He seemed almost like he was out of Central Casting — tall and patrician, with a cultivated above-the-fray presence. Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau actually inspired some television casting of his own, as the model for the avuncular character of prosecutor Adam Schiff, played by actor Steven Hill on the long-running television series, Law and Order.
Law & Order creator Dick Wolf called Morgenthau “the greatest district attorney in the history of New York.”
Morgenthau, who died on Sunday at 99, just 10 days before turning 100, spent nearly half of his life jailing criminals from mob kingpins and drug-dealing killers to a tax-dodging Harvard dean.
Photo: Reuters
He served as US attorney for New York’s southern district during the administrations of then-US presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, returned to law enforcement as Manhattan’s top state prosecutor in 1974 and did not leave for 35 years, with his office handling about 100,000 criminal cases yearly.
In 2005, at 86, Morgenthau was elected for the eighth and last time. He was 90 when he stepped down from office in 2009.
“I looked at my birth certificate, and I said: ‘It’s about time,’” he told reporters at the time.
In his position at the forefront of Manhattan’s legal and political scene, Morgenthau was widely acknowledged by allies and foes alike as effective, nonpartisan and incorruptible.
Under Morgenthau’s watch, New York County prosecutors took on many high-profile cases: political payoffs by mob boss Anthony Corallo, the shooting of four black youths by white subway gunman Bernhard Goetz and the weapons-possession arrest of hip-hop mogul Sean Combs.
Over the years, Morgenthau’s office also prosecuted mob boss John Gotti, acquitted on state charges of ordering a hit on a union official, and produced a guilty plea from John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman.
Morgenthau was born into a wealthy New York family. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr, was US ambassador to Turkey during World War I, and his father, Henry Morgenthau Jr, was US secretary of the treasury under then-US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, a family friend.
His childhood reflected his lineage. Morgenthau had a lifelong friendship with members of the Kennedy clan and he once cooked hot dogs with Eleanor Roosevelt for King George VI.
He joined the US Navy one day after graduating Amherst College in 1941 and spent four years in the service during World War II.
After the war, Morgenthau earned a law degree from Yale and began his career at a law firm headed by former US secretary of war Robert P. Patterson.
Morgenthau is survived by his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Lucinda Franks, and seven children. His first wife, Martha Pattridge Morgenthau, died of cancer in 1972.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of