In 1980, as some of you will recall, Sunny Von Bulow, a socialite and famed wealthy woman, fell into a coma and remained there..her husband was accused of putting her in the coma and was tried multiple times, twice by the courts and more often than that by the press.
Sunny is.. or was, a US Heiress, who swam in only the best pools, and ran with only the best circles.
Today, after 28 years in a coma, Sunny von Bulow died at the age of 76.
Though she herself was unconscious for nearly thirty years, that didn’t stop the tabloids, or even the courtrooms from playing out a drama based on her illness/injuries, after she was found nearly lifeless in her mansion in Rhode Island before Christmas in 1980.
Her second husband, Claus von Bulow, who is now a society figure in Britain, was acquitted not once, but twice trying to kill her with insulin injections. Mrs Von Bulows injuries and the events surrounding them were turned into a hit film in Hollywood in 1990, called Reversal of Fortune.
Wealthy daughter of George Crawford, a utilities tycoon, Sunny had it all and she didn’t mind sharing it.
In what reporters have said was one of the most sensational legal cases in existence, Claus von Bulow was at first convicted in 1982, of attempting to kill Sunny, before being cleared on appeal, and then acquitted at a second trial in 1985.
Two years later he agreed to divorce his wife and give up claims to her fortune of up to $40m, as well as the $120,000-a-year trust fund she had established for him.
He currently lives in the UK, and does book reviews. Now THAT… is a reversal of fortunes.
