Story of his two sensational US trials in 1980s was made into film starring Jeremy Irons

Claus von Bülow, the British society figure convicted and later acquitted of killing his wife, has died aged 92.

Von Bülow, who was born in Copenhagen, was convicted in 1982 of attempting to murder his American wife, Martha “Sunny” von Bülow, by giving her an overdose of insulin so he could gain her fortune and live with his mistress.

His conviction for attempted murder in 1982 at a trial in Newport, Rhode Island, was overturned on appeal and he was acquitted at his second trial in 1985. The story was made into a film, Reversal of Fortune, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Von Bülow moved to London after he was cleared. Riccardo Pavoncelli, his son-in-law, confirmed to the New York Times that he died at his home in the city on Saturday.

Sunny spent 28 years in a coma after what prosecutors alleged were two murder attempts by her husband, and she remained in a vegetative state until her death in 2008.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Claus von Bülow. Photograph: Time & Life Pictures/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

The trials caused a sensation in the 1980s. Prosecutors said Von Bülow had wanted to kill his wife to inherit a large portion of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress.

But the defence depicted Sunny, who suffered from low blood sugar, as an alcoholic and drug abuser who drank herself into a coma.

The case split the family: Sunny’s two children from her first marriage to an Austrian prince accused their stepfather of attempted murder, while the couple’s daughter maintained her father was innocent. She was for several years excluded from her grandmother’s will because of her belief.

Von Bülow, who was portrayed by Irons in the film, did not testify at his criminal trials but denied wrongdoing under oath in a civil case brought by his stepchildren.

He rarely spoke about the case, in part because of an eventual financial settlement reached with his stepchildren. “If I give an interview, it will be a $5m interview,” he said in 2012, referring to a fine he said he might face if he discussed the matter with the press.

The Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented Von Bülow and kept in touch with him for decades, said he scrupulously avoided the spotlight.

“He lived a good happy life following his acquittal because he decided to remain in private. I advised him once we won the case to disappear from public view. He, unlike OJ Simpson, accepted my advice,” he said on Thursday.

Before the settlement agreement, Von Bülow described the case as a disaster for all concerned. “This was a tragedy and it satisfied all of Aristotle’s definitions of tragedy,” he told members of the Harvard Law School during a 1986 talk. “Everyone is wounded, some fatally.”

When he was found not guilty at the second trial, Von Bülow expressed an interest in staying out of the public eye. “I want to be forgotten and live peacefully,” he said.

Dershowitz said he lived a “simple and humble life in a very small apartment”, enjoying the company of his daughter and grandchildren and attending the opera and theatre.

The trial had shed light on the lives of the super-rich during an era when Ronald Reagan was the US president and TV shows such as Dallas and Dynasty were extremely popular. Sunny Von Bülow was the heiress to a substantial fortune, with her mother’s net worth estimated at $100m.

The couple had a grand Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City and an oceanside mansion Clarendon Court in Newport, Rhode Island, which had been the setting for the 1956 musical High Society starring Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

The prosecution said Von Bülow on two occasions injected his wife with insulin in an attempt to aggravate her hypoglycemia and kill her. They said he could not face the financial consequences of a divorce that would cut him off from her millions.

A settlement in a civil case brought by his stepchildren was reached in 1987 in which von Bülow agreed to drop all claims to his wife’s fortune, to divorce her, and to refrain from discussing the case or profiting from it.

Von Bülow was born Claus Cecil Borberg in 1926 in Copenhagen. During the second world war, after the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Claus was moved to England and was brought up by his mother and maternal grandfather, Frits Bülow, a former justice minister in Denmark.

Claus adopted the Bülow name and was said to have added the “von” when he was a young adult.