Handwriting Expert Witness On Brooke Astor’s Will

A handwriting expert told Manhattan Supreme Court jurors on Tuesday that Brooke Astor “very probably” penned her signature on a will update – one prosecutors charge was forged. “I believe this is an authentic signature,” Alan Robillard, a former FBI documents examiner expert, told the jury weighing evidence against Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, 85, and lawyer Francis Morrissey, 66. Marshall and Morrissey are being tried on charges of fraud and grand larceny for swindling Astor out of $60 million in a series of will updates in 2004, four years after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Robillard was the first defense witness called in the case. The expert’s testimony contradicted that of Gus Lesnevich, a forensic document examiner called by prosecutors. He said he had “absolutely no doubt” the signature was not Astor’s.

Excerpted from nydailynews.com.