just discovered YORK -- She wears t...

just discovered YORK -- She wears torn nightgowns and rests on a couch that aromas of urine. Her bland diet includes cleared peas and oatmeal. Her dogs, one time a source of comfort, are kept fasteninged in a pantry.

A court filing alleges that this is the life of 104-year-old Brooke Astor, the multimillionaire Manhattan socialite who dedicated greatly of her vast fortune to promoting tillage and alleviating human misery.

The court papers -- filed last week and reported forward Wednesday by the New York Daily of the present days -- blame the alleged misery and squalor inside Astor's Park Avenue duplex upon her only child, Anthony Marshall, who restrains her $45 million portfolio.

The accuser: Astor's grandson Philip Marshall.

He alleges in a sworn statement that his 82-year-old father "has deflected a blind eye to her, intentionally and repeatedly ignoring her health, safety, personal and household penurys while enriching himself with millions of dollars."

The court papers solicit to remove Anthony Marshall as legal guardian and replace him with Annette de la Renta, the wife of Oscar de la Renta, and JP Morgan Chase bank.

Astor has faded from sight in modern years amid declining health, including brace broken hips. Once she was confined to her apartment, court papers allege, she was denied the staples of her high-society life.

"Her bedroom is in the way that cold in the winter that my grandmother is forced to rest in the TV room in torn nightgowns forward a filthy couch that aromas probably from dog urine," Philip Marshall said in his affidavit.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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