Doctor says Brook Astor had Alzheimer's

NEW YORK, May 6 (UPI) -- A doctor testified that he concluded elderly New York heiress Brook Astor had Alzheimer's disease when she failed a memory test in 2000.

Dr. Howard Fillet, a gerontologist called to testify in the trial of Astor's son and an attorney, told a Manhattan jury that the then 98-year-old Astor failed to accurately draw a clock with the hands pointing to 9:25.

"The test truly told me she had Alzheimer's," Fillet said Tuesday during the trial of Astor's 85-year-old son, Anthony Marshall, and lawyer Francis Morrissey.

The New York Daily News said Wednesday that Fillet's conclusions were aimed at bolstering the prosecution's contention that Marshall and Morrissey took advantage of Astor's senility to rewrite her will in 2004 and pocket $60 million she had intended to donate to charity.

The defense contends Astor was lucid when she made the changes. T

Astor died in 2007 at the age of 105.