Word: bulow
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sequels, if they are to be successful, must combine elements of the original blockbuster with a new twist. The Von Bulow Affair II does just that. As before, there are the loyal maid with the German accent, the stepchildren who stand to inherit millions, the sleeping heiress who was allegedly the target of a murder attempt most foul, all set against the gilded backdrops of Newport, R.I., and Manhattan. But this time there is the promise of new and quirky characters, while the once icy defendant, lo and behold, seems to have come to life...
When the retrial of Claus von Bulow on charges that he twice tried to murder his wife with insulin injections began in Providence last week, the media glare was even more relentless than last time. The Danish aristocrat's wife Martha (nicknamed "Sunny," for her disposition) von Auersperg von Bulow, heiress to a Pittsburgh fortune estimated at $35 million, went into an irreversible coma at Christmastime 1980 at the couple's oceanfront Newport home. An impassive Von Bulow was convicted in 1982 on two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But last April, after...
...first two days of televised testimony retraced the steps of the original trial. Assistant Attorney General Marc DeSisto in his opening argument depicted Von Bulow to the jury as a freeloading layabout: "He was living off her money, and he was living well. The defendant was well aware of what he would get if his wife died." The prosecution's first witness was Mrs. Von Bulow's maid of 23 years, Maria Schrallhammer, an overwrought, slightly bowed woman who could have stepped out of a whodunit. Schrallhammer recounted how her mistress had slipped into a coma while Von Bulow, sitting...
DeSisto, the new prosecutor, is an earnest but inexperienced 29-year-old legal beagle who already seems frustrated. Von Bulow's principal attorney for this trial is former Abscam Prosecutor Thomas Puccio, who is as brashly streetwise as Claus is polo-wise; Dershowitz, a constitutional expert, is advising him from the wings...
...Bulow, who maintained an imperious aloofness during the first trial, seems to have undergone image surgery. Though he still looks as if he would be most at home in a uniform, he has taken to draping his 6-ft. 3-in. frame with the occasional plaid sport coat instead of the somber suits of the first trial. Last week, as Corinne Grande, the presiding judge, led jurors on a walking tour of Clarendon Court, the family mansion in Newport and the alleged scene of the crime, Von Bulow strayed over to the kennel to play with the three golden retrievers...