Claus von Bülow
Claus von Bülow (né Claus Cecil Borberg, August 11, 1926, Copenhagen, Denmark) is a British socialite of German and Danish ancestry [1] who was falsely accused of attempting to murder his wife, ‘Sunny’ von Bülow (née Martha Sharp Crawford) with an insulin overdose given in late 1980.
Von Bülow's mother shared agnatic ancestry with the Danish-German von Bülows, one of whom, the conductor Hans von Bülow, was first husband of Cosima, the second wife of Richard Wagner. Claus von Bülow's father was the Danish playwright Svend Borberg, known for Nazi sympathies.
Claus von Bülow graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and worked as personal assistant to J. Paul Getty after having practiced law in London in the 1950s. Getty wrote that he showed ‘remarkable forbearance and good nature’ as Getty's occasional whipping boy. Von Bülow remained with Getty until 1968, two years after marrying Sunny, ex-wife of Prince Alfred of Auersperg and mother of two children, on June 6, 1966; she bore a child to Claus, their daughter Cosima von Bülow.
In 1982, von Bülow was tried for the attempted murder of Sunny, supposedly occurred at her estate, Clarendon Court, in Newport, Rhode Island. At the trial in Newport, von Bülow was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years imprisonment; he appealed, hiring Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to represent him. Professor Dershowitz and associates rendered doubtful the first trial's most damning evidence and testimony; in 1984, the conviction was reversed; in 1985, after a second trial, Claus was found not guilty on all charges.
Sunny's family remained convinced of Claus's guilt; for having sided with her father, Cosima von Bülow, was disinherited by her maternal grandmother, Annie Laurie (Crawford) Aitken. Von Bülow's two stepchildren, from Sunny's previous marriage, sued him for $56 million. Resultantly, he renounced claim to Sunny's $75 million dollar personal fortune, in exchange for Cosima's reinstatement as heiress to the Crawford fortune.
Currently, Claus von Bülow lives in London, writing art and theatre reviews. His ex-wife, Sunny von Bülow, remains comatose in Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.
Literary, cinema, and television accounts
Professor Dershowitz wrote the book Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow case (1985) that was cinematically adapted as Reversal of Fortune (1990), with Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow, and Glenn Close as Sunny von Bülow.
TV reporter Bill Kurtis narrated the American Justice crime series episode titled Von Bülow: A Wealth of Evidence.
The television series Biography produced and aired a documentary episode titled Claus von Bülow: A Reasonable Doubt featuring interviews with Claus von Bülow and Prof. Dershowitz.
See also