His Heiress Wife Fell Into Two Mysterious Comas, And He Was Charged With Attempted Murder
In 2019, Claus von Bülow, a high society figure who was convicted and then cleared of attempting to kill his heiress wife, died at the age of 92.
He was accused of trying to kill his wife, Martha “Sunny” von Bülow, by injecting her with insulin twice to trigger her hypoglycemia, a low blood sugar condition.
Sunny von Bülow went into a coma in December 1979. She recovered from that, but then, she went into a second coma in December 1980 that put her in a vegetative state until her death in 2008. She died at the age of 76.
Von Bülow was convicted of attempted murder by a jury in Newport, Rhode Island, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1982. He was later acquitted of the charge.
The heiress was known as Sunny because of her cheerful manner. She was the only daughter of a utilities magnate from Pittsburgh and was left a fortune of $75 million. In 1957, she married Prince Alfred von Auersperg. After their divorce in 1965, she married von Bülow.
Von Bülow was born as Claus Cecil Barber in Copenhagen, Denmark. During World War II, he was sent to Britain to live with his mother. He took his maternal family’s name, Bülow, and later added the “von.”
His father was accused of being a Nazi collaborator after the war and was sentenced to four years in prison. After 18 months, he was released on appeal.
Von Bülow became known in high society in London during the 1960s. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and was hired as an administrative assistant to the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. Von Bülow and Sunny got married in 1966.
The couple lived in a 12-room apartment on 5th Avenue in New York City and a 23-room mansion on 10 acres of land in Newport, Rhode Island. On December 21, 1980, Sunny was found unconscious on the bathroom floor in their Newport mansion.
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Prosecutors portrayed their marriage as an unhappy one and said that he had tried to kill her so he could inherit her fortune and marry his mistress, who was a soap opera actress.
If they had divorced, he would lose the $14 million he would inherit in her will. Meanwhile, the defense painted Sunny as an alcoholic and a pill-popper and accused her of drinking herself into a coma.
He was found guilty in 1982 in Newport, but the Rhode Island Supreme Court reversed his conviction two years later.
Von Bülow’s second trial was held in 1985 in Providence. He was acquitted, but one month later, his stepchildren brought a civil case against him.
In the settlement, he agreed to divorce his wife, giving up his rights to her fortune and to oversee her medical care.
He also agreed to leave the country and later moved to London. He never spoke publicly about the case, as he had forfeited the right to do so.
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