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Claus von Bülow

Claus von Bülow (born Claus Cecil Borberg on August 11, 1926, in Copenhagen, Denmark) is a British socialite of German and Danish ancestry. He was accused of the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bülow (née Martha Sharp Crawford), by administering an insulin overdose in 1980.

Biography

Von Bülow's mother Jonna belonged to the old Danish-German noble family Bülow, originally from Mecklenburg, 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 his Nazi sympathies. Claus was the maternal grandson of Fritz Bülow, a Danish lawyer, Minister of Justice from 1910-1913 and President of the first Chamber of the Danish Parliament.

Claus von Bülow graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and worked as personal assistant to J. Paul Getty after having practised law in London in the 1950s. Getty wrote that von Bülow showed "remarkable forbearance and good nature" as Getty's occasional whipping boy. Von Bülow remained with Getty until 1968. On June 6, 1966, von Bülow married Sunny, the ex-wife of Prince Alfred of Auersperg. Sunny has a son and a daughter from her first marriage, and she and von Bülow have a daughter, Cosima Iona von Bülow, born in 1967.

In 1982, von Bülow was tried for the attempted murder of Sunny, which allegedly 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 in prison; 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, von Bülow 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. As a result, von Bülow renounced his claim to Sunny's $75 million personal fortune in exchange for Cosima's reinstatement as heiress to the Crawford fortune.

Currently, von Bülow lives in London, writing art and theatre reviews. His ex-wife, Sunny von Bülow, remains comatose at a private nursing home..

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). Jeremy Irons starred as Claus von Bülow, and Glenn Close as Sunny von Bülow.

Television 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.

Von Bülow is mentioned by Bart Simpson in the episode The Boy Who Knew Too Much.