The Newport Heiress Who Never Woke Up
If you are a woman, you will have experienced some variation of people telling you to choose your husband well. This piece of advice always seems to assume that every woman has thousands of proposals to choose from, and a biological clock that has never troubled her. And from among those many suitors, without the benefit of a crystal ball or being swayed by any anxieties or lusts, you are expected to pick a man who is flawlessly successful, and brilliant, and loyal and kind. Because if you do not, he might kill you, and then people will say it was your fault for not choosing better. Apropos of nothing—certainly nothing like that—let’s look at the case of Sunny von Bülow.
When considering the life of Sunny von Bülow, it is tempting to begin at the end. We are inclined to remember her as she was immortalized in the newspapers of the early 1980s—bed bound in a diabetic coma which may (or may not) have been induced by her husband Claus. She remained unconscious in an Upper East Side nursing home for 28 years, finally passing away in 2008.
But there was a great deal before that. Sunny was born Martha Sharp Crawford in 1931, on her father’s personal railroad car on the way to New York. She was the only child of George Crawford, the chairman of a utilities company. Her father called her Choo-Choo, but the nickname evolved into Sunny because of her cold, dour personality. Joking. It was because she was a very upbeat child, though perhaps somewhat less so after her father passed away when she was four. His death left her an heiress with an estimated wealth of around $75 million. As she grew up, society columns declared that “her beauty rivals her wealth.”
Her mother, daughter of the founder of the International Shoe Company, was extremely affectionate but also very protective, so much so that Sunny always seemed like a somewhat otherworldly creature. The newspapers reported that she was known for being “shy and delicate like a ‘princess.'”
Among other young Americans, she stood out—a friend from her youth recalled a trip to France where, while everyone else was milling about in Bermuda shorts and jeans, Sunny could be seen nearly floating in a pristine white linen dress and matching hat. On the same trip, Sunny claimed her favorite place in Europe was not Paris or Venice but Assisi because, she claimed, “it had such an air of holiness about it.” She was so shy that, when she had to speak with people she did not know well, she sometimes broke out in hives. She opted not to go to college, but remained a voracious student, frequently reading a book a day.
One oft-repeated anecdote involved a luncheon where Sunny was seated between two men she did not know. It was evident to onlookers that she was struggling to keep up a conversation and seemed to almost shrink in on herself. Then a tiger from the host’s menagerie escaped. Guests ran, but the tiger made its way over to Sunny, where it curled up while she happily fed it bites of her dessert, far more at ease with the animal than she had been with the people.
It would seem predictable that she would marry a prince possessed of “good looks that almost parodied the Prince Charming ideal.” This was not Claus, but Prince Alfie (Alfred) von Auersperg, a 20-year-old aristocrat working as a tennis pro at a Swiss resort, where Sunny and her mother were visiting. The two fell instantly in love, but those around them foresaw disaster. Alfie was wildly outgoing. Sunny was painfully shy. Sunny was rich, and Alfie’s family had lost their fortune when the Austrian Empire collapsed. Alfie had a European attitude toward infidelity (namely, that he could be unfaithful without too much complaint) while Sunny valued monogamy. This did not stop them from marrying on July 20, 1957.
They had several happy years together in Munich during which time Sunny hired a personal maid, Maria Schrallhammer, who would remain with her throughout her life. The couple had two children, Annie-Laurie (known as Ala) and Alexander, and Sunny made several close friends. But problems with the European lifestyle eventually began to present. Sunny, a passionate animal lover, hated Alfie’s many hunting excursions. Additionally, Sunny never learned fluent German. Alfie filled their home with many of his friends who were not only boisterous, but all spoke in “rapid fire German.” Alfie, supposedly, had no fear that Sunny would leave him and so “pursued his pleasures with little thought about the effect on his wife.” He was wrong.
In 1965, Sunny got a divorce and moved back to New York with the children. While Alfie was shocked, the divorce was exceptionally amiable, and the two remained friends. Sunny would claim, “You can’t hate Alfie. It would be like hating trees or grass.” Alfie, on his part, seemed to assume they’d reconcile. So he was shocked when, a year later in 1966, Sunny married Claus von Bülow.
Referred to as “Paul Getty’s man in New York”, Claus von Bülow reportedly worked as a personal assistant to the oil tycoon. Others would claim this meant he was Getty’s “secretary, his gofer, his pimp.” Many found the 6’5” Danish Claus handsome, similar to Robert Duvall in appearance, although the reporter Susan Stewart would later quip that he looked like “a cross between Prince Phillip and a very mean purebred dog.”
Claus would later claim that he was attracted to Sunny because she was the most beautiful woman he ever saw, but his friends claimed that would have made little difference if she had not been rich. Getty paid Claus the modern equivalent of 12,000 Euros a year. This made it difficult to maintain his lifestyle, which included a butler to whom he confessed he had $80,000 worth of debts. (Some people might take this as a sign not to retain a butler.)
After his marriage to Sunny, all such money problems evaporated. Claus and Sunny divided their time between London and New York, where they entertained lavishly. They bought a “cottage” called Clarendon Court in Newport. Claus took over much of the design, while Sunny busied herself with their new daughter, Cosima. During this era Sunny’s old friends noted that Claus snubbed all of them, leaving Sunny, never particularly social, more isolated while Claus involved himself in all the Newport charities.
Around this time, Claus von Bülow stopped working for Getty. He dabbled in New York theatre, where he would be one of the top investors in a Broadway show called Deathtrap. It was about how a man might murder his rich wife for her inheritance. In retrospect, people would always wonder how this was not a red flag for Sunny, but, well, everyone who buys mystery novels is hardly a killer. Besides, Sunny’s life had always been filled with generally nice, even-tempered people, and she had no real reason for caution. This is a moment that brings to mind an excellent line from Bojack Horseman: “When you see the world through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
In 1978, a very red flag appeared in the form of Alexandra Isles, the beautiful soap opera actress best known for playing the governess on Dark Shadows. She and Claus began an affair. By 1979, he declared his love and said that he wanted to marry her, but first had to extricate himself from his marriage to Sunny—preferably while retaining the funds that made his lifestyle possible. Alexandra told him she wanted everything to be settled by Christmas.
Convenient then, that Sunny was found unresponsive in bed at Clarendon Court on December 26, 1979. Her maid, Maria, first noticed that she hadn’t moved and was moaning at 9:30 in the morning. The maid told Claus to call the doctor. Claus declined to do so until 2 pm. When he finally called, he told the doctor that Sunny had been up and about in the morning, which, according to Sunny’s maid, was not true.
Maria would later write to her friend about the incident, claiming: “He [Claus] told me specifically that I don’t have to come [into Sunny’s room]. As I stood in front of the locked door, I heard her moaning. Determined, I knocked on the door and went in. He lay next to her and tried to convince me that she was asleep. It went on all day. He refused to call a doctor, and she sank deeper in her coma. At 6 p.m. I held her groaning in my arms as the doctor finally came through the door . . . Sometimes I get sick thinking what is going to happen next. Mrs. trusts her husband blindly and is totally dependent.” By the time the doctor arrived Sunny had gone into cardiac arrest and was rushed to the hospital. There she regained consciousness.
This event left people wondering what propelled Sunny into this state. It was attributed to heavy drinking the prior night. Claus claimed, “She was known for 15 years before she married me as somebody who got drunk in public, and that can be checked by an honest person.” But when presumably honest people did try to confirm, Sunny’s maid, again, claimed that she hadn’t been drinking heavily. Her son from her first marriage, Alexander, would also go on to explain that his mother rarely drank. Her housemaid, Kathleen Sullivan, who’d worked for the von Bülows for thirteen years, claimed that Sunny did drink occasionally, but she’d never seen her drunk. Everyone who knew her testified that she drank less than the average person.
Another explanation was that someone – maybe someone who would not call the doctor for 5 hours – had poisoned her or otherwise interfered with her health. When the hospital ran tests, they found her blood sugar level to be shockingly low, something that could happen if a healthy person had been given insulin injections, as insulin “eats” sugar. She was given glucose injections to help return her blood sugar to a normal level. The tests showed she had no alcohol in her system.
In any event, Sunny recovered and returned home. Maria told Alexander that she was fairly certain Claus had tried to kill his wife. But what were they to do? Sunny seemed to have no inclination to leave him. One of Sunny’s friends claimed, “Sunny felt very deeply that she had failed with her first marriage. She hated the idea that she might have failed a second time.” Alexandra Isles, meanwhile, sensibly decided the affair was a lot more trouble than it was fun after this episode and said that she and Claus should take a break.
Meanwhile, Ala, Alexander and Maria were all on the lookout for any evidence that might prove Claus was an attempted murderer. They would find a black bag containing a vial labeled “insulin.” Maria, confused by this as no one in the house was diabetic, queried Alexander, “Insulin? What for insulin?” Alexander, at the time, thought this was an innocuous finding – insulin, after all, normally not being regarded as a harmful drug.
Meanwhile, Claus was attempting to convince Alexandra to take him back. He pursued her to her new job in Washington in November 1980 and promised, again, that he was leaving Sunny.
The next month, on December 20, Sunny was once again feeling weak. Her husband brought her a cup of chicken soup and then carried her to bed. Some suspected that he might have given her tranquilizers—easily slipped into a drink—and then injected her with insulin. The next morning, he claimed he found her unconscious, sprawled on the bathroom floor. She was rushed to the hospital. This time, she would not wake.
Claus would go on to say that these attacks, which were evidenced by unusual levels of blood sugar, were “caused by overindulgence—the first by copious amounts of eggnog, the second by an ice cream sundae smothered in marshmallow sauce.”
Claus was tried and at first convicted of attempted murder. However, he appealed the conviction, retaining the services of high-profile lawyer Alan Dershowitz. The conviction was ultimately overturned on a technicality, that “the police had no search warrant when they seized from the mansion a ‘little black bag’ containing questionable drugs.” This allowed Claus to, as the Morning Sentinel claimed, “continue his appearances, chronicled in the better magazines, at marvelous parties on two continents.”
Throughout the trial, Sunny was smeared as an alcoholic neurotic who somehow brought her misfortune on herself. No one could understand why she didn’t simply leave Claus, as though a reluctance to leave a marriage indicates a desire to be murdered. “So often,” her son recounted, “it’s the victim who is put on trial, like our mother, who was helpless and could not defend herself.”
Maria went to work for Alfie’s sister. And while Cosima sided with her father, Sunny’s children from her first marriage founded the Sunny von Bülow National Victim Advocacy Center. Today, it is known as the National Center for Victims of Crime. Findings from the Center helped establish the Violence Against Women Act and the Stalking Resource Center.
As for Sunny, it is either a tragedy or a mercy that she was not in the least aware of her situation. As she lay in a coma, with 70 percent of her brain cells destroyed, she was able to hear sounds and recognize the difference between dark and light, but no more. Her children continued to visit, and her room was filled with fresh flowers until her death. They kept playing opera, which she loved. I like to think that sometimes, in that sleep between life and death, she had dreams. Perhaps of something pleasant, like tigers, which were a great deal kinder to her than men.