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Claus von Bülow — a socialite who was convicted and later acquitted for attempting to murder his wealthy wife in a case that captured the nation’s attention in the 1980s —died on May 25. He was 92, and died at home in London.
The Danish-born Bülow was accused of arranging the murder of his wife Sunny in an effort to inherit her fortune and marry his mistress.
His two televised trials exposed a world of power and infidelity in tony Newport, R.I., where Bülow and his wife lived in a seaside mansion.
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In a stunning twist, von Bülow was acquitted in 1985 at a second trial after the jury rejected the insulin-injection theory. Von Bülow’s defense attorney contended that Sunny’s comas were a result of her abuse of alcohol and prescription medications, as well as her regular consumption of sugary foods.
Sunny von Bülow had severe hypoglycemia, which affects blood sugar levels and can cause diabetic comas.
After almost 28 years in a coma, she died in a New York nursing home at the age of 76 in 2008.
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Von Bülow’s father would be convicted and eventually acquitted for collaborating with the Germans. Svend Borberg served just 18 months out of a four-year sentence after successfully appealing his conviction.
Von Bülow met his wife in 1966, a recently divorced mother of two and heiress to the fortune of her utilities-tycoon father. The two would marry that same year, with Sunny giving birth to their one child a year later.
Eventually, von Bülow would stop working. He began living off his wife’s vast fortune and eventually moved the family from their 14-room Manhattan apartment into an 11-acre Newport estate in 1970.
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As von Bülow and his wife grew more distant, he began an affair with Swedish-born actress Alexandra Isles, who testified that she had given him a deadline to formally divorce his wife just prior to Sunny’s first coma. Von Bülow stood to gain his wife’s nearly $100 million fortune.
Free on bond after a jury convicted him of two counts of attempted murder, von Bülow was looking at a 30-year prison sentence. But the Rhode Island Supreme Court voided the conviction in 1984, claiming evidence had been gathered without a search warrant and that his attorneys had been denied access to important notes.
“Moving to England was a very, very smart thing for him to do,” his defense attorney Alan Dershowitz once toldThe Daily Telegraph. “In Great Britain, Claus is regarded as a victim of a false accusation. In the U.S., opinion is certainly more divided.”
source: people.com
