The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark Read Online Free PDF Page A

wrongdoing, but their questions were multiplying by the second. Was she in good health and of sound mind, or was someone else making financial decisions on her behalf? Was she well cared for? As the meeting broke up, they agreed to do more research and make a plan.
    Although Ian Devine’s great-grandmother Mary and Huguette had been half sisters, he had never met the oldest living Clark. He sent her two cards in the 1970s that went unanswered. Now Ian went home and searched online for information about Kamsler. What turned up was odd. A friend of the accountant had posted purported advice from Kamsler about the repercussions of an upcoming tax law change. As Ian recalls, the quotes “seemed to indicate that Irving Kamsler was in favor of getting clients to agree to be kept on life support, kept alive by any means possible, until 2010, when estate taxes dropped to zero because of a quirk in the law.” These kinds of comments were actually common in accounting circles at the time because of the oddities of the 2001 Bush tax cut. (The family of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner saved an estimated $600 million in federal taxes because he died in 2010, rather than a year earlier or later.) Karine had found the same online reference to Kamsler’s supposed thoughts about estate taxes. The trio worried that Huguette might be in physical danger.

    Unaware that the Clark relatives were marshaling their forces against him, Irving Kamsler went to Beth Israel Hospital to tell Huguette about the reunion. At 102, she remained mentally sharp, although she suffered from severe hearing loss. She was capable of having a conversation if people stood near her good left ear; familiar voices were easier for her to understand. Kamsler portrayed himself as acting as her champion at the event, challenging her family members on her behalf. Brutally honest, he told Huguette that in his opinion, her relatives were ingrates: “I was upset on your behalf that the family diagram and tree didn’t have your name on it.” For Huguette, this brought back painful memories of being treated dismissively by her half siblings in the 1930s and ’40s. Kamsler did tell her that many relatives had expressed interest in her, but the accountant insisted that hehad been circumspect. As he recalls, “She was glad that I had gone to represent her but upset that I had gotten into a tiff with Carla.”
    Carla Hall called Wallace Bock to complain that Kamsler had been rude at the reunion, saying that she was “upset and concerned.” Bock recalls, “I tried to gloss it over and smooth it out.” Carla asked Bock to arrange a call between Huguette and her mother, Erika—the women had not spoken in several years—and he turned her down. Carla then talked things over with her mother, who decided to make the case herself. On November 24, Erika Hall phoned Wallace Bock to reiterate her request to speak to Huguette and received an equally frosty response. “He was very noncommittal and closed the door,” says Erika Hall. “That was the feeling, you had the door shut in to your face.”
    Bock insists that he was only following Huguette’s instructions. “Mrs. Clark wasn’t talking to anyone on the telephone. She wouldn’t talk to any strangers,” he said. “One of the problems was her hearing. People had to shout at her, and she didn’t enjoy the conversations anymore.”
    Erika was so angry that she wrote to Corcoran director Paul Greenhalgh, complaining about Bock and describing Kamsler’s criminal conviction. “As you may have heard, several of us are very disturbed and worried about the condition and financial situation of Huguette Clark,” she wrote. “After meeting the Kamslers, this became very apparent… We are exploring what legal rights we have and if there could be ‘elder abuse.’ ”
    But the museum officials already knew about the accountant’s legal troubles. “Irving came to us personally and confessed he had this conviction,”