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.
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