Claus von Bulow, accused killer, 92, dies
estate in Newport.
It wasn’t the first time she had been found unconscious.
During another Christmastime visit to Newport the year before, she had lapsed into a coma but recovered the next day.
This time, however, the coma was irreversible.
About two weeks later, her family hired a lawyer to quietly conduct a private investigation to find out whether her mysterious ailments were the result of criminal conduct.
Members of her family, including her children from a previous marriage to an Austrian prince — Alexander von Auersperg and Annie Laurie Kneissl — suspected von Bulow.
At Clarendon Court, von Auersperg and a private investigator removed a small black traveling bag from Claus von Bulow’s locked closet.
Sunny von Bulow’s personal maid had first discovered the vinyl bag after Sunny lapsed into her first coma in late 1979. The maid later testified that the case had contained Valium and various other pills, and she continued to monitor it over the ensuing months.
After she slipped into her irreversible coma, unusually high levels of insulin were found in her blood.
Among the items allegedly found in the bag by von Auersperg and the private investigator: a used hypodermic needle that a lab test showed had a residue containing a high concentration of insulin, as well as traces of Valium and amobarbital.
In July 1981, after an investigation by Rhode Island authorities, 54-year-old Claus von Bulow was indicted on charges he twice tried to kill his wife with injections of insulin.
Prosecutors at his first trial in 1982 argued that von Bulow wanted to kill his wife in order to inherit a $14 million share of her fortune and be free to marry his mistress, socialite and former soap opera actress Alexander Isles, who testified that she told von Bulow that he would lose her if he didn’t leave his wife.
The defense argued that Sunny von Bulow brought on the comas herself, either through drug and alcohol abuse or by injecting herself with insulin to lose weight
Claus von Bulow was described in the press as tall, aristocratic and aloof. The jury found him guilty on both counts of assault with intent to commit murder.
Sentenced to 30 years in prison but free on $1 million bail pending appeal, von Bulow continued living in his wife’s grand Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan.
In 1984, with Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz representing von Bulow in the appeal, the Rhode Island Supreme Court reversed von Bulow’s convictions and a new trial was ordered.
The conviction was reversed for two reasons: The state police had failed to obtain a search warrant before sending some of the pills from the black bag for testing. And the detailed notes made of interviews with key witnesses by the lawyer hired to conduct the initial investigation had not been made available to either the prosecution or the defense.