Take Two

By Richard Stengel

Sequels, if they are to be successful, must combine elements of the original blockbuster with a new twist. The Von Bulow Affair II does just that. As before, there are the loyal maid with the German accent, the stepchildren who stand to inherit millions, the sleeping heiress who was allegedly the target of a murder attempt most foul, all set against the gilded backdrops of Newport, R.I., and Manhattan. But this time there is the promise of new and quirky characters, while the once icy defendant, lo and behold, seems to have come to life.

When the retrial of Claus von Bulow on charges that he twice tried to murder his wife with insulin injections began in Providence last week, the media glare was even more relentless than last time. The Danish aristocrat's wife Martha (nicknamed "Sunny," for her disposition) von Auersperg von Bulow, heiress to a Pittsburgh fortune estimated at $35 million, went into an irreversible coma at Christmastime 1980 at the couple's oceanfront Newport home. An impassive Von Bulow was convicted in 1982 on two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But last April, after his newly retained defense attorney, the high-powered Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, filed a brief claiming wrongful conviction, the Rhode Island Supreme Court threw out the verdict on technical grounds. The justices ruled that the contents of Von Bulow's "little black bag," found by his stepson Alexander von Auersperg and containing a used syringe with traces of insulin, were illegally analyzed by state authorities.

The first two days of televised testimony retraced the steps of the original trial. Assistant Attorney General Marc DeSisto in his opening argument depicted Von Bulow to the jury as a freeloading layabout: "He was living off her money, and he was living well. The defendant was well aware of what he would get if his wife died." The prosecution's first witness was Mrs. Von Bulow's maid of 23 years, Maria Schrallhammer, an overwrought, slightly bowed woman who could have stepped out of a whodunit. Schrallhammer recounted how her mistress had slipped into a coma while Von Bulow, sitting unperturbed on the bed reading in his bathrobe and pajamas, resisted calling a doctor for nearly five hours. "I picked her up and was holding her in my arms until the doctor came," said Schrallhammer, tears brimming in her eyes.

DeSisto, the new prosecutor, is an earnest but inexperienced 29-year-old legal beagle who already seems frustrated. Von Bulow's principal attorney for this trial is former Abscam Prosecutor Thomas Puccio, who is as brashly streetwise as Claus is polo-wise; Dershowitz, a constitutional expert, is advising him from the wings.

Von Bulow, who maintained an imperious aloofness during the first trial, seems to have undergone image surgery. Though he still looks as if he would be most at home in a uniform, he has taken to draping his 6-ft. 3-in. frame with the occasional plaid sport coat instead of the somber suits of the first trial. Last week, as Corinne Grande, the presiding judge, led jurors on a walking tour of Clarendon Court, the family mansion in Newport and the alleged scene of the crime, Von Bulow strayed over to the kennel to play with the three golden retrievers he has not seen in more than three years. Suddenly he broke down. He quickly removed a paisley pocket-square, dabbed away his tears, then abruptly reset his stern jaw.

The prosecution strategy mirrors that of the first trial: persuade the jury that Von Bulow tried to murder Sunny because of the $14 million he stood to inherit and because his mistress, Alexandra Isles, had threatened to leave him if he did not marry her. Isles, a socialite and former soap-opera actress whose dramatic testimony may have helped convict her ex-lover the first time around, has apparently left the country, and no one seems sure whether she will reappear.

The hard-ball defense team says it will remedy what Puccio regards as a bungled job the first time out. Puccio intends to portray Sunny as a bored, boring and spoiled brat, as well as a depressed drunk and drug abuser who may have intended to take her own life. As ever, Von Bulow can be seen, the / testimony playing itself out in front of him, leaning back in his wooden chair, with two perfectly manicured fingers placed horizontally across his lips.

With reporting by Timothy Loughran/Providence