Huguette Clark

Huguette Clark (1906-2011)

There's copper in them thar hills

When industrialist William Andrews Clark died in 1925, he left a fortune to his daughter Huguette. When she died 86 years later at 104, she still had a fortune but no children or close relatives to leave it to.

In her last and final will, Huguette left more than $30 million to her nurse as well as substantial sums to her lawyer and her accountant. She had distant relatives and she left them nothing at all, expressly disinheriting them in her will.

This total exclusion was totally at odds with an earlier will leaving most of her $400m estate to those very same relatives - earlier by only six weeks. Why the sudden and drastic change of mind? And was Huguette - 98 years old when she made her final will - mentally competent and free from influence?

Huguette got it.

After making a fortune mining copper in the American state of Montana, William Andrews Clark (1839-1925) expanded into railroads, property, banking and other lucrative industries. He also served as a US Senator for Montana for one term (1901-1907), managing to get elected more or less legitimately after an earlier attempt marred by payments to legislators.

At that time in America, senators were elected by their respective state legislatures, and Clark, helped by his son, paid state representatives for their votes. He was stripped of his seat after an extensive hearing in, and by, the US Senate.

In his day, Clark rivalled John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) as America's wealthiest individual. Rockefeller won the publicity contest, his name becoming synonymous with superwealth. And despite being a hard-nosed businessman, he also became a symbol of beneficence, personally handing out dimes – ten-cent coins – during the Great Depression.

Clark had five children with his first wife, and after she died he began an affair with his much younger (by 40 years) French-Canadian ward, Anna Eugenia La Chappelle. They married secretly seven years later.

In a more recent January-May marriage, Anna Nicole Smith was 67 years younger than J Howard Marshall III when they walked down the aisle. Marshall lived only a year; Clark lasted for 20 and had two children with his second wife.

Huguette [pronounced ‘Hue-get’] Marcelle Clark and her older sister, Andrée, were born in Paris and raised in America, in their father's massive Fifth Avenue house. Huguette was fluent in French - she spoke English with a French rather than a New York accent - and studied music and art.

Her early adulthood coincided with the Roaring Twenties, a decade that brought her more grief than joy. Her sister succumbed to meningitis in 1919, and her father died seven years later, in 1925.

In 1928 Huguette married a law student named William Gower, but she became disillusioned during the first year of the marriage and they divorced after only two years.

Huguette had inherited $300 million (equivalent to several billion dollars today) from her father, who had left one-fifth of his estate to each of his surviving children.

Huguette had no children with Gower and, as she drifted deeper into reclusiveness during the 1930s, she was destined to remain childless.

After her divorce, she roomed with her mother in a spacious apartment in 907 Fifth Avenue, a luxurious apartment building not far from her childhood home. Mother and daughter occasionally socialised, but Huguette increasingly withdrew and by 1940 was no longer seen in public. Her fortune grew larger still after her mother died in 1963, and she was the sole beneficiary.

Huguette also inherited another notable quality from her parents: longevity: her mother and father each lived into their mid-80s and, lapping them both several times, Huguette made it to 104.

After her mother's death, Huguette bought a spacious flat occupying the entire eighth storey overlooking Central Park in 907 Fifth Avenue. She kept the other flat, peopling it with her collection of antique dolls and storing furniture and paintings there.

Huguette also owned two fabulous homes outside New York: Bellosguardo, an oceanside mansion in Santa Barbara, California even more valuable than her Manhattan apartments; and the 52-acre Le Beau Chateau in New Canaan, Connecticut.

She might have had a soft spot for the Connecticut mansion. When she bought it in 1952, she added an artist's loft. She was an accomplished painter, and the loft extension suggests that she might have contemplated using it herself.

She never did. She never lived in it and, in fact, hardly visited. The same with Bellosguardo in California. Both properties were kept ship-shape for decades in case their mistress decided to drop in, but she barely budged from Fifth Avenue.

Trading Down

In 1981, when she was in her mid 70s, Huguette moved out of 907 Fifth Avenue altogether. She could have moved into her Connecticut or California mansion, or into a luxury hotel, or into pretty much any other premises she desired.

Instead, she moved into a hospital - although she was not ill. Home now was a private room in Doctors' Hospital in New York's posh upper east side. Later, she relocated to Beth Israel Hospital, in a nondescript section of lower Manhattan. From what I can gather, her rooms were ordinary private hospital rooms, not lavish suites. Some of her antique dolls kept her company.

And she made the move in secret. No one outside of her small intimate circle knew she had moved, let alone into a hospital, and she took measures to ensure that no one was likely to find out: she registered using pseudonyms, and her identity was concealed even within the hospital.

Her lawyer at the time was Donald L Wallace, one of whose responsibilities was to travel the world buying dolls and doll houses for her. She gave him enough to do, and paid him well enough to do it, to become his one and only client. They never met in person.

Wallace represented her for about 20 years to 2002. When he became ill, his partner Wallace Bock took over, and he apparently met frequently in person with his client. Also representing Huguette was Irving Kamsler, an accountant.

The fourth man

Huguette ran up some bills. Although she did not dine out or socialise when she lived on Fifth Avenue or in a hospital, she continue to buy antique dolls. She also had to pay hospital bills and for the upkeep of her properties, all of which she retained, and maintained, after moving into the hospital.

Her list of expenditures also included a $1.5 million for the construction of a bomb shelter in Israel (Huguette was Roman Catholic).

Money came into her account, from usual sources such as stock dividends, and from surprising ones: she sold a Renoir and a Stradivarius violin.

Despite her wealth, Huguette ran afoul of the Internal Revenue Service after giving gifts for which tax should have been paid - but wasn't. She eventually settled her bill with the IRS but had to pay millions of dollars in penalties.

None of this was public knowledge, and all of it may have remained concealed if not for a series of exposés by msnbc.com investigative journalist Bill Dedman.

Some of the details raised eyebrows. The Israeli bomb shelter that she helped fund, Dedman revealed, was located in the settlement where her lawyer's daughter lived. Dedman also reported that her accountant, Irving Kamsler, had a criminal record.

His crime? According to an affidavit filed by lawyers for the relatives, Kamsler had been "charged with 6 counts of attempting to disseminate indecent material to minors in the first degree, and 9 counts of attempting to endanger the welfare of a child. Thereafter, Kamsler was indicted on 15 counts. ...[He] pled guilty to one felony count of attempting to disseminate indecent material to minors in the first degree...."

Full court press

Dedman's revelations opened a can of legal and litigious worms. In August 2010, the Manhattan district attorney started looking into Huguette’s finances, and the next month, three of her relatives went to court seeking to replace lawyer Bock and accountant Kamsler with a court-appointed guardian. A New York State Supreme Court justice rejected their application on the grounds that the allegations were based on hearsay and speculation. However, Huguette's life and finances were now under a spotlight that would not fade or go away.

Less than a year after the relatives filed their suit, Huguette died. Two days later, she was interred in the Clark mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery just north of Manhattan. The only people present were cemetery and funeral home staff. There were no religious rites, and no personal mourners – no family members, no doctors or nurses, no gardeners or housekeepers. Not even Bock or Kamsler attended.

This minimalist funeral was no accident. Huguette’s death and funeral arrangements had not been announced, either to the family or the general public. Attorney Bock asserted that his client wanted it that way.

Champagne on ice

Shortly after Huguette died, Bock's law firm filed for probate and presented her last and final will, dated 19 April 2005.

The main bequest was the creation of an arts-orientated foundation, to be based in Bellosguardo, her California home.

The largest gift to an individual was about $35m to her Philippines-born private nurse Hadassah Peri - an outright cash gift of £5m plus 60 per cent of the residuary estate - for a total of about $30m.

Several other individuals received gifts ranging from about $25,000 to $1m. Lawyer Bock and accountant Kamsler were left $500,000 each, but they were also appointed executors of her will, and administrators of the new foundation. They stood to earn about $10m each in executor fees, and millions more administering the foundation - and the latter would be on an ongoing, not one-off, basis.

Huguette's relatives got zilch. In her will, Huguette said that she had had no contact with them, and they were to get not a penny.

Six weeks earlier, on March 7, 2005, Huguette had signed a will which did not create a foundation and which left everything to her relatives - with one exception. Nurse Hadassah Peri was awarded $5m, and if Hadassah had received $5m from the sale of the Connecticut mansion, she was to receive nothing from this will. (The Connecticut property was on the market in 2005 but did not sell.)

Two wills, thousands of questions

The court case that was mounted while Huguette was alive - to change guardians - had been brought by three relatives. Huguette had a total of 21 relatives who were ‘intestate distributees’ – next of kin who would inherit in case of intestacy. They are “half-great-nieces and half-great-nephews and others descended from her father's first marriage, and scattered descendants of her mother's siblings,” Dedman explains. Overall, approximately 50 people are descendants of Huguette’s father and his first wife.

A group of 19 relatives now challenged probate - the original three and 16 others. They argued that there were "substantial and gravely serious issues of alleged deceit, undue influence and exploitation of a very elderly and extraordinarily wealthy woman at the hands of two professionals who, with the help of certain others, took control of her life, isolated her from family, and ultimately stripped her of her own free will, as well as millions of dollars.”

Now, after Dedman's revelations, a judge in New York Surrogate’s Court ordered Bock and Kamsler to list all of their financial transactions on Huguette's behalf and also to explain the reason for each expenditure.

Bock and Kamsler had powers of attorney over Huguette's affairs, and during her years in hospital, they wrote many thousands of cheques in her name. They had a lot of explaining to do.

In the event, they did very little. They presented long lists of expenses but did not state the reasons for the expenditures.

In an affidavit, the lawyers representing the relatives replied by providing several examples of expenses crying out for explanations, or further explanations:

- £2.4m for apartments for nurse Hadassah's children. The affidavit notes that Hadassah had already received $5m for homes for herself and her children, and if the later will were upheld, she would receive a further $34m.

- $225,000 to nine schools and colleges (the lawyers ask, "Surely Huguette was not attending these schools! So who was she sending to school?")

- In her final will, Huguette left $100,000 to her doctor, Henry Singman. He had also received regular monthly payments of $5,000 totalling $521,000.

- Nearly one million dollars was paid to a management company apparently linked to Huguette's assistant, who was left $500,000 in the final will. Why, the lawyers ask.

- One million dollars was paid to another doctor, surgeon Jack Rudick. Why, the lawyers ask.

They also note payments to a nursing home, law firms, a trust, and a fund. Again, why?

Some questions were prompted not by expenses but by money received by Huguette, in particular $52m from Sotheby's. "The Stradivarius was sold to a private buyer for $6 million in 2001, but what else was sold? And why?"

At least one item was beyond dispute - Huguette's tax arrears. The Surrogate Court judge, concluding that there was strong evidence that Bock and Kamsler committed tax fraud, removed them as executors.

Bock has always maintained that he acted in Huguette's best interest and according to her instructions, and did not solicit gifts from her, including the bomb-shelter contribution.

The waters are still roiled

Bock and Kamsler are still being investigated by the District Attorney.

The relatives' lawyers have petitioned Bock and Kamsler to provide the explanations demanded by the judge in the first place.

A court-appointed public administrator may try to recoup millions of dollars from nurse Hadassah Peri, and her own lawyers are fighting back.

New information is surfacing.

About 10 years before Huguette died, an American art collector bought a £10m Degas unaware that it had been stolen - from Huguette. The purchaser was Henry Bloch, the H in the well-known American accounting firm H&R Block (the company name is spelled with a 'k'). Huguette, shy as ever of the limelight, did not report the theft. However, by keeping it under wraps, she may have legally forfeited her ownership.

Huguette's life is getting the one thing she would have hated most: intense scrutiny. She came close, ever so close, to succeeding in her disappearing act. She was about 103 years old when Dedman’s first report aired. If he had stumbled on her strange life a year later, her secrets might have gone to her grave with her. Huguette's final will might have sailed through probate, and no one would have been any the wiser.

Updates will be reported here.

A note on sources

Huguette Clark's story was exposed by Bill Dedman of msnbc.com; that website contains an archive of his articles and includes copies of Clark's wills and many court filings. The latter are a unique source of personal and historical information about Clark. The msnbc.com archive provided the bulk of material in this article.