Heiress dies after being in coma 27 years

NEW YORK — Martha "Sunny" von Bulow, the heiress who was first married to an Austrian playboy prince and then to a Danish-born man-about-society who was twice tried on charges of attempting to murder her, died Saturday at a nursing home in Manhattan. Von Bulow, 76, had been in a coma for nearly 28 years.

Maureen Connelly, a spokeswoman for the family, confirmed the death. Von Bulow's three children said they "were blessed to have an extraordinary loving and caring mother."

Her death came 27 years, 11 months and 15 days after she was found unconscious on the floor of her bathroom in her mansion in Newport, R.I., on Dec. 21, 1980.

In her long, silent years at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and then at a nursing home on the Upper East Side, doctors said von Bulow never showed signs of brain activity; she was fed through a tube in her stomach.

Yet there were always fresh flowers in her room, and photographs of her children and grandchildren sat on a bedside table. She was attended by private nurses, and her room, for some time, was guarded by private security personnel.

She is survived by her daughters, Annie-Laurie von Auersperg Kneissl Isham and Cosima Pavoncelli; her son, Alexander von Auersperg; and nine grandchildren.

Her second husband, Claus von Bulow, was convicted and later acquitted of twice trying to kill her with injections of insulin so as to aggravate her hypoglycemia, a low-blood-sugar condition.

His trials were among the most sensational of the 1980s. News media from around the world were drawn to the drama of the beautiful heiress who lay in a twilight zone, the debonair husband accused of attempted murder, two royal children pitted against their younger half-sister.

Hollywood, too, could not resist. The trials became the subject of the 1990 film "Reversal of Fortune" with Glenn Close as Sunny and Jeremy Irons as Claus. The film was based on a book by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who had been Claus von Bulow's lawyer during his appeal.

Family intrigue

The prosecutions were the result of an investigation initiated at the time by Alexander von Auersperg and his sister Annie-Laurie von Auersperg Kneissl, the children of Sunny von Bulow's marriage to Prince Alfred von Auersperg.

The accusations pitted the von Auerspergs against their stepfather and their half-sister, Cosima von Bulow, and divided the loyalty of friends in Newport and New York.

In his first trial, in Newport in 1982, Claus von Bulow was found guilty of twice trying to kill his wife and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He appealed and posted a $1 million bond believed to have been put up by his friend and former employer J. Paul Getty Jr., the oil tycoon.

The appeal was guided by Dershowitz, working with, among others, a team of Harvard students, and the conviction was overturned on the grounds that certain information had not been made available to the defense and that there had been no search warrant when pills were confiscated and sent for testing.

Claus von Bulow was acquitted in 1985 after a second trial in Providence, R.I., where his chief defense counsel was Thomas Puccio.

A $56 million civil suit filed against Claus von Bulow by his stepchildren was settled in 1987 with the stipulation that von Bulow agree to a divorce and not discuss the case publicly or profit from it.

The couple were divorced in 1988. Claus von Bulow lives in London.

Prosecutors contended that Claus von Bulow wanted to get rid of his wife, who had inherited $75 million, to inherit a large chunk of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress.

The prosecution put Alexandra Isles, who had been Claus von Bulow's mistress, on the stand to admit that she had given her lover an ultimatum about dissolving his marriage.

It was noted, too, that a divorce would have voided the $14 million that von Bulow would have inherited under his wife's will.

Von Bulow acknowledged that he and his wife had discussed divorce but denied that the issue was another woman. He initiated the talks, he said, because he wished to return to work and his wife did not agree.

The defense countered by painting Sunny von Bulow as an alcoholic and pill popper who drank herself into a coma.

Claus Von Bulow was accused of injecting his wife with insulin first in December 1979, causing a coma from which she revived. Prosecutors said he tried again a year later, and the 49-year-old heiress fell into an irreversible coma.

Born in a railcar

Her world was reduced to a private, guarded room in the Harkness Pavilion and later the McKeen Pavilion of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She died at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, her family said.

Her doctor testified that the cost of maintaining her was $375,000 the first year, 1981.

No figures were available for the years that followed, but by the early 1990s, room charges were up to $547,000 a year — plus $200,000 to $300,000 for round-the-clock nursing.

She was born Martha Sharp Crawford aboard a railcar in Manassas, Va., on Sept. 1, 1932, daughter of utilities tycoon George Crawford, who died when she was 4.

While touring Europe with her mother, she met Prince Alfred von Auersperg, who was younger, penniless and working as a tennis pro.

They were married in 1957 and divorced eight years later after she returned alone to New York with their young son and daughter.

On June 6, 1966, she married von Bulow, who then quit his job as an aide to oilman Getty.

Claus von Bulow now is "mostly taking care of his grandchildren," Dershowitz said Saturday, adding, "It's a sad ending to a sad tragedy that some people tried to turn into a crime." He said he hopes this will finally put things to rest.

Author Dominick Dunne wrote about the case and had known Sunny von Bulow since she was an 18-year-old debutante. He said Saturday that she had been portrayed unfairly in the film as an emotionally frail alcoholic.

Rather, he said, she was a "beautiful and shy" woman who "really did not like the social life, although she was totally associated with the social life."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.