Claus von Bülow was acquitted of trying to kill his wife, then gave up her fortune to settle her children's $56 million suit

Martha "Sunny" von Bülow had two children, Annie Laurie and Alexander von Auersperg, by her first husband, Prince Alfred von Auersperg, and a daughter, Cosima, by her second, Claus von Bülow. Prosecutors said Claus tried to kill her with insulin in December 1979, which she survived, and again on 21 December 1980, which left her in an irreversible coma. In 1982 a Newport jury convicted him of attempted murder. The verdict was overturned on appeal, and a Providence jury acquitted him in 1985. In July 1985, a month after the acquittal, the two older children sued him for $56 million. Their grandmother had cut Cosima out of her will for siding with her father. In December 1987, before the civil trial, the parties settled. Claus agreed to divorce Sunny, to give up the $25 million he would have inherited at her death and $120,000 a year in trust income, and not to discuss or profit from the case. Cosima was restored to a one-third share of her grandmother's $100 million estate. Sunny lay in a coma for 28 years and died at a New York nursing home on 6 December 2008, aged 76. Her Newport house sold for $4.2 million, her Fifth Avenue apartment for $6.25 million, and her art and antiques for $11.5 million. Claus died at his London home in 2019, aged 92.