Montana mining heiress dies amid probe into care
She left apartment for hospital in ’80s
NEW YORK – Huguette Clark, a 104-year-old heiress to a Montana copper fortune who once lived in the largest apartment on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, died Tuesday at a Manhattan hospital, as prosecutors were looking into her care and how her finances were being handled.
The reclusive Clark spent the last two decades of her life in New York City hospitals.
“Madame Clark’s passing is a sad event for all those who have loved and respected her over the years,” her attorney, Wallace Bock, said in a statement. “She died as she wanted, with dignity and privacy, and we intend to continue to respect her request for privacy.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been looking into how her affairs were managed, people familiar with the probe have said. Bock and Clark’s accountant, Irving Kamsler, were in charge of a fortune estimated at a half-billion dollars.
No criminal charges have been filed against either Bock or Kamsler.
Both have denied any wrongdoing in their dealings with Clark; their lawyers declined to comment Tuesday on the investigation.
Distant relatives said they never saw Clark and feared she may not have understood decisions the two men made for her.
Clark inherited the riches amassed by her father in Montana’s mining industry. William A. Clark was one of America’s wealthiest men and built railroads across the country, founding Las Vegas in the process. Nevada’s Clark County is named for him.
Huguette Clark was born in 1906, when her 67-year-old father was a U.S. senator representing Montana and was married to a 28-year-old Michigan woman named Anna Eugenia La Chapelle. He died in 1925.
At 22, she married a poor bank clerk studying law, but they parted ways after only nine months.
As of last year, Clark still owned a 42-room, multi-floor apartment at 907 Fifth Ave.; a Connecticut castle surrounded by 52 acres of land; and a Santa Barbara, Calif., mansion built on a 23-acre bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Beginning in the 1960s Clark rarely left her Fifth Avenue home overlooking Central Park. She moved into a hospital in the 1980s.