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Sunny von Bulow 'Was Like Sleeping Beauty'

Dunne recalls the woman behind the high-society scandal

By Kristina Loew, Newser User

Posted Feb 5, 2009 1:10 PM CST

(Newser) – Sunny von Bülow's death in December after 28 years in a coma brought her children no peace, writes the journalist most closely associated with the story, Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair. Her son's voice when he called with the news contained no "sense of 'Thank God it’s finally over for us,'" Dunne writes in a poignant look back at the scandal and its aftermath. "There was grief."

"She was a first-rate mother," writes Dunne, who admits to siding with Sunny's children from her first marriage over Claus von Bülow, the husband who was tried twice for attempting to kill her. Her funeral was a modest affair, put together "in haste, before the media got wind of it." And at her memorial service on Park Avenue, her children, reunited after a falling-out, permitted "not a single reference to the terrible event that changed all of their lives forever."

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In this Feb. 9, 1982 file photo Claus von Bulow, is seen in a Newport R.I. courtroom while standing trial for allegedly having attempted to twice kill his wife Martha "Sunny" von Bulow with injections... (AP Photo/pool)

The Mary Manning Walsh nursing home is seen Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008, in New York. Martha "Sunny" von Bulow, who spent the last 28 years of her life at the nursing home in a coma, died Saturday at 76. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)

In this undated file photo, Martha "Sonny" Von Bulow is shown. After surviving 28 years in a persistent vegetative state, Von Bulow died Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008. She was 76. (AP Photo)

In this Aug. 12, 1981 file photo, Martha "Sunny" von Bulow is seen in Providence, R.I. Von Bulow spent the past 28 years in a coma. (AP Photo/Providence Journal)

In this Feb. 9, 1982 file photo Claus von Bulow, is seen in a Newport R.I. courtroom while standing trial for allegedly having attempted to twice kill his wife with injections of insulin. (AP Photo/pool)

In this July 23, 1995 file photo, Vanity Fair reporter Dominick Dunne is seen in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

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The trailer for "Reversal of Fortune," the 1990 film about Claus von Bulow's trials for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny. (AyutthayaClips)

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Sunny was often portrayed by the defense, and portrayed again on film by the brilliant Glenn Close, as a drug-taking drunk. She was a first-rate mother. Kids don’t turn out as hers did by accident.
- Dominick Dunne in Vanity Fair

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Sunny von Bulow 'Was Like Sleeping Beauty'