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Sunny von Bülow takes secret of her death to the grave
Kiran Randhawa8 Dec 2008
THE lawyer who famously defended aristocrat Claus von Bülow over the attempted murder of his wife today said her death after 28 years in a coma will bring closure for the family.
US heiress Martha von Bülow died in a nursing home on Saturday after nearly three decades in a coma.
Alan Dershowitz, who helped overturn an attempted murder conviction against her husband, said: "It's a tragic ending to a tragic story."
Mrs von Bülow, known as Sunny, was found unconscious in her Rhode Island mansion in December 1980.
Mr von Bülow, her second husband and now a society figure in Britain, was acquitted in 1985 of twice trying to kill her with insu lin injections.
The well-publicised events were turned into a 1990 Hollywood film, Reversal of Fortune, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.
Mr Dershowitz said: "Claus was falsely accused of something that he didn't do and I was privileged to represent him. This is not a day for celebration. There are not happy endings in these situations."
He said he spoke to Mr von Bülow after the news broke about his ex-wife's death at a nursing home in New York. He said the 82-year-old now has grandchildren and was living the life of a "retired old gentleman" in London.
Mr von Bülow and the couple's daughter, Cosima Pavoncelli, 41, have kept in touch with Mr Dershowitz since 1984, when the Rhode Island Supreme Court granted a new trial in the dramatic case.
"The other children still mistakenly believe that a crime happened here. Hopefully, this will put an end to that," Mr Dershowitz added.
Mrs von Bülow, 76, the daughter of utilities tycoon George Crawford, was found unconscious in a bathroom at her Newport mansion after falling into an irreversible coma on 21 December 1980.
At his first trial in 1982, Mr von Bülow was convicted of twice trying to kill his wife by injecting her with insulin. He was acquitted at a second trial in 1985 after medical experts testified her coma was induced by drugs, alcohol and chronic health problems. The von Bülows had been celebrating just before Christmas 1980 when Mrs von Bülow, who was then 48 and had a history of drug use and heavy drinking, was taken ill.
Doctors said she had suffered brain damage that left her in a "persistent vegetative state".
Yesterday Mr von Bülow prayed at the Brompton Oratory before returning to his £4million South Kensington home. He said: "My daughter and I are both very sad."
Mrs von Bülow's three children, Mrs Pavoncelli and Ala Isham and, from her first marriage to an Austrian prince, Alexander von Auersperg, said in a statement: "We were blessed to have an extraordinarily loving and caring mother."
