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Podcasts Off-Ramp
'Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune'
Off-Ramp with John Rabe Hero Image
(
Dan Carino
)
Sep 12, 2013
Listen • 11:10
'Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune'
Jury selection begins Tuesday in a trial involving a reclusive copper heiress, an empty mansion in Santa Barbara, Pershing Square's Beethoven statue, and a $300m fortune.
The last public photo of Huguette Clark, who died in 2011 at 104, leaving a $300m fortune and unlived-in palaces across the US.
The last public photo of Huguette Clark, who died in 2011 at 104, leaving a $300m fortune and unlived-in palaces across the US.
(
Huguette Clark
)

Jury selection begins Tuesday in a trial involving a reclusive copper heiress, an empty mansion in Santa Barbara, Pershing Square's Beethoven statue, and a $300m fortune.

Jury selection begins Tuesday in a trial that involves a 104-year old reclusive copper heiress, a mansion in Santa Barbara that hasn't been lived in since the 1950s, the Beethoven statue in Pershing Square, a 30-million dollar nurse, and a 300-million dollar fortune.

The descendents of Huguette Clark, who died in 2011, at 104, are fighting over her will, which cuts them out. Her story is told in the new book "Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune," written by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.

Listen here for my interview with Dedman, and on Tuesday, November 12, Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr. have a book reading at UCLA's Clark Library, founded by Huguette's older half brother William Andrews Clark, Jr., who donated the library to the university in 1926.