Morgenthau, Robert Morris,
, 1919-2009, b. New York, N.Y, Amherst College (B.A., 1941);
Yale Univ. Law School (J.D., 1948). He was the son of Henry Morgenthau Jr. and grandson of Henry
Morgenthau. After
attending college, he enlisted in the Navy in World War II, serving for four
and a half years in the Mediterranean and Pacific, and then attended law
school. He joined a corporate law firm (1948-61) and then was appointed U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of N.Y. by President John F. Kennedy. In 1962, he ran for governor
of the state, but was defeated by Nelson Rockefeller. Morgenthau was forced out
of office by President Richard Nixon in 1969, briefly ran for governor
again in 1970, and then returned to private practice until 1974, when he was
elected District Attorney of N.Y. County to fill out the term created by the
death of the previous D.A.; he won a full term in 1977 and was subsequently
re-elected eight times, running unopposed from 1985-2005; he retired in 2009
as the longest-serving D.A. at the time. Morgenthau oversaw several cases
that won national attention, including that of Mark David Chapman (1981, who
murdered John Lennon), Bernhard Goetz (1987, the so-called “Subway
Vigilante”), Robert Chambers (1988, the “Preppie
Killer”), and the Central Park Jogger case (1989, subsequently
overturned when the D.A.’s office investigated the trial in 2002).
Among those who served as assistant D.A.s under Morgenthau were future
Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor , future governors Eliot
Spitzer and
Andrew Cuomo, two scions
of the Kennedy family, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and
his successor, Cyrus Vance Jr.
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