Claus von Bülow has died
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 10:06 am
Claus von Bülow Dies at 92; Society Figure in High-Profile Case
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/obit ... e=HomepageClaus von Bülow, the Danish-born man-about-society who in two trials was convicted and later acquitted of twice trying to murder his heiress wife, placing him at the center of one of the most sensational social dramas of the 1980s, died on Saturday at his home in London. He was 92.
His death was confirmed on Thursday by Riccardo Pavoncelli, his son-in-law.
Mr. von Bülow was charged with the attempted murder of his wife, Martha von Bülow, known as Sunny, by injecting her with insulin to aggravate her hypoglycemia, a low-blood-sugar condition. Mrs. von Bülow, the heiress to a $75 million utilities fortune, went into a coma in December 1979, from which she recovered, and a second, irreversible coma in December 1980. She remained in a vegetative state until her death in 2008.
A jury in Newport, R.I., found Mr. von Bülow guilty of attempting to induce his wife’s death, and he was sentenced in 1982 to a 30-year prison term. He continued to maintain his innocence and was freed on $1 million bail. An appeal, masterminded by the Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz, was successful and paved the way for a new trial. Mr. von Bülow was represented at his second trial, in Providence, R.I., by Thomas Puccio, a former United States attorney, and acquitted of all charges in 1985.
In his best-selling book “Reversal of Fortune” (1986), Mr. Dershowitz recounted his role in aiding Mr. von Bülow. He began the book with a quote from a prosecutor involved: “This case has everything. It has money, sex, drugs; it has Newport, New York and Europe; it has nobility; it has maids, butlers, a gardener.”