City probes welfare of aged billionaire heiress

The 104-year-old heiress to a Montana copper mining fortune - now a recluse in a New York hospital room - is at the center of a criminal investigation into her fortune and welfare, two people familiar with the probe told The Associated Press.

The Manhattan district attorney's office is looking into how Huguette Clark is being cared for and how her finances are being handled, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Clark has been living in hospitals since leaving her luxury co-op overlooking Central Park more than 20 years ago, according to building staff who saw her leave in an ambulance.

Attorney Wallace Bock and accountant Irving Kamsler have been in charge of her financial affairs for years, and they're among the few people who have contact with Clark.

"She's very much alive," Bock told The Associated Press recently. Neither he nor Kamsler returned calls about the investigation. MSNBC.com first reported the criminal probe.

The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to say whether a probe was under way. The office successfully prosecuted the case surrounding Brooke Astor, the late philanthropist and heiress whose 85-year-old son was convicted of scheming with her attorney to bilk millions of dollars from her.

Clark is worth about half a billion dollars - four times as much as Astor. There is no public record of a will, and distant relatives have not seen her in years. She was divorced in 1930.

In recent weeks the Manhattan mystery has taken on sinister turns, with Bock and Kamsler, a registered sex offender convicted of e-mailing pornographic pictures to underage girls, apparently crucial to the investigation. Neither has been charged in the Clark probe.

But the question remains: How are she and her fortune being cared for? When she left home on a stretcher, Clarke was frail but not ill, building staff said. Since then, nobody has lived in her 42 rooms at 907 Fifth Ave., or her Connecticut castle, with 52 acres of land, now on the market for $24 million.

The properties are financed by her inheritance as the daughter of a 19th-century Montana copper mining king who built railroads across America, founding Las Vegas along the way.

All that's left of her privileged existence are the lifeless properties - and her name in the New York Social Register.