeasure in her tone of voice. She might say a few harsh words like, ‘What do these people want?’ ”
On December 9, Ian and Karine tried to visit her at the hospital. Ian called ahead to tell the hospital’s legal counsel that they were en route. “There was a security guard,” Ian recalls. “We said, ‘We’re here to see our aunt.’ He knocked on the door and Hadassah Peri came out.” Karine adds, “She wasn’t happy to see us. I found her very confrontational. I was tongue-tied.” The nurse berated them for turning up after so many years had passed, demanding, “Why are you here?” Hadassah refused to accept their flowers, but Karine insisted that she take in a note to Tante Huguette, which stressed that the family cared about her and were acting out of concern.
Elizabeth Loewy visited Huguette two more times as her investigation continued. Each time, they spoke in French and Huguette repeated that she had not been coerced by anyone. The prosecutor examined Huguette’s financial and medical records and interviewed her employees and her relatives. Some of Huguette’s magnanimous gifts raised the specter of undue influence. Loewy kept digging, searching to see if a crime had been committed.
Huguette had never been religious, but as she approached the twilight of her life, she fondly remembered the Catholic prayers that she had uttered as a child. When Marie Pompei stopped in to see the heiress, Huguette asked, “Do you know the Our Father? Would you like to sing it with me?” As Marie, a practicing Catholic, recalls, “I’ve got my arm around her back, she’s holding my hand with her other hand, and we’re singing Our Father together. See me, God? It was so lovely, so unusual.”
On Marie’s next visit in early 2011, Huguette teased her about how out of tune they had been. Marie suggested that Huguette come to her grandson’s upcoming wedding and they could sing it together. Huguette laughed, replying, “I’m not going to make a fool of myself and you shouldn’t, either.” She asked questions about the wedding—asking for a description of the bride’s gown and inquiring about whether the couple had planned their honeymoon yet.
If not, Huguette had a suggestion. Even now, her birthplace called to her, that romantic and beautiful city of lights where her mother and father had fallen in love, where she and Andrée had played together in the family’s apartment on the Avenue Victor Hugo. With a smile that spoke of happy memories, Huguette declared: “They should go to Paris.”
Chris Sattler lingered on a few extra minutes at the end of a hospital visit that winter of 2011 to express his endur
ing gratitude to his employer. Huguette had given him a satisfying job for twenty years, she had paid his daughters’ private school tuition, and when he had health problems, she called him every day to wish him well. He did not know how much longer the 104-year-old would be alive. He leaned over by her good ear to express his thoughts. “Thank you, Mrs. Clark, for all you’ve done,” he told her. She turned her head so she could see him clearly and replied, “No, Chris, I thank you.”
That was their last conversation. Huguette suddenly came down with an acute case of pneumonia. “I had a bad feeling about it because she was so frail,” recalls Mildred Velazquez, her hospital case manager. “But she told me, ‘I’m going to fight this.’ I said, ‘You never quit, you always a fighter.’ She smiled. Then the next time I went to see her she was already in the ICU, intubated… unable to respond.”
Huguette lingered on in a comalike state for almost two months. Hadassah sat at her bedside, held her hands, and talked to her. Chris, Marie, and Irving made frequent visits. They hoped their familiar voices would be comforting even if Huguette could not communicate. She had refused to sign a DNR order, and now she was on a respirator with a feeding tube. Kamsler, who had been entrusted as her medical proxy, found himself arguing with hospital officials as the weeks stretched on. “They wanted to pull the plug,” he says. The accountant had already been vilified in the press for his felony conviction, and he could imagine the headlines if he signed the equivalent of her death warrant. He says that he insisted Huguette’s wishes be respected, even though she was unlikely to regain consciousness.
On May 24 at 3 a.m., Chris got a call from Kamsler, summoning him to the hospital. Huguette was dying. It took Chris an hour to get in from Long Island, and by then Hadassah and Dr. Singman were there, as well as other nurses who had cared for Huguette. Chris found it painful to bear witness, saying, “It’s awful to watch someone die.” For hours, the small group prayed and reminisced. As Kamsler recalls, “We went in and out of the room. Everyone was talking about their little memories of her and how kind she was to them.” At Hadassah’s insistence, a priest was called to give Huguette last rites. At 7:35 a.m., she took her last breath.
Wanda Styka received the news in an early-morning call from Irving Kamsler. She was grateful for his courtesy and his acknowledgment of her relationship with her godmother. Wallace Bock e-mailed Karine McCall, saying that he had sad news, and asked her to inform the rest of the family. She inquired about funeral services, and was told that Huguette had expressly asked for a private burial and no funeral.
The gates at Woodlawn Cemetery opened briefly at dawn on May 26 to admit the hearse with Huguette’s casket, transported by pallbearers from the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, the discreet Upper East Side firm favored by the well-to-do. Susan Olsen, the cemetery’s historian, was waiting along with the president of the cemetery and the contractor who had rebuilt the Clark mausoleum. No one else was permitted inside: not Hadassah, Chris Sattler, or any of Huguette’s intimates. “High-profile funerals have to be orchestrated out of respect for family and the people you are entombing,” Olsen says. “It wasn’t about keeping anyone away. She led a very private life and deserved a very private funeral.”
The mausoleum’s bronze door, with its vision of a mysterious woman, was created more than a century earlier, but now that decorative touch seemed especially apt. In an 1897 article about the much-admired door entitled “The Vision,” the New York Times wrote, “The face of the figure expresses the sadness of parting from family and friends, while the abundant draperies and the right hand raised to the breast furnish at once a suggestion of modesty and offer a gesture that calls attention to the person represented; in other words, it is an appeal to be remembered by the living.”
For a private woman, Huguette received a very public send-off. On her death certificate, her occupation was listed as “artist.” The form was filled out by Wallace Bock, who knew she cherished that identity. But this central fact of her life was not what fascinated the journalists and headline writers, who focused instead on her copper fortune and her secretive life.
The New York Times played Huguette’s obituary on page one (HEIRESS TO THE HIGH LIFE, THEN DETERMINED RECLUSE), and the Wall Street Journal weighed in as well (SOCIETY GIRL WHO SPENT 8 DECADES IN SECLUSION). This curious tale was an international sensation, covered by publications from Australia’s Courier-Mail (POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL’S SAD LIFE) to the Scottish Express (AMERICA’S ANTISOCIAL SOCIALITE) and Asian News International (REAL “MISS HAVISHAM”).
The Clark family drama would continue to unfold, but without Huguette. The New York Post cut directly to the chase: MYSTERY HEIRESS DIES—$500 MILLION FORTUNE AT STAKE. It was the obvious question: what would become of Huguette’s money?
Chapter Seventeen
The Battle for Huguette’s Fortune
So many famous New Yorkers are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to newspaper baron Joseph Pulitzer to Broadway legends Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan, that caretakers offer visitors a “Hall of Fame” map. William Andrews Clark’s mausoleum is not on that list, because the robber baron faded long ago to obscurity, but his daughter’s death in the spring of 2011 turned the spot into a tourist destination.
In the weeks after Huguette’s death, many people came to gawk, but one woman came regularly to mourn: Hadassah Peri. The nurse who had been by Huguette’s side for two decades was now at loose ends without her job, and she missed her confidant. So the nurse made frequent visits to the cemetery, sometimes joined by Huguette’s other nurse-turned-friend, Marie Pompei. Hadassah tucked tokens of affection such as plastic flowers and cartoon toys into the side of the grand bronze doors. She knew and remembered Huguette’s interests.
But her mourning rituals were at odds with the high WASP way of death. After several Clark family members complained to cemetery officials that these gifts were tacky, Hadassah was asked to discontinue her offerings. Reprimanded, she cut back her visits to the white mausoleum.
For the cast of characters who had populated Huguette’s well-compensated but invisible world, their new reality was jarring once her will was filed for probate on June 22. Suddenly, they were in the press. Hadassah became a tabloid favorite when it was revealed that she was the chief beneficiary at the expense of Huguette’s relatives. FAMILY STIFFED OUT OF $400 MILLION FORTUNE, announced the Daily News. HEIRESS HAD ILL WILL: NURSE $34M, KIN 0, trumpeted the New York Post. No one knew, at that time, that Hadassah had already received $31 million from Huguette during her lifetime.
The players in this high-stakes drama chose their attorneys with care, aware that they needed to depend on—and would be judged by—the company they kept. Hadassah hired veterans from the Brooke Astor case. Prominent trusts and estate lawyer Harvey Corn had successfully handled an early legal battle for Astor’s son Anthony Marshall; Corn brought in public relations man Fraser Seitel, who had been the spokesman in that case for David Rockefeller and Annette de la Renta.
With her shaky command of English, Hadassah was judged too inarticulate for prime time, although her demure demeanor might have played well before the cameras. The public relations spinning began immediately as Seitel issued a statement on Hadassah’s behalf about her now deceased employer: “I am profoundly sad at her passing, awed by the generosity she has shown me and my family, and eternally grateful.” This did not sound remotely like the nurse’s awkward cadences and inverted sentence structure. In Seitel’s release, Hadassah went on to piously vow to devote some of Huguette’s money “to making the world a better place.”
For Wanda Styka, the publicity surrounding being named as a beneficiary of Huguette’s will was an intrusion on her rural idyll in the Berkshires. When her home phone began ringing off the hook from reporters requesting comment, she switched to an unlisted number. Instead of hiring New York legal heavyweights, she chose John Graziano, a small-town Lee, Massachusetts, lawyer who had handled her mother’s estate.
As the e
xecutors of Huguette’s estate, Wallace Bock and Irving Kamsler needed to hire their own legal gladiators to protect their interests, probate the will, and insure that Huguette’s wishes prevailed if her will was challenged. Kamsler had previously had professional dealings with John Dadakis, of Holland and Knight, a Manhattan attorney who specialized in high-end estate planning. His firm had just won national acclaim for representing the actor Mickey Rooney in an elder abuse case. By signing on as clients, Bock and Kamsler could hope that some of that legal glow would rub off on them.
All wills filed for probate in New York State are assigned to a judge. Case 1995/1375 landed on the docket of Surrogate’s Court Justice Kristin Glen, who had been the dean of City University of New York law school before being elected to the bench in 2008. With a sarcastic sense of humor and forceful persona, the judge was intimidating; lawyers tended to sit up straight in her presence. Early in her career, Glen had worked with crusading liberal lawyer Leonard Boudin on such prominent cases as the Pentagon Papers and viewed herself as an advocate for social justice. In her two and a half years on the bench so far, she had not presided over a trial. Every single case—even the most viciously litigated ones—had settled.
The Huguette M. Clark case had the potential to be the will fight of the decade: hundreds of millions up for grabs, angry disinherited relatives, a scandal-tinged accountant, a nurse whose unemployed husband drove a Bentley, a criminal investigation by the district attorney’s office, and a press corps avidly following the action. An army of trained professionals would be hired to deconstruct Huguette’s life, including private detectives, psychiatrists, forensic accountants, jury consultants, and PR firms hired to influence public opinion. Holland and Knight alone would employ eighty-five people to work on the case.