Millionaire dies after 28 years in coma

Los Angeles: Martha 'Sunny' von Bulow, an heiress of misfortune who spent almost 28 years in a coma and whose husband Claus von Bulow went on trial twice for attempting to kill her, died on Saturday at a nursing home in New York. She was 76.

Sunny von Bulow had a fortune estimated to be as much as $75 million (Dh275.5 million) when she married Claus von Bulow, a Danish-born financier, in 1966. They lived a charmed life in multi million-dollar homes on New York's Fifth Avenue and in Newport, Rhode Island.

Trouble developed in the marriage, and Sunny von Bulow went into a coma December 27, 1979, but was soon revived. A year later, on December 21, 1980, she was found unconscious on her bathroom floor and never recovered.

Sunny von Bulow's two children from her previous marriage to an Austrian prince financed a $400,000 private investigation that led to Claus von Bulow's indictment in 1981. They alleged that Claus von Bulow was having an affair and stood to inherit $14 million if his wife died.

In one of the most sensational legal scandals of the 1980s, Claus von Bulow was convicted of attempting to kill his wife with an overdose of insulin, "knowing that it could be fatal." The von Bulows' maid said she had found a black bag in Claus von Bulow's closet containing syringes with traces of insulin and sedatives.

Harvard University lawyer Alan Dershowitz took up von Bulow's defense on appeal and painted his wife as an alcoholic, drug abuser who was subject to attacks of hypoglycemia. High-profile friends, including writer Truman Capote and Johnny Carson's ex-wife, Joanne Carson, testified that she had used drugs extensively. Claus von Bulow's conviction was overturned on technical grounds that police had mishandled evidence - specifically, the black bag with the syringes.

Rhode Island prosecutors brought attempted murder charges against von Bulow a second time in 1985, but he was acquitted. The trials, the mysteries surrounding the case and the sad fate of Sunny von Bulow became the subject of a best-selling book by Dershowitz, "Reversal of Fortune."

A move was later made which depicted Sunny von Bulow as a nagging wife with substance abuse problems. Her children objected, saying: "Our mother has been portrayed as pathetic and self-destructive. We reject this injurious and erroneous portrayal."

Sunny von Bulow's two older children, Annie-Laurie von Auersperg Isham and Alexander von Auersperg, were convinced of their stepfather's treachery. They were outraged when he posed for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1985 in his wife's New York apartment.

Sunny's children filed a $56 million civil suit against Claus von Bulow in 1985 and settled it two years later with the proviso that von Bulow would file for divorce and never speak in public about the case again. He also renounced any claim to his wife's fortune. Claus, now 82, lives in London.