Anna dePeyster obit

Anna De Peyster Dies: Second Wife Of Rupert Murdoch And Former News Corp Board Member Was 81

 

She was not on the list.

Anna de Peyster, former wife of media titan Rupert Murdoch and mother of James, Elisabeth and Lachlan Murdoch, has died. She was 81.

Her death in Palm Beach, FL, following a long illness was first reported by the Murdoch-owned New York Post and later confirmed by other media outlets.

De Peyster, who married investor and real estate developer Ashton de Peyster in 2019, was born Anna Torv in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1944. When she was 9 years old, her family emigrated to Australia, where she went on to became a reporter at a newspaper in Sydney. She married Rupert Murdoch, who was publisher of the paper, in 1967, following his divorce from his first wife, Patricia Booker. The couple would stay married for 31 years.

The three children from the marriage became central figures in a closely watched succession drama, which reached its stunning conclusion in 2025 in a settlement that saw James and Elisabeth cut ties with the family business. Lachlan Murdoch, who has been CEO of Fox Corp. since 2019, was reaffirmed as the heir to Rupert Murdoch, 94. While they have cut ties with the Murdoch media empire, Elisabeth continues to run production company Sister, while James is an investor and a member of Tesla’s board of directors.

Along with raising the couple’s three children, de Peyster earned a Master’s degree in literature and mythology at New York University, after studying at Fordham University in the 1970s. Starting in the 1980s, she also wrote three novels: In Her Own Image, Family Business and Coming to Terms. During her marriage to the late Bill Mann, she became was a noted philanthropist and prominent figure in Palm Beach and Southampton.

The stature of Rupert Murdoch as a media mogul put the couple in a bright spotlight. In 1969, thinking they were kidnapping Anna, they instead mistakenly took and murdered Muriel McKay, wife of a top Murdoch deputy.

De Peyster served on the board of Murdoch’s News Corp for eight years, departing after his affair with Wendi Deng was revealed in 1998. Murdoch and Deng later married, while Anna and Bill Mann were married from 1999 to 2017.

In a 2001 interview with Australian Women’s Weekly, Anna Murdoch-Mann described Murdoch as “extremely hard, ruthless and determined.” She also expressed confidence in her children’s abilities but also trepidation about their being forced to compete to succeed their father. “I think they’re all so good that they could do whatever they wanted,” she said. “But I think there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak and hardship” during the succession process.