Results tagged “reversaloffortune”

Martha (Sunny) von Bulow died today in a Manhattan nursing home at age 76, just under 28 years after she slipped into a coma that would lead to a dramatic series of events. A multimillionaire born into parents who had a shoe fortune and ran an electric company respectively, the events leading up to her coma triggered charges against her second husband for attempted murder and would create the setting for trials that were media spectacles in the '80s when Claus von Bulow was convicted and but later acquitted in a retrial for poisoning his wife. Those trials along with the battle among her stepchildren over Mrs. von Bulow's riches would inspire the movie Reversal of Fortune (where defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz's protege Eliot Spitzer is portrayed by Desperate Housewives' Felicity Huffman!) Mrs. von Bulow attended the Chapin School in Manhattan many years ago and is survived by three daughters, a son and five grandchildren.