Updated at 1 a.m. ET: A one-year-old boy was undergoing surgery Monday night after he and seven others were wounded in a hail of gunfire in Oakland.

Television footage showed a van belonging to an Oakland rapper, Kafani, that was riddled with bullet holes. The vehicle had apparently taken some of the victims to the hospital.

Surgeons were trying to relieve swelling on the boy's brain after his father, who was also shot, drove him to Children's Hospital in Oakland, relatives told KTVU-TV.

"We are aware of a one-year-old boy who was shot — possibly in the head — in critical condition right now," Oakland Police Lt. Robert Chan told the station. The hospital declined to release any details about the victim.

In a Twitter message, Kafani said to "send y'all prayers to @hirolla900_bfa its his son who was shot."

He also asked people to "Pray for my lil cuz."

Kafani tweeted that he had not been shot and said news reports that he had been shooting a music video when the shooting took place were incorrect.

The wounded were taken to local hospitals by others at the scene before officers arrived to find dozens of bullet casings near the parking lot where the crowd had gathered early Monday evening, police said.

The shootings happened just after 6 p.m. near I-880 in the city's West Oakland neighborhood, Oakland police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said.

The other victims' conditions were unclear, though police said their injuries did not appear to be life-threatening.

Investigators were seeking multiple shooters, but further details on suspects or a motive were not immediately available.

John McGuire / msnbc.com

Wreckage of a twin-engine plane is seen Tuesday morning in Riverwoods, Ill.

Three people were killed but two others survived when a small medical plane crashed Monday night in a suburb of Chicago, narrowly missing a resident's house.

The plane was carrying an 80-year-old patient and his wife when it went down between 10:45 p.m. and 11 p.m. CT in Riverwoods, Ill., according to the Lake County Sheriff’s office. The patient, John Bialek, and his wife, Ilomae, 75, were among those killed. Authorities had not yet released the name of the third victim.

The Chicago Tribune said the pilot had told air traffic controllers of a fuel problem shortly before the accident, citing FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory. The flight originated from Florida.

John McGuire / msnbc.com

Plane wreckage is seen in Riverwoods, Ill., on Monday night.

The plane landed mere feet from a ranch house belonging to Riverwoods resident and msnbc.com regional sales director John McGuire, who lives about 25 miles northwest of Chicago.

"It's heavily, heavily wooded here," said McGuire, who didn't realize a plane had crashed until after emergency crews arrived. "It sounded like when a bad thunderstorm comes through. It sounded like 80 or 90 mile an hour winds; I could hear all this stuff hitting the roof."

McGuire said he was watching Monday night football when the plane came down about 25 feet from his house.

John McGuire / msnbc.com

Plane wreckage is seen on Tuesday morning.

"The football game was three hours, kind of a blow-out, and I had some laundry to do, so I took it to the other end of my house," McGuire said. "I finished putting my clothes away, and a minute or two later, I hear trucks, ambulances and rescue staff coming up my driveway."

Not able to see the plane through the dense trees, McGuire asked the emergency personnel what was going on.

"They're like, 'There's a plane in your backyard,' and all I could think was 'I hope it's a single engine, not a commercial flight,'" McGuire said.

The twin-engine aircraft, owned by Trans North Aviation, was transporting the patient, his wife, two pilots and a flight paramedic to the Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling, Ill., five miles from the crash site, reported The Chicago Tribune.

Survivors stable
McGuire said his wife, who was reading in the opposite end of the house at the time of the crash, said she heard a thud when it happened.

"It's kind of surreal," McGuire said. "The first few hours, we just caught up and thought, this is bizarre. Now that I look back on it, I think I was really lucky. That was a couple tons of metal that came flying out of the sky within 30 feet of where I was sitting."

McGuire watched as some of the victims were loaded into ambulances.

"I saw them take people away that were clearly alive on stretchers," he said. "And then they put a tarp on the plane wreckage. I think they were waiting for the coroner to arrive."

The plane sheared trees as it plunged to the ground Monday night. Its mangled tail was still hanging in a tree Tuesday as NTSB investigated the wreckage, McGuire told msnbc.com. His house had no visible damage.

The two crash survivors were in stable condition on Tuesday. Nobody on the ground was injured.

Ron Schaberg, president of Trans North Aviation, said he had been in contact with the son of the patient who died. 

"I'm just very sorry," he said, telling The Tribune it was the first fatal crash at his company in more than 30 years.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- The charity for at-risk children founded by Jerry Sandusky on Monday asked its donors to instead give their money to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.

The Second Mile made the recommendation in the latest sign its days may be numbered. But the charity said its December programs will continue as scheduled.

The Second Mile was founded in the 1970s by Sandusky, who was charged this month with sexual abuse of eight boys over a 15-year period. Prosecutors say Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach, met victims through the charity. He denies the allegations.

Last week, the charity said it was considering restructuring, transferring programs to other organizations or ceasing operations.

Lawyers for one of the people described in a grand jury report as a victim of repeated sexual attacks by Sandusky are seeking a court order to prevent the charity from unloading its assets.

The scandal has resulted in the ouster of head football coach Joe Paterno and has cast a shadow over one of college football's most legendary programs.

In other developments Monday:

• A team with the U.S. Department of Education arrived in State College as part of the federal investigation into whether the school violated reporting mandates for campus crime. The federal investigation centers on whether reporting provisions of the Clery Act were complied with in the Sandusky case. State prosecutors charged athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz with not properly reporting suspected child abuse and perjury before a grand jury. Violations of the Clery Act, named for a Lehigh University freshman who was raped and murdered in her dorm room by another student in 1986, can bring fines and a loss of federal student aid.
• Penn State said student government leaders and high-ranking administrators will participate in a town hall forum Wednesday for students about the child sex abuse scandal. The forum will be broadcast by the Pennsylvania Cable Network and streamed over the Internet. The school also plans three forums for students that will be run by its counseling and psychological services center. Potential topics include the criminal allegations, Penn State's image, the reactions of others to the scandal and stress. 

Curley has been placed on leave, and Schultz, who oversaw the university's police department, has stepped down.

Schultz and Curley have denied the allegations and await preliminary hearings next month. Sandusky acknowledges he showered with boys but says he never molested them.

U.S. Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion

The government issued a consumer brochure spelling out what the new guidelines mean. Click the cover for a full pdf version.

Federal guidelines meant to help Americans eat healthier foods are straining Meals on Wheels and other nonprofits already laboring to make sure the elderly get enough to eat at all.

Lanakila Meals on Wheels in Honolulu, Hawaii, already has a waiting list of 90 people, most of them elderly, who have asked for food the organization can't afford to provide.

The program can always use more volunteers, but what it really needs now is money.

"We're looking for $120,000 just to maintain our existing programs and another $170,000 to meet the needs of the 90 people who are on our wait list," Lyn Moku, the program's director, told NBC station KHNL of Honolulu.

"It's a real time of uncertainty," Moku said, because "everyone is having a hard time just with the way the economy is and unemployment."

Some Meals on Wheels programs in the U.S. support themselves solely through donations and fundraisers, but many — like Lanakila Meals on Wheels — also rely on government funding. The Hawaii program says it gets about 60 percent of its funding from government sources.

That government funding is also in question, for Lanakila Meals on Wheels and many other local chapters of the national nonprofit.

The Health Trust, a charitable foundation in Campbell, Calif., reported that it has lost more $100,000 for its Meals on Wheels program. Most of that loss has come from government sources, and small corporate sponsorships haven't made up the difference.

"It's tough. Times are very, very tough," said Enid A. Borden, president and chief executive of the Meals on Wheels Association of America.

Last week, Meals on Wheels volunteers abandoned the traditional delivery of hot Thanksgiving meals to homes across Silicon Valley in Northern California. Instead, needy individuals — most of them elderly — received a frozen meal two days in advance that they had to thaw and heat themselves, NBC station KTVU of San Francisco/Oakland reported.

Cut the salt; crunch the veggies
It's not just the economy that's squeezing government outlays for community programs in general. Some are also being restricted by new federal nutrition guidelines that set standards for assistance programs.

That means that when government agencies sit down to hand out community service grants, they have to consider the new guidelines when it comes to food programs like school lunches and Meals on Wheels.

The guidelines drew a lot of attention for calling for a drastic reduction in salt consumption, especially among those 51 and older. But they also significantly changed the recommended ratio of proteins to fresh fruits and vegetables — putting much more emphasis on the latter.

• Dietary Guidelines for Americans (.pdf)

That requires new menus, new storage facilities to keep all that produce fresh and new ways to cook and deliver meals.

Meeting the new requirements could be cost-prohibitive for Meals on Wheels in Bailey County, Texas, which could lose its funding from the regional association of governments, NBC station KCBD of Lubbock reported.

Meals on Wheels for Lubbock itself isn't affected, said Lisa Gilliland, the program's assistant director, because it relies solely on donations and fundraisers. But in Bailey County, northwest of the city, and in many other areas across the country, funding could be at risk because "most of the smaller programs are government funded," she said.

Borden told msnbc.com she is confident that Meals on Wheels will figure out a way to keep handing out the 1.7 million meals it delivers every day.

"There are always things that are going to happen," she acknowledged. "We are always impacted when the price of anything goes up."

But "one of the things I know is that our program will do whatever it needs to do to feed those seniors who are hungry," she said.

"We are a resilient organization."

Alex Johnson is a news and technology reporter for msnbc.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

MADISON, Wis. -- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's daughter, whose defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author, has died. She was 85.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, who was known as Lana Peters since 1970, died of colon cancer Nov. 22 in Wisconsin, a state where she lived off and on after becoming a U.S. citizen, said Richland County Coroner Mary Turner.

Her defection in 1967 — which she said was partly motivated by the poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, by Soviet authorities — caused an international furor and was a public relations coup for the U.S. But Alliluyeva, who left behind two children, said her identity involved more than just switching from one side to the other in the Cold War. She even moved back to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, only to return to the U.S. more than a year later.

Alliluyeva (pronounced ah-lih-lu-YAY'-vah) carried with her a memoir she had written in 1963 about her life in Russia. "Twenty Letters to a Friend," was published within months of her arrival in the U.S. and became a best-seller.

When she left the Soviet Union in 1966 for India, she planned to leave the ashes of her late third husband, an Indian citizen, and return. Instead, she walked unannounced into the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and asked for political asylum. After a brief stay in Switzerland, she flew to the U.S.

Upon her arrival in New York City in 1967, the 41-year-old said: "I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia." She said she had come to doubt the communism she was taught growing up and believed there weren't capitalists or communists, just good and bad human beings. She had also found religion and believed "it was impossible to exist without God in one's heart."

In the book, she recalled her father, who died in 1953 after ruling the nation for 29 years, as a distant and paranoid man.

Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin denounced her as a "morally unstable" and "sick person" and added, "We can only pity those who wish to use her for any political aim or for any aim of discrediting the Soviet country."

"I switched camps from the Marxists to the capitalists," she recalled in a 2007 interview for the documentary "Svetlana About Svetlana." But she said her identity was far more complex than that and never completely understood.

"People say, 'Stalin's daughter, Stalin's daughter,' meaning I'm supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans. Or they say, 'No, she came here. She is an American citizen.' That means I'm with a bomb against the others. No, I'm neither one. I'm somewhere in between. That 'somewhere in between' they can't understand."

The defection came at a high personal cost. She left two children behind in Russia — Josef and Yekaterina — from previous marriages. Both were upset by her departure, and she was never close to either again.

Raised by a nanny with whom she grew close after her mother's death in 1932, Alliluyeva was Stalin's only daughter. She had two brothers, Vasili and Jacob. Jacob was captured by the Nazis in 1941 and died in a concentration camp. Vasili died an alcoholic at age 40.

Alliluyeva graduated from Moscow University in 1949, worked as a teacher and translator and traveled in Moscow's literary circles before leaving the Soviet Union. She was married four times — the last time to William Wesley Peters, after she came to the U.S., and she took the name Lana Peters. The couple had a daughter, Olga, before divorcing in 1973.

Alliluyeva wrote three more books, including "Only One Year," an autobiography published in 1969.

Her father's legacy appeared to haunt her throughout her life. She denounced his policies, which included sending millions into labor camps, but often said other Communist Party leaders shared the blame. "Over me my father's shadow hovers, no matter what I do or say," she lamented in a 1983 interview with the Chicago Tribune.

After living in Britain for two years, Alliluyeva returned to the Soviet Union with Olga in 1984 at age 58, saying she wanted to be reunited with her children. Her Soviet citizenship was restored, and she denounced her time in the U.S. and Britain, saying she never really had freedom. But more than a year later, she asked for and was given permission to leave after feuding with relatives. She returned to the U.S. and vowed never to go back to Russia.

She went into seclusion in the last decades of her life. Her survivors include her daughter Olga, who now goes by Chrese Evans and lives in Portland, Ore. A son, Josef, died in 2008 at age 63 in Moscow, according to media reports in Russia. Yekaterina (born in 1950), who goes by Katya, is a scientist who studies an active volcano in eastern Siberia.
Her father died in 1953.

W.A. Clark Memorial Library

Huguette Clark with one of her prized dolls. She reached age 98 without declaring who should receive her copper-mining fortune, and then signed two contradictory wills back to back.

NEW YORK — There is a new surprise in the mysterious story of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark. It turns out that she signed two wills, the first one benefitting her family, the second one cutting out her family altogether. And she signed them one after another, within six weeks.

Despite years of pleading from attorney after attorney, Clark reached age 98 without directing who should inherit one of America's great fortunes from the Gilded Age, estimated to be at least $400 million. She made no plan for her $100 million oceanfront estate in Santa Barbara, Calif.; her $20 million country house in New Canaan, Conn.; her three apartments on New York's Fifth Avenue, worth up to $100 million; her precious paintings by Renoir and Monet, or her doll collection worth millions.

Then, within six weeks, she signed two wills, right about the time that her family says her attorney stopped putting through their phone calls.

It appears both wills are genuine. That is to say, both were presented by her executors, who are her attorney and accountant. The second will was already filed in court by the executors in June, a month after her death in May at age 104. The first will was turned over by the executors voluntarily to her family, which filed it in court Monday morning along with a motion to enter the case.

This is the first step in a family effort to wrest control of Clark's fortune away from her attorney and accountant, who remain the subjects of a criminal investigation.

The family's motion accuses Clark's attorney and accountant of "plundering" her fortune.

"Before the court are substantial and gravely serious issues," the family attorney, John R. Morken, wrote in a sworn statement to the court on Monday, "of alleged deceit, undue influence and exploitation of a very elderly and extraordinarily wealthy woman at the hands of two professionals who, with the help of certain others, took control of her life, isolated her from family, and ultimately stripped her of her free will, as well as millions of dollars." (Document: Read the family's motion.)

On March 7, 2005, in her spartan hospital room at Beth Israel Medical Center on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Clark signed a will leaving $5 million to her longtime nurse Hadassah Peri, and everything else to her 21 closest relatives, who are descendants of her father from his first marriage, according to documents filed Monday morning in a New York court. The relatives are not named in the documents, but are referred to only as her "intestate distributees," legal jargon for the people who would inherit her money if she didn't have sign any will at all. You can read that first will here from NBC News.

On April 19, 2005, in the same hospital room, Clark signed a second will. This time her family got nothing. The nurse's share jumped to an estimated $34 million. There was half a million for her accountant and half a million for her attorney, who drew up both wills. Her doctor received $100,000. And the largest share went to a charitable foundation, controlled by the attorney and accountant, to set up an art museum in her California mansion, known as Bellosguardo. You can read that second will here from NBC News.

Both wills are typewritten, with what appears to be her signature in a firm hand.

She also had two earlier wills from the years 1926 and 1929, when she was 19 and 22 years old. Both of those wills left everything to her mother, who died in 1963, so in effect those wills would also, under state law, have left everything to the relatives making a claim now.

What happened during those six weeks?
And so begins what could be a long, expensive battle for her fortune. The case may turn on the answer to these questions: What happened in those six short weeks to turn around the fate of her fortune? Did her attorney and accountant exercise undue influence on her decision? Did she have the mental capacity to know what she was signing? How close was she to her relatives? Will the judge allow her attorney to serve as an executor, and to be a beneficiary, after he drew up the will — the same attorney whose family benefitted from nearly $2 million in gifts from Clark? Will the judge allow her accountant, a convicted felon, to be an executor?

The relatives maintain in the new court documents that they were much closer than her attorney has portrayed. Though the Clark family was spread from California to New York to France, several family members were in regular contact with her over many years, exchanging holiday greetings and letters and having phone conversations arranged through her attorney, even as she secluded herself in a hospital room, hiding her location from even these relatives, according to the sworn statement by attorney Morken, who represents 19 of the 21 relatives.

"Despite her reclusive life style," wrote attorney Morken, "Huguette remained true to her family and her all too important family name, by remaining in contact with certain of her relatives over the years, sharing events in their lives. Indeed, she well knew and was proud of the fact that she was a Clark, and her family was integral to who she was. She therefore remained close to them, but from a distance, simultaneously preserving her desire to communicate with her relatives and her need for seclusion and solitude."

Relatives have said that Clark's attorney cut off those contacts without explanation, just before the wills were signed. "Suddenly in or about 2004/2005, phone contact ceased, and relatives who were speaking to Huguette on the phone were no longer able to," Morken wrote. "Thereafter, in 2008, on at least one occasion when relatives sought to visit their Aunt Huguette to check on her well-being, they were prevented from doing so by" her attorney. Several of these relatives asked a judge last year to appoint a guardian for her, based in part on the information in the msnbc.com articles, but that case was rejected without a hearing.

Copper King Mansion Bed And Breakfast, Butte, Mont.

Huguette Clark, heiress to a copper fortune, was secluded for decades. How much contact she had with family may be an issue for the court.

The second will tells a different story, attempting to foreclose any claim by family. "I intentionally make no provision in this my Last Will Testament (sic) for any members of my family, whether on my paternal or maternal side, having had minimal contacts with them over the years. The persons and institution named herein as beneficiaries of my Estate are the true objects of my bounty."

The fact-gathering in this case is expected to be extensive. Prominent lawyers have been retained to represent all sides. Testimony should shed light on her contacts with family and what changed during that six-week period in 2005.

Though she inherited one of the great mining fortunes of the 19th century, Huguette (pronounced "oo-GET") Marcelle Clark lived quietly into the 21st century, secluded under fake names in a hospital room for more than two decades despite being in relatively good physical health. Intensely shy, she was almost entirely alone, aside from her private nurse, other helpers and occasional visits by her accountant. One of her former attorneys represented her for 20 years without meeting her face to face, instead talking to her through a closed door.

In the last year of her life, after her three empty mansions drew the attention of a reporter for msnbc.com in late 2009, she became a subject of public fascination, a trending topic of searches on Google and Yahoo, pictured on the cover of the New York tabloids, with fan pages on Facebook, a biography on Wikipedia, and her story read by tens of millions — though the last known photograph of her was made in 1930.

Huguette Clark was married only briefly and had no children. Her only full sister died at age 16 and had no children. Her mother had no other children. Under state law that leaves 21 "intestate distributees" — the relatives who would inherit her estate if she left no will or if the court chooses to uphold the earlier will instead of the later one. Those 21 relatives are descended from three of the children from Sen. Clark's first marriage: 13 half-grandnieces and half-grandnephews (and their children), and eight half-great-grandnieces and half-great-grandnephews (and their children). Counting all the children of these relatives, there are about 50 living descendants of Clark's father, former Sen. William Andrews Clark of Montana.

Criminal investigation continues
The estate fight is beginning two blocks away the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., whose criminal investigation of the actions of her attorney and accountant in handling her finances is continuing. A state grand jury issued subpoenas for documents, and a forensic accountant and police officers have been chasing leads. Both wills would grant large sums to the attorney and accountant. As executors, each would receive about 2 percent of her estate, or $8 million to $10 million each. Under the second will, they also receive the $500,000 apiece as beneficiaries and have a nearly unlimited ability to draw fees and salaries as trustees of the art museum.

There are other parties besides her family and the attorneys for the executors. The New York attorney general has entered the case, representing the interests of charities that could be helped or hurt by the decision —those include the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which is named in the second will to receive one of Monet's "Water Lilies" series of paintings, and the yet-unborn Bellosguardo Foundation, the art museum to be set up at her California home under the second will. And the public administrator, a county official, has been named as a third temporary executor to serve alongside, and to monitor the activities, of her attorney and accountant. The judge took the unusual step of requiring that all actions by the temporary executors be unanimous, in effect giving the public administrator veto power over handling of her accounts for now.

Msnbc.com reported last year that her wealth was managed by her attorney, Wally Bock, now 79, of Queens, N.Y., and her certified public accountant, a felon named Irving H. Kamsler, now 64, of the Bronx, N.Y. Kamsler pleaded guilty in 2008 to attempting to distribute indecent material to 13- and 15-year-old girls in an AOL chatroom, where he went by the handle "IRV1040." He remains a registered sex offender in New York.

Msnbc.com also reported that the attorney and accountant took over ownership of the New York City apartment of another elderly client, a lawyer at Bock's firm who had been Clark's attorney. The apartment was bequeathed to them after the man's last will and testament was revised six times during his last years, a period when his family and neighbors said he suffered from dementia.

Her attorney, Bock, confirmed in court documents that after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he had solicited a donation from Clark of more than $1.5 million, which she gave to a West Bank community where his daughter is a settler. Bock said that she gave the donation freely of her own accord. New York ethics rules prohibit lawyers from soliciting gifts from clients "for the benefit of the lawyer or a person related to the lawyer."

The attorney and accountant have not been accused of a crime in the handling of the Clark finances. Bock told the court he has safeguarded Clark's health, safety, welfare and privacy. He said she chose to live in the hospital, even when she was well. He denied controlling her affairs and access to her, saying he has merely carried out her wishes. "Ms. Clark has explicitly instructed me on many occasions that she does not want visitors and does not want anyone — including her relatives — to know where she resides," Bock wrote.

A recent accounting of her finances by Bock and Kamsler show $126.3 million in spending by them from her accounts during her last 15 years, and another $43.3 million that was transferred into her personal account, apparently to cover her own spending, ending in early 2009. The total of $170 million works out to $1 million per month for a woman who never left her hospital room during that time.

The family calls the accounting "a chilling report of the mishandling, misappropriation and mismanagement of Huguette's assets."

"The interest of the family members is not just financial, although that is of course considerable," wrote family attorney Morken. "Even of greater concern to them is the family's heritage. That a very significant member of their family should have fallen victim, it appears, to the greed of persons who had put themselves in a position of trust with their great-aunt, and with the apparent assistance of others, had violated that trust, is something that requires an exhaustive review of every transaction which they engineered: in other words, full and complete accountability."

An independent attorney's perspective
A prominent estate attorney in New York not involved in the case, Sanford J. "Sandy" Schlesinger, addressed in an interview several of the issues that he said the judge, Surrogate Kristin Booth Glen, might look at closely, depending on the evidence presented.

The close timing of the two wills, signed within six weeks, could raise a hurdle for the relatives, if they argue that Clark was not competent to sign the second will. "How can you argue," Schlesinger asked, "that she was competent in March but not competent in April?"

But the relatives may have more traction with a claim of undue influence, Schlesinger said, giving them the opportunity to knock out both wills.

The dual roles of attorney Bock raise several questions. Schlesinger said it is generally frowned upon in New York for an attorney who drafts a will to be a beneficiary; the burden of proof is on the attorney to show that he did not exercise undue influence on the client. The court would probably take into account, Schlesinger said, that the $500,000 bequest to attorney Bock is relatively small, in comparison with the $400 million estate. On the other hand, the size of the gift benefitting Bock's family, nearly $2 million, raises additional concerns. he said.

It's more common, but still not always accepted, for an attorney who drafts a will to serve as an executor, which puts the attorney in line for an executor's fee of roughly 2 percent.

As for the accountant, Kamsler, the court can decide whether to allow him to serve as an executor. Generally a felon cannot serve, but the sentencing judge granted Kamsler a "relief from civil disabilities," allowing him to keep his accountant's license. That makes it possible that the surrogate court will allow Kamsler to serve, Schlesinger said. It may make a difference, he said, that Kamsler's guilty plea to attempting to distribute indecent material to minors, documented in the court record, was not a financial crime, no matter how sordid.

And it's too soon now to know the result of the criminal investigation by the district attorney.

"When you put the whole picture together, it seems there are some real questions to be answered," Schlesinger said. "But I wouldn't rush to judgment. Nobody's  proved nothing yet."

The second will's plan to set up a charity for the artwork could sound plausible, Schlesinger said, though the fact that it could provide unending fees and salaries for the attorney and accountant may raise more questions. The court could approve the charity, but not put it under the control of those two men. "You don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater," Schlesinger said. "You can just throw out the bathwater."

In the end, this sounds like a case that could eventually get settled, Schlesinger said.

"There's plenty of money here to pay everybody."

Associated Press

This is the last known photo of Huguette Clark, taken 80 years ago. She hid away in a New York hospital room for at least the past 22 years, until her death in May. This photo was made on Aug. 11, 1930, the day of her divorce, in Reno, Nev. Her marriage lasted two years. She had no children.

A quiet life
Huguette Clark was born in Paris on June 9, 1906, the youngest child of U.S. Sen. William Andrews Clark of Montana (1839-1925), known as one of America's copper kings. When she was a child, her father was described by The New York Times as either the richest or second-richest American, neck and neck with John D. Rockefeller. W.A. Clark made a fortune in copper mining in Montana and Arizona, and owned banks, railroads, newspapers, sugar, tea, timber, real estate and many other investments. He served one full term in the Senate as a Democrat from Montana, from 1901 to 1907, despite having to give up the seat earlier in 1900 in a scandal involving bribes paid to legislators. The 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which removed the election of senators from the hands of legislators and gave it to the people, is a backhanded tribute to his legacy.

While serving in the Senate in 1904, the 65-year-old widower shocked the political and financial world by announcing that he had secretly remarried three years earlier, and that he and his 26-year-old wife already had a 2-year-old daughter, Andrée. A second daughter, Huguette, was born in 1906. When Huguette was about 4, the family of four moved into a 121-room house at Fifth Avenue and 77th Street in New York City, stuffed with the senator's collection of French paintings.

Her father the senator died in 1925. Huguette inherited one-fifth of his estate, which in today's dollars would have been worth about $3.6 billion -- her share being about $700 million in today's terms. She also inherited nearly all of her mother's estate in 1963.

The Clark name was largely forgotten, except to the occasional question on Jeopardy! and to historians in Montana and Arizona, and in Nevada, where his railroad spawned the city of Las Vegas and where Clark County is named for him.

Neither of the wills signed by his daughter leaves any money to those states.

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If you have information on the Huguette Clark mystery, use the links below to contact Bill Dedman. Add your comments to this story at the bottom of the page.

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Documents (PDF files)

Family motion to intervene in the estate case, Nov. 28, 2011

Huguette Clark's last will and testament, signed April 19, 2005

Huguette Clark's previous will, signed March 7, 2005

Family's petition seeking a guardian for Huguette Clark, September 2010

Attorney Bock's sworn statement to the court, September 2010

Judge's ruling rejecting her family's guardianship petition, September 2010

Kamsler letter informing Clark of his guilty plea, February 2009

Kamsler's criminal court file and investigator's report

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Previous stories in the Huguette Clark mystery on msnbc.com:

Archive of all stories, photos and videos

Photo narrative, "The Clarks: An American story of wealth, scandal and mystery," Feb. 26, 2010.

Printable version of the photo narrative, Feb. 26, 2010. 

Clark family notes and sources, Feb. 26, 2010.

Investigative report, part one, "At 104, the mysterious heiress Huguette Clark is alone now: Relatives are kept away. Only her accountant and attorney visit. Who protects Huguette Clark, with 3 empty homes and no heirs?" Aug. 19, 2010.

Investigative report, part two, "Who is watching Huguette Clark's millions? Reclusive heiress's assets are sold by two advisers, one an accountant with a felony conviction. Another elderly client signed over his property to the same accountant and attorney," Aug. 20, 2010. 

"Criminal probe begins into the finances of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark: Manhattan DA's Elder Abuse Unit is on the case. The same unit prosecuted the Brooke Astor case — though Clark has about four times the wealth," Aug. 24, 2010. 

"Report sparks welfare check on heiress Huguette Clark," Aug. 25, 2010. 

"Generosity of an heiress: four homes for a nurse, gifts for attorney's family," Sept. 1, 2010. 

"Huguette Clark, the reclusive heiress, has signed a will, attorney says," Sept. 2, 2010.

"Family of copper heiress asks court to protect her from attorney, accountant," Sept. 3, 2010.

"Attorney for 104-year-old heiress defends his handling of her finances," Sept. 7, 2010. 

"Judge leaves pair under investigation in control of heiress Huguette Clark's fortune," Sept. 9, 2010. 

"Huguette Clark, the reclusive copper heiress, dies at 104," May 24, 2011.

"Family excluded from Huguette Clark burial," May 26, 2011.

"The 1 percent of the 1 percent: How Huguette Clark's millions were spent," Nov. 19, 2011.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife via AP, file

This June 19, 2010 trail camera image provided by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shows a wolf from the Imnaha pack in northestern Oregon. A young male from this pack fitted with a collar transmitting GPS locations has become a celebrity while traveling some 730 miles across the state searching for a mate.

A young wolf from Oregon has become a media celebrity while looking for love, tracing a zigzag path that has carried him hundreds of miles nearly to California, while his alpha male sire and a sibling that stayed home near the Idaho border are under a death warrant for killing cattle.

Backcountry lodge owner Liz Parrish thinks she locked eyes with the wolf called OR-7 on the edge of the meadow in front of her Crystalwood Lodge, on the western shore of Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon, and hopes someday she will hear his howls coming out of the tall timber.

"I was stunned — it was such a huge animal," said Parrish, who has seen her share of wolves while racing dog sleds in Alaska and Minnesota. "He just stopped and stared. I stopped and stared. We had a stare-down that seemed like a long time, but was probably just a few seconds.

"He just evaporated into the trees. I stayed there awhile, hoping he might come back. He didn't."

Cattle rancher Nathan Jackson has not seen or heard the wolf, and hopes he never does.

"In this country, we worked really hard to exterminate wolves 50 years ago or so, and there was a reason," said Jackson, who ranches on the other side of Upper Klamath Lake from Parrish's lodge.

"A lot of people who don't have a direct tie to the agricultural community tend to view wolves as majestic, beautiful creatures. They don't seem so majestic and beautiful when they are ripping apart calves and colts."

Last February, OR-7 was in a snowy canyon in northeastern Oregon, when a state biologist shot him with a tranquilizer dart from a helicopter, then fitted him with a tracking collar and blue ear tags. State biologists have been able to chart his journey from GPS positions transmitted from the collar. They show he has traveled 730 miles on his meandering route, getting as far as 320 miles from home. And each time he crosses a county line, OR-7 makes it into the newspapers and on TV news.

The conservation group Oregon Wild has begun a contest to give OR-7 a different name, hoping to make him too famous to be shot, either by a poacher, rancher or government hunter. One entry came from as far away as Finland. The first came from a little girl in OR-7's home territory of Wallowa County, who suggested "Whoseafraida."

Death warrant
OR-7 set out on his trek on Sept. 10, just before state wildlife officials issued a death warrant for members of his Imnaha pack for killing cattle. The kill order specifically mentions OR-7's father, the alpha male, and one younger wolf with no collar. Since OR-7 and two siblings took off, that would leave his mother and one pup.

The department reports a government hunter had a shot but missed, and did not get another before conservation groups won a stay of the kill order while their legal challenge is settled by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Wolves started moving into Oregon from Idaho in the late 1990s, from packs introduced into the Northern Rockies as part of a federal endangered species restoration program. From trail cameras, radio tracking collar data, and sightings, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife figures the state has at least 23 wolves. All four packs are in the northeastern corner of the state. Two produced pups this year.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife via AP

This map image provided by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shows the journey of a young wolf known as OR-7, which has become a celebrity by trekking 730 miles on a zigzag course across the state. Meanwhile, back at home, his father and a sibling are under a death warrant for killing cattle.

Federal protection for wolves was lifted in Eastern Oregon, but they remain under state protection. West of Interstate 97 they are back under federal protection.

When wolves reach about 2 years old, they typically strike out on their own, looking for a mate and an empty territory they can call their own. And that's what OR-7 has done.

He's trekked across mountains, deserts and major highways from his pack's turf.

Once in the Cascade Range, OR-7 meandered through the Rogue-Umpqua Divide, where Oregon's last known wolf was shot by a bounty hunter in 1946. He skirted Crater Lake National Park, and dropped down to the flatlands near Upper Klamath Lake, climbed back up in the Cascades, and crossed over the crest south of Mount McLaughlin, a snow-capped volcano visible from Interstate 5.

So far there have been no reports of cattle killing along his path.

Embraced by the public
Russ Morgan, the wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, has been surprised by the way the public has embraced the wandering wolf. Much of Morgan's time is spent on a more difficult task, trying to build acceptance among ranchers.

"With all that's going on right now with management of wolves in Oregon, this is kind of a different side that people across the state have taken a shine to," Morgan said.

OR-7's travels are not unusual, said Ed Bangs, the retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf coordinator for the Northern Rockies. A female from Montana headed south through Wyoming, crossed southeastern Idaho, dropped down to Utah, crossed northern Colorado, and headed back up to Wyoming, where she ate poison and died.

"If you connect all the dots, she walked something like 3,000 miles," said Bangs. "Wolves are amazing travelers.'"

And patient. One male hung out four years in Idaho, howling and leaving scent markers, before a female found him, Bangs said. They established a pack, and the male lived to the near-record age of 13 before lying down and dying next to a dead elk.

Bangs said most of the wanderers become biological dead ends, but even if OR-7 dies alone, the trail of scent posts he has left will be followed by others.

And OR-7 already may have company. Tracks and sightings from last winter indicated other wolves made it to the Cascades. Parrish spotted a track last May in a muddy area of her meadow.

By Jo Ling Kent, NBC News

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- In a significant development in the Republican presidential contest, the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper endorsed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as his campaign surges in polls both nationally and locally. Despite his tumultuous political past, Gingrich was cited by the paper to have conservative credentials they believe to be critical to win the GOP nomination.

"A lot of candidates say they're going to improve Washington," wrote publisher Joe McQuaid. "Newt Gingrich has actually done that, and in this race he offers the best shot of doing it again."

The paper called Gingrich's strategy "innovative, forward looking" and his leadership "positive." However, McQuaid was quick to conceded Gingrich is far from the ideal candidate.

Slideshow: Gingrich through the years

"Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate," McQuaid wrote. "But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running ... he has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in trying times."

Gingrich: 'Enormous boost'
The paper's support is considered the state's most influential media nod ahead of the first-in-the-nation Republican primary and will certainly help Gingrich's prospects here. The Union Leader is the state's largest and only state-wide daily publication. It prides itself on being independent and conservative.

"We are honored to have the endorsement of the Union Leader," Gingrich's New Hampshire state campaign director Andrew Hemingway told NBC News Sunday morning. "This is an enormous boost to our campaign and further proof the the people of N.H. are wanting substance and solutions over soundbites and pandering." Gingrich was not immediately available for comment.

The Union Leader's Gingrich endorsement comes after significant courting by Mitt Romney, who has been campaigning in the state for several years. This is the second time that the Union Leader has chosen not to endorse Romney. In 2008, it notably backed John McCain who eventually went on to win the New Hampshire primary following a major comeback from a near-dead campaign the summer and fall before the primary. The paper's editorial team also took several significant swipes at Romney in the process, undoubtedly hurting his chances in New Hampshire.

Looking back, the Union Leader has only supported two Republican candidates who went on to actually cement the GOP nomination: Reagan in 1980 and McCain in 2008. The Granite State publication endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, Pete du Pont in 1988, Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996, Steve Forbes in 2000 and John McCain 2008.

As for this election cycle, McQuaid recently told the Concord Monitor that "the future of the free world" is at stake. McQuaid said that the paper decided on its endorsement earlier this week and wrote the opinion ahead of Thanksgiving.

"I'm not kidding," McQuaid said of the upcoming 2012 contest. "I think this is a very important election in America."

In the latest New Hampshire polls, Gingrich is tied with Rep. Ron Paul for second place at 14 percent, behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney who garnered 41 percent, according to Suffolk University and 7 News. In another state-wide survey by WMUR and University of New Hampshire, Gingrich has 15 percent of support, behind Romney at 45 percent and ahead of Paul at 12 percent.

In the last month, Gingrich has retooled his New Hampshire strategy by building out a virtually non-existent structure, citing new funds as his impetus to expand. He has visited more frequently, brought in Hemingway and rapidly hired New Hampshire-based staff, most recently snagging Rep. Michele Bachmann's former New Hampshire director Jeff Chidester.

His campaign has also started rolling out "Newt Hampshire", a Granite State-focused web platform to attract supporters and get out the vote in the final weeks until the primary.

New Hampshire voters go to the polls on Tuesday, January 10.