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Socialite and heiress Sunny von Bulow who spent 28 years in a coma that spawned one of the most infamous criminal trials of the 1980’s, died in a New York nursing home Saturday at age 76, CNN reported.
Her husband, Claus von Bulow was accused of injecting Martha “Sunny” von Bulow with an overdose of insulin, which prosecutors said sent her into the coma. The von Bulow case became one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century and inspired the film Reversal of Fortune, which starred Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close.
Claus was accused of two attempts on her life, the first of which was overturned on appeal and he was acquitted in a second trial.
His attorneys maintained that alcohol abuse, among other factors, caused her to slip into the coma.
Sunny was found unconscious in the bathroom at the family’s Newport, Rhode Island home on Dec. 22, 1980 and she never regained consciousness.
She was hospitalized the year before after lapsing into a coma but recovered, according to the Crime Library site. Doctors diagnosed her with hypoglycemia.
"We were blessed to have an extraordinarily loving and caring mother," said a statement from her three children -- Annie Laurie "Ala" Isham, Alexander von Auersperg and Cosima Pavoncelli. "She was especially devoted to her many friends and family members."
Claus’s famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz said in a statement following Sunny’s death that it is "a sad ending to a sad tragedy that some members of her family tried to turn into a crime. We proved overwhelming[ly] that there was no crime and that the coma was self-induced. We saved his life, but could not save hers."
Sunny is survived by her children, their spouses and nine grandchildren, according to the family’s statement.
