NEW YORK—In the 14th week in the ongoing trial over the will of late philanthropist Brooke Astor, new evidence has turned up that her son, 85-year-old Anthony D. Marshall, not only limited her gifts to charity but used the intended money to pay for his own business ventures, including a theater production company and a United States Marine Corps scholarship named after him. Among the charitable gifts Astor had committed to were funds to purchase an antique Buddha for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Marshall had previously sold his mother's favorite artwork, a Childe Hassam painting, to a New York gallery for $10 million — $2 million of which he pocketed — despite his mother's original intent to donate the painting to the same museum.

Marshall is also accused of stealing funds from his mother, who died in 2007, for personal use, including the upkeep of the family’s Maine vacation home, which she bequeathed to him in 2003. Astor's former accountant told the jury that she was instructed by Marshall never to enlighten Astor as to the details of her finances. Marshall's lawyers, however, argue that Astor always took financial care of her son and that he did not exploit her in the later years of her life.

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