Sunny Von Bulow Dead After 28 Year Coma 1932-2008 (Photos)

Martha 'Sunny' von Bulow 1932-2008

, U.S. heiress, philanthropist and socialite died in a Manhattan nursing home on December 6, after spending 28 years in a persistent vegetative state.

Sunny was stricken on December 21, 1980 during a Christmas celebration at her home in Newport, Rhode Island. She ended up in a hospital in a deep coma.

A previous hospitalization in April 1980 for similar symptoms and a breakdown of Sunny and her husband Claus von Bulow's marital relationship caused her children from a previous marriage to suspect foul play after the second hospitalization. They convinced law enforcement officials that Claus von Bulow had injected their mother with drugs that induced the coma.

Rhode Island prosecutors were eventually persuaded to present the evidence to a grand jury. Claus von Bulow was tried and convicted and later acquitted of the charges.

Martha 'Sunny' von Bulow is survived by Annie-Laurie Isham and Alexander Auersperg from her marriage to Prince Alfred of Auersperg, an Austrian tennis instructor. At the time of their divorce in 1957, Sunny had a net worth of $75 million. Sunny is also survived by daughter Cosima von Bulow, 41.

The three offspring split a $90 million inheritance at the death of their material grandmother and are Sunny's sole heirs. Claus von Bulow relinquished any claim to Sunny's fortune many years ago at the behest of his daughter Cosima's maternal grandmother, who threatened to disinherited the child for siding with her father in his quest to be acquitted of murder.

Claus von Bulow, 82, lives in London, where he writes theater and art reviews.











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