I’m not a person who has people tell me things in parking garages. Q: How did you begin to piece her life together?Ī: I’m pretty much a documents reporter. By joining up with Paul, her cousin who had spoken to her for nine years on the phone, we were able to piece together her character. We knew nothing of her character and personality.

We knew nothing about what contacts she had with her employees and how they managed her life. We didn’t know about what might have happened between her and the nurse in their lives in the hospital. We didn’t know about her life in the hospital. Before now there had been more unknowns than knowns about her. She lived on her own terms, gave $30 million in gifts to the nurse who cared for her, spent a fortune in upkeep on empty homes and signed two wills within six weeks, which relatives are challenging in a court case scheduled to begin on September 17.ĭedman spoke to Reuters about his extensive research, uncovering the mystery of Clark’s life and her generosity.Ī: Well, it was a mystery. Clark, one of the wealthiest men of his time.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman hopes to change that with his book “Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.”Īfter combing through tens of thousands of documents and correspondence, and interviewing her inner circle and staff, Dedman and his co-author Paul Clark Newell Jr., a cousin of Clark, reveal the life of the eccentric heiress who inherited a fortune from her copper magnate father William A. NEW YORK (Reuters) - She was one of America’s richest heiresses with sprawling apartments, palatial homes and fabulous paintings, but little was known about the reclusive woman when she died in 2011 at the age of 104 after spending decades living in a hospital.

The book empty mansions