High society trial near end

Press, 10 March 1982, Page 9

High society trial near end

NZPA-Reuter Newport, Rhode Island The tortured courtroom exposure of the private lives of the socialites “Claus and Martha von Bulow has ended after 57 days. Now a jury will decide if the case of the Danish financier and his SUS7S million heiress wife, lying in a coma in New York hospital, is one of attempted murder or of self-destructive excess. Evidence in the case against Mr von Bulow, charged with twice trying to murder his wife with insulin injections, ended yesterday with eight witnesses called by the prosecutor to counter the defence case. Judge Thomas Needham told the jury of seven men and five women it could start considering a verdict tomorrow after final arguments by both sides today. The jurors will be driven under police escort to hotel rooms each night until they reach a verdict. The judge advised them: “better bring a toothbrush.” Von Bulow, aged 55, once J. Paul Getty’s closest aide, returned to his hotel room with chief defence counsel after the last evidence was given. He had sat in court for two

months as the prosecution called his family servants, his step-children, and his own mistress to support its case that he plotted murder for the love of another woman and for 5U514.5 million in his wife's will. The jury heard • that Mrs von Bulow took-24 laxatives a day, had a facelift she did not even tell her children about, and once gave her husband a “licence to cheat” after telling him she no longer wanted sex with him. i Mrs von Bulow never knew that intimate details of her life were being related in court. She has lain senseless with a feeding tube in her nose for almost 15 months. The jury was even taken on a tour of Clarendon Court, the von Bulow mansion of Newport’s “millionaires’ row.” The defence case pictured her as a neurotic alcoholic and drug taker given to gluttonous indulgence in sweets forbidden by doctors. Surprise witnesses called by the defence testified that she herself said her husband’s first alleged attempt to kill her was in fact a suicide attempt and that she once recommended self-in-jection of insulin as a diet aid.