The wife of British society figure Claus von Bulow has died after almost three decades in a coma that prosecutors tried to blame on him.


Heiress Martha “Sunny” von Bulow was 76.

She died at a nursing home on Saturday in New York, her children said in a statement issued by family spokeswoman Maureen Connelly.

Mrs von Bulow spent the past 28 years in a coma after what prosecutors alleged were two murder attempts by her husband, who lives in London and writes arts reviews.

Mr von Bulow was ultimately acquitted of charges that he tried to kill her by injecting her with insulin at their estate in Newport, Rhode Island.

His trials, in Providence, Rhode Island, were among the most sensational of the 1980s.

At the first, in 1982, he was convicted of trying twice to kill her, but that verdict was thrown out on appeal and he was acquitted at a second trial in 1985.

Prosecutors said Mr von Bulow wanted to get rid of his wife to inherit a large chunk of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress.

But the defence depicted Mrs von Bulow, who suffered from low blood sugar, as an alcoholic and pill popper who drank herself into a coma.

Two years later, Claus von Bulow agreed to give up any claims to his wife’s estimated $25-40m (£17-27m) and to the $120,000-a-year (£81,000) income of a trust she set up for him.

He also agreed to divorce her, leave the country and never profit from their story.

The murder case split Newport society, produced lurid headlines and was later made into a film, Reversal of Fortune, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Mrs von Bulow was a stunning heiress who brought her American millions to marriages to men who gave her honoured old European names.

But she ended her days in a vegetative state, showing no sign of awareness as she was visited by her children, and tended around the clock by nurses. The von Bulows had a daughter, Cosima, who married an Italian count and lives in London.