Finances of 104-Year-Old Heiress at Center of Probe

             Huguette  Clark

A 104-year-old heiress  to a Montana copper mining fortune - now living in a New York hosiptal room - is 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 annonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the probe.

Clark  has been living in hosiptals 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 finanicail affairs for years , and they're  among the few people who have contact with her. "She's very much alive," Bock said recently .

Neither bock nor Kamsler returned calls about the investigation , which was first reported by MSNBC.com.

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.

Huguette Clark is worth about half a billion dollars - four times as much as Astor. There is no public record of a Clark will, and distant relatives have not seen her in years. Neither Bock  nor Kamsler  has been charged in the Clark probe, but the questions remain : How are she  and her forture being cared for ?

When she left home on the stretcher , Clark was frail  but not physically ill , according to building staff. Since then , nobody has lived in her meticulously maintained 42 rooms at 907 Fifth Avenue , or her Connecticut castle , surrounded by 52 acres of land and now on the market for $24 million. The  properties are financed by her inheritance as the daughter of a 19th centry Montana  copper mining king who built railroads across America, founding Las Vegas along the way.

Clark's story begains in 1906  Paris, where she was born to then 62-year-old U.S.  Sen. William A. Clark,of Montana , and a 23-year-old Michigan woman  named Anna Eugenia La Chapelle. Years of mining the Montana earth for copper made Clark the second-richest man in America, after the Rockefellers. To prove it , he built an ostentatious mansion on New York's Fifth Avenue  and gaind power -- as a U.S. Senator serving one term.

At 22, she married a poor bank clerk , but they parted ways after 9 months, Huguette cited desertion by her husband. He claimed she failed to consummate the marriage, according to the "The Clarks : An American Phenomenon," a book written by former employee William D. Mangam.

Huguette Father died in 1925 , she and her mother  left the mansion and moved to 907 Fifth Avenue , the Italian-Renaissance-palazzo-style  building where Clark lived for 6 decades . When her mother died in 1963, Huguette was tranformed from a rather private socialite in her 50's to a social specter - an eccentic whom building staff say they never saw her ; she had whatever she needed delivered.

Even distant relatives attempting to visit were discourged from entering; she told several of them  to stand on the sidewalk and she would wave at them. "She never went out ," said Laurance Kaiser IV, a Manhattan real estate agent who once met her in the Fifth Avenue Building.  She apparently trusted almost no one , but was generous , each doorman got a $500 check from her at Christmas. They'd seen her only a few time over the decades -- and only by accident , while slipping  mail under her door when she happened to open it, she would scurry away. In the end , her vast fortune allowed the heiress to lead an even more solitary life.

Just saying : I was told by a very wise man not to long ago , this year as a matter of fact ... extreme  wealth is a "menace to happiness," and friend I call that old man  'DAD.'