» Claude Wasserstein (left), who has been separated from financier Bruce Wasserstein since last year, has purchased the 7,000-square-foot duplex penthouse at 995 Fifth Avenue, which was listed at $47.5 million. Her new neighbors in the building will include socialite Daphne Guinness and Philosophy cosmetics founder Cristina Carlino. [Update: The purchase price was $34 million according to TRD.] [NYT]
» Barbara Corcoran paid $1.46 million for a 4,000-square-foot townhouse at 408 Stuyvesant Avenue in Brooklyn. The home had originally been on the market for $2.1 million in late 2006. [Real Deal]
» The Long Island home once owned by Alistair Cooke, the BBC journalist who died in 2004, has been put on the market at $5.2 mil. The four-bedroom house sits on 1.4 acres overlooking Peconic Bay. [Newsday]

When famed broadcaster Alistair Cooke (of Masterpiece Theatre fame) died in 2004, his family wanted to respect his wishes and scatter his ashes in Central Park. Since disposing of human cremains on park property is frowned upon by authorities, the family smuggled his ashes into the park in a Starbucks cup (we're assuming venti) and did the deed. That would be creepy enough, were it not for further revelations that, pre-cremation, Cooke's leg bones had been sawed off for sale by an illicit body-part retail ring run by "ex-dentist" Michael Mastromarino. According to the Daily News, owners of the New York Mortuary Service — one of Mastromarino's sources for people pieces — are taking a prosecution deal to detail the dismemberment and sale of "hundreds" of corpses. Regarding Cooke, the NYDN notes with characteristic restraint that "his cancer-ravaged bones were sold for more than $7,000." That's nasty, but at least his parts weren't used to beef up someone's insufficient pecker.