The Mysterious Case of Sunny von Bulow

Summary

Morbid Podcast

Episode: "The Mysterious Case of Sunny von Bülow"

Hosts: Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart
Date: January 8, 2026

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the infamous high society scandal and attempted murder case involving Sunny von Bülow, a wealthy American heiress, and her enigmatic husband, Klaus von Bülow. With their signature blend of heavy research, humor, and commentary, Ash and Alaina unpack the wild twists of the case—from Sunny’s privileged upbringing, to her mysterious comas, to the high-profile trials and bitter family saga that followed for decades. The discussion explores issues of wealth, family loyalty, medical forensics, the legal system, and the lasting impact on one of America’s notable families.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sunny von Bülow's High Society Upbringing

• Sunny’s Origins

  • Born Martha “Sunny” Crawford in 1931—in her father’s private train car en route to New York. [07:58]
  • Daughter of George Crawford (oil, gas, electric magnate) and Annie Laurie Crawford.
  • Inherited ~$100 million at age 4 after father's death—a sum that would be about $2.4 billion today. [09:10] Alaina: “Today, that would be about 2.4 billion dollars!”
  • Raised at elite boarding schools and debuted in New York’s high society. [09:40]

• First Marriage

  • Married Austrian prince & tennis pro, Alfred von Auersperg.
  • Had two children, Annie-Laurie (“Ala”) and Alexander.
  • Marriage soured over Alfred’s big-game hunting and flirtatiousness. Divorced in 1965.

2. Second Act: The Enigma of Klaus von Bülow

• Enter Klaus

  • Born Klaus Borberg in Denmark. After WWII, family scandal (father accused of being a Nazi collaborator).
  • Changed his surname and added “von” to sound “fancier.” [12:50] Ash: “He added the ‘von’ later to make himself rich and fancy.”
  • Law school grad; worked for oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.
  • Ash and Alaina riff on how certain names work with “von” and joke about high society (“It’s hard to Von. That’s why it’s exclusive.” - Ash, [13:22]).

• Marriage to Sunny

  • Married in 1966; settled between Manhattan’s 5th Ave & Newport’s Clarendon Court mansion.
  • Became a fixture in American aristocracy circles (Vanderbilts, Astors, etc.).
  • Had a daughter, Cosima, in 1967.
  • The marriage faltered: Klaus’s public affairs, especially with actress Alexandra Isles. The couple moved into separate bedrooms, maintaining appearances. [20:17]

3. Seeds of Suspicion: The Mystery of the Comas

• First Incident (1979)

  • Maid hears Sunny distressed; Klaus blocks medical intervention. Sunny eventually hospitalized, found with abnormally high insulin. Recovers, episode ruled as hypoglycemia. [25:10]

• Second Incident (1980)

  • Sunny found by her son, Alex, struggling, then face-down and unresponsive in the bathroom.
  • Paramedics and doctors again baffled; extremely high insulin level: 216 (normal is 5–15). [30:41] Ash: “Her insulin was at 216. That’s wild...”
  • Sunny slips into a permanent coma.

• Klaus’s Behavior Raises Eyebrows

  • Ash: “Paul Ripa... said Klaus looked at his wife with ice cold blue eyes and there was absolutely no feeling.” [29:54]
  • Shortly after, Klaus takes a vacation with Alexandra Isles, further upsetting Sunny’s adult children. [32:03]

4. Family Investigation & The Black Bag

• Suspicion Grows

  • Alex and Ala, suspecting foul play, consult family lawyer Richard Q.
  • Search Klaus’s locked closet (with a locksmith and private investigator): find the infamous black bag—pills, a used syringe, insulin. [35:10]
  • Tests confirm insulin in the syringe; neither Klaus nor Sunny had prescriptions.
  • Doctor threatens to contact authorities unless the family does so.

• Police Inquiry

  • Detective Jack Reese leads investigation, reconstructs how Sunny’s body was found, using his own wife to test the scenario. [37:52]
  • Interrogates Klaus, who gives inconsistent statements and is caught making suspicious moves during a search. [40:26]
  • Klaus is indicted for two counts of attempted murder.

5. The First Trial (1982): Greed, Gossip, and High Society

• Prosecution’s Case

  • Motive: money. Divorce would disinherit Klaus; if Sunny died, he got millions.
  • Medical experts testify overdose could only be from surreptitious injection.
  • Key testimony from maid Maria and son Alex about the black bag.
  • Alexandra Isles testifies about the ultimatum, admits her doubts about Klaus (memorable moment: “I thought it was a pack of nonsense. But then… I don’t know.” [50:20]).

• Defense’s Counter

  • Blames Sunny: Self-administered insulin, possibly to lose weight; paints her as psychologically troubled.
  • Suggests Alex planted the evidence to frame Klaus.
  • Questionable tactics in closing: defense lawyer whispers “suicide” to the jury, shocking Alaina:
    • Alaina: “Did he tiptoe over there… twiddling his mustache like a villain?” [52:52]

• Outcome:

  • Klaus found guilty on both counts; sentenced to 30 years. [53:35]

6. The Dershowitz Appeal and Retrial

• Enter Alan Dershowitz

  • Renowned/controversial defense attorney: “After speaking with Klaus and reviewing the evidence used to convict him, Dershowitz actually agreed to take on the case. Shocked later, he said, ‘Sounded to me like the evidence was convincing.’” [54:44]

• Problems with Prosecution's Evidence

  • Lab tests on insulin: wildly inconsistent (some tests showed 0, others 350+). [56:01]
  • Chain of custody: black bag seized without a warrant and not properly documented.
    • Alaina: “No one called that out... this is your biggest piece of evidence, you don’t want to risk that being thrown out.” [58:11]
  • Lawyer’s notes (Richard Q): original inventory did not mention insulin, contradicting earlier testimony.

• Result:

  • Supreme Court of Rhode Island grants a retrial. Black bag evidence is (mostly) suppressed.

7. Second Trial & Aftermath

• Changed Testimony and Circumstances

  • New trial proceeds without the crucial black bag; prosecution relies on witness recollections.
  • Alexandra Isles, no longer with Klaus, heavily implies he confessed to delaying calling for help, but inconsistency with prior testimony damages credibility.

• Outcome:

  • Klaus acquitted on all charges. [63:44]
  • Sunny’s older children file civil suit against Klaus; unsuccessful.
  • Inheritance wars: Cosima (daughter by Klaus) is nearly disinherited, then restored after Klaus relinquishes claims to Sunny’s fortune.

8. Legacy and Reflection

• Sunny’s Fate:
  • Remained in a coma for 28 years, until her death in 2008 at age 77. [65:55]
  • Family rift: siblings divided for decades.
  • Klaus moved quietly back to London, lived until 2019.
• Hosts’ Reflections:
  • Alaina: “That’s a gnarly—gnarly—story... a tragic family tale. Right?” [67:24]
  • Both express empathy for all three children and note that ultimate truth may never be known.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On High Society Trappings and Names
  • “[The] name alone… Any ‘von’ name in this case has ‘von’ names up the wazoo.” – Ash [07:41]
  • “It’s hard to von. That’s why it’s exclusive.” – Ash [13:22]
• On Medical Evidence
  • “Her insulin was at 216. That’s wild.” – Alaina [30:41]
  • “None insulin and all insulin.” – Alaina cracking up at the test result range ([56:01])
• On Defense Tactics
  • “Did he tiptoe over there, probably, and like, twiddling his mustache like a villain?” – Alaina, reacting to the lawyer’s conduct [52:52]
• On the Inheritance Struggle
  • “He gave up his claim so his daughter could get hers.” – Ash [65:07]
• Reflecting on the Tragedy
  • “Can you imagine how utterly horrific that was for her family?” – Alaina [66:10]
  • “It’s a really, really tragic story.” – Ash [66:28]

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Important Timestamps

• 07:58 – Sunny’s birth and early life
• 10:54 – Marriages and children
• 20:17 – Sunny & Klaus's relationship breakdown
• 25:10 – First coma incident
• 30:41 – Discovery of second incident, Sunny’s insulin level
• 35:10 – Discovery of black bag
• 53:35 – Klaus found guilty in first trial
• 56:01 – Inconsistent forensic results, start of defense appeals
• 63:44 – Klaus acquitted at retrial
• 65:55 – Sunny’s prolonged coma and eventual death

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Fun Fact Finale

• Cosmopolitan claims Kim Kardashian has a “glam clause” in her will: Her hair, nails, and makeup must be kept perfect if she’s ever unconscious.
  • Ash: “And when I do my will, I will be adding that to mine. And that’s a fact.” [69:18]

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Tone & Style

True to Morbid’s signature vibe, Ash and Alaina approach the content with deep research, conversational banter, and irreverent humor. Their empathy for victims and surviving family members is always present, especially in their closing reflections. They poke fun at high society, the “von” name trope, and legal drama, while remaining respectful and thoughtful about the tragedy and its impact.

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For Listeners:

This episode is a comprehensive, engaging dive into the Sunny von Bülow case that captures the excess, intrigue, and heartbreak of one of America’s most mysterious society scandals. Highly recommended for fans of true crime, legal drama, and “old money” secrets—with enough witty commentary to keep the mood from getting too dark.

Transcript

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[Alaina]

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[Ash]

I'm Ash.

[Alaina]

And this is Mor.

[Ash]

Oops, oops, oops, oops.

[Alaina]

Oh, I can't get too crazy with it. My voice is still getting back together.

[Ash]

Yeah. And then you'll hack through my episode.

[Alaina]

Yeah, I almost hacked through your last one. Yeah, we're like batch recording a little bit.

[Ash]

Yeah. You know, we're going to New York. We just came off of the holidays.

[Alaina]

We're just being responsible, you know, not.

[Ash]

Too much so that we're not like aware of what's going on in the world. Are we like, aren't able to talk to you about.

[Alaina]

Yeah, we're just like kind of getting a couple done. But I almost hacked my way through her last one. But then I realized that every time I felt like I was gonna cough if I just chugged water with liquid IV in it. This is not an ad, but it actually has liquid IV in it.

[Ash]

It should. You've been sick.

[Alaina]

Then it would make the cough go away. But then by the end of the episode, I had to pee so bad that I thought I was gonna die.

[Ash]

And then I happened to find a fun fact about urination giraffes, which hopefully.

[Alaina]

You just listened to.

[Ash]

It all worked out. I wonder oh, oh.

[Alaina]

Hold on. Oh. All right. I took some water.

[Ash]

I wonder what the fun fact will be today.

[Alaina]

The fun fact today?

[Ash]

Well, we say it at the end.

[Alaina]

Girl, that I know. But I'm just trying to lead into.

[Ash]

Oh, you're segueing. Sorry to interrupt.

[Alaina]

You said. Fuck that. We'll say it later.

[Ash]

I jumped in front of your segue.

[Alaina]

Jumped right in front of my segue. I died. It made me flip over.

[Ash]

You crushed me. I think he was so real.

[Alaina]

But yeah. So something cool that just happened was we were on watch. What happened? Every time I go to say that, I go to say watch what Crappens, which is an amazing podcast. We love Ronnie and Ben, but. Amazing. Oh, my God.

[Ash]

I. Surreal. Incredible.

[Alaina]

Still can't believe it.

[Ash]

I. I need to like, bask in it and then we can like do a full. Yeah, a full breakdown on the next episode.

[Alaina]

Exactly.

[Ash]

And you know, I will be doing that.

[Alaina]

You need to let it settle for a minute.

[Ash]

I just, you know.

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[Alaina]

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[Alaina]

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[Ash]

But wait, there's more.

[Alaina]

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[Ash]

All the things.

[Alaina]

All the things. Butcher Legacy. I'm so excited, guys. You're gonna love it.

[Ash]

I can't wait to read it.

[Alaina]

And you can put it in your back pocket, but it's a little thick. Little thick. But go get either one. Whatever one you feel is calling to you, go get it. Pre order it. Butcher Legacy. I'm really fucking excited about this story, guys. So I really hope you dig it.

[Ash]

I'm so excited because usually when Elena's writing a book, like the first two times she has me read so much of It. But this time she didn't have me read any of it. If anything, I read, like a paragraph of a chapter here, like twice maybe. So this. I'm going into this, like, virtually blind.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And that I'm really excited about. I do need to reread the last two over again so that I'm, like, up on everything for the third book.

[Alaina]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Ash]

Yeah. I'm really excited about it. Everybody should do that.

[Alaina]

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[Ash]

Yeah, go buy them.

[Alaina]

Go buy Butcher and the Wren in the Butcher game and then buy the Butcher legacy.

[Ash]

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[Alaina]

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[Ash]

You know what? People are going to have to start buying cargo pants, which is good because they're in again, or at least they were last season. But you're going to maybe make them popular for two seasons in a row because people are going to need more pockets to put your books into.

[Alaina]

It's true. And this one's. She's a little thick. Thick. She's a little thick.

[Ash]

I love a thick, so. I love a thicky.

[Alaina]

She might weigh down your booty a little bit. But you know what? It's worth it. It just can.

[Ash]

You know what? Squat with them in your pockets. Gains.

[Alaina]

Look at me. I'm trying. I'm trying to help you with your fitness goals.

[Ash]

20, 26 gains.

[Alaina]

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[Ash]

Look at you. Put some respect on your name. Sorry.

[Alaina]

It's going to be awesome. I can't wait. And I'll come see you this. This year to talk about it and.

[Ash]

Maybe I'll tag along.

[Alaina]

Maybe. Who knows, on the.

[Ash]

Depending on where I'm at. Yeah.

[Alaina]

Who knows? So go get the book.

[Ash]

I can't wait.

[Alaina]

It's fun.

[Ash]

I'm actually really excited.

[Alaina]

I am, too. Ah, yay.

[Ash]

What else is going on? Anything. I mean, those are two pretty big things.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

I said that, like, I needed more.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Our Twilight episode is gonna be coming out. Our New Moon episode is going to be coming out soon. I gotta start. I want to reread it, but I think I'm gonna listen to it so it goes a little faster.

[Alaina]

Smart.

[Ash]

And that will be such a different experience because that wasn't an option that I was at least aware of back in the day.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So that'll be fun.

[Alaina]

I'm really excited because the first one was such a blast to do. And I know you guys seemed like you guys really liked that. The Twilight episode So I. And we had so much fun doing it. Yeah. That I cannot wait to do New Moon. Because New Moon, as we all know, is batshit fucking crazy.

[Ash]

Yeah, it really is batshit. New Moon makes me really sad.

[Alaina]

It's a sad, actually. But it's a wild fucking ride.

[Ash]

It is. It gives me heartache, to be honest. I remember being. Absolutely. We'll get into it.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Another time.

[Alaina]

Don't worry. Another time on the bonus episode.

[Ash]

Yeah. Like next week.

[Alaina]

Yeah. We want to save it all.

[Ash]

Guess what I have for you today.

[Alaina]

What do you have?

[Ash]

I haven't done one of these in a while. At least it feels like that to me. A high society case.

[Alaina]

Oh, you. You love a high society case.

[Ash]

They just embody who I am.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like I'm not high society. I wish I was, but I think I wasn't. A past.

[Alaina]

Like your soul feels like it should.

[Ash]

Be one of them.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So we're going to be talking about the mysterious case of Sonny Von Bulow.

[Alaina]

Just that name alone.

[Ash]

Any Vaughn name in this case has Vaughn names up the wazoo.

[Alaina]

Oh, if there's a Vaughn up the Vaughn.

[Ash]

I'm so excited. All right, so let's talk about it. Martha, who was known as Sunny. Martha Sunny Crawford was born in her father's private train car.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

On September 1, 1931, in Virginia. All while her parents, George and Annie Lori Crawford, were traveling to New York.

[Alaina]

So just on the way to New York, she gave birth to a child.

[Ash]

In a private train car. Like her. What's richer than that?

[Alaina]

Yeah, that's. That's pretty high.

[Ash]

That's big money.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So by the time she was born, Sunny's father had already made a shit ton of money. First in the oil industry.

[Alaina]

All. All.

[Ash]

And then in gas and electric. And that year he was named the chairman of the board of Columbia Gas and Electric. So big motherfucking money. Shocking.

[Alaina]

But the motherfucking board we were talking.

[Ash]

About means he was gaining. He and Sunny's mother had gotten married in 1927 when George was 66 and Annie Laurie was 27. And four years later, Sunny was born. Given that he was 70 years old when his daughter was born and a very prominent figure in the world of finance and business, George didn't have much of a relationship with his daughter.

[Alaina]

Ah, yeah.

[Ash]

Yeah. And also, just like fathers and daughters weren't really, like, hanging out a ton back then. And in 1935, when Sunny was just four years old, George actually ended up dying after being sick briefly.

[Alaina]

O.

[Ash]

He left his entire fortune, though. Valued at more than $100 million back then.

[Alaina]

Holy.

[Ash]

$100 million back then. He left his wife and daughter.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

Today, that would be about $2.4 billion. Whoa. Big money.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

So after her father died, Sunny spent most of her childhood at different very elite boarding schools all along the east coast, including the Chapin School in Manhattan and St. Timothy's School in Maryland. And in 1949, when she gr. Graduated from high school, she had her debut in New York's high society.

[Alaina]

Oh, she debuted.

[Ash]

I've also been watching the. The old episodes of New York Housewives lately. And when Tinsley's on it with her mother, Dale next. This is giving that, like, next level.

[Alaina]

The Mortimers.

[Ash]

I'm so upset that I didn't get to make a debut in high society.

[Alaina]

I know you are.

[Ash]

Yeah. It's really.

[Alaina]

I'm sorry that we couldn't provide that for you.

[Ash]

Thank you. Thank you so much. Maybe my 30th birthday, we can have it be debutante themed.

[Alaina]

Oh, my God.

[Ash]

Maybe I will come out to high society.

[Alaina]

There you go. Watch.

[Ash]

Watch this space. So in 19. Keep your eyes on this space. So in 1957, 20 years after her father died, her mother, Annie Laurie, remarried to writer and sculptor Russell Atkin. And the two remained married until Annie Laurie died in 1984. That same year, 24 year old Sonny also got married in a very heavily publicized wedding to Austrian prince and tennis pro Alfred von Ausberg.

[Alaina]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ash]

Yep, of course.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So after the wedding, they moved from the US To Munich, where they lived briefly and then eventually settled in Kitzbuhl, Austria. The following year, Sunny gave birth to their first child, who she named after her mother, Annie Laurie, but they called her Allah.

[Alaina]

Oh, cute.

[Ash]

She was followed one year later by a son, Alexander. But unfortunately, outside of their, like, very opulent wedding and the little short honeymoon phase that followed, the Sunny and Alfred's relationship wasn't a very happy one. They didn't have a lot of shared interest. Sunny hated his enthusiasm for big game hunting and the fact that he was, like, a shameless flirt. Like, he would literally flirt right in front of her.

[Alaina]

Ew.

[Ash]

So in 1965, their marriage ended in divorce. In the settlement, Alfred actually received two houses and $1 million. And Sunny got the kids and was able to return to the U.S. damn. Which honestly, like, a million dollars is nothing to her.

[Alaina]

Yeah, that's true.

[Ash]

I'm sure it was something, obviously, but.

[Alaina]

You know what I mean? But in her situation.

[Ash]

So not long after they moved back to New York, Sunny Ran into her old friend Klaus von Bulow. She had met him in London years earlier while she was still married to Alfred. But they were just friends. But, you know, she went back to New York and they met up and they rekindled their friendship. And within a few months, their friendship kind of evolved and they were dating.

[Alaina]

Oh, look at Sunny and close.

[Ash]

It's beautiful. And then In June of 1966, a little over a year after she got divorced from Alfred, so Sunny and Clouse were married.

[Alaina]

Oh, look at that.

[Ash]

So from the moment they got married, the press and the public were very interested in Klaus's story. But no matter how deep reporters dug, they really couldn't differentiate between fact and fiction. When it came to Klaus, they did know that he was.

[Alaina]

Got a little Jay Gatsby in him.

[Ash]

Yes, Very, very that very that. So he was born Klaus Borberg in copenhagen, Denmark, in 1926 to Sven and Janna Borberg. And after World War II, his father, Svend, was actually accused of being a Nazi collaborator. Yeah, horrible. And served 18 months in prison, which I say give him more. After his dad died rid rest in distress, Klaus took his mother's maiden name, Bulow, but added the Vaughn later.

[Alaina]

Oh, yeah, he did.

[Ash]

To make himself rich and fancy.

[Alaina]

Oh, my God. He really is like Jay Gatsby.

[Ash]

And he also just gets it. You add Vaughn to your name instead of fancy and Bulow.

[Alaina]

Von Bulow sounds. It was a real fancy name.

[Ash]

It works perfectly.

[Alaina]

Yeah, that's the thing.

[Ash]

Like, you have to be selective about where you Vaughn.

[Alaina]

Because it can't just be like Vaughn. I'm trying to think.

[Ash]

Von Kelly doesn't.

[Alaina]

Von Kelly? Yeah.

[Ash]

Von Urquhart doesn't really work. No offense.

[Alaina]

It really doesn't.

[Ash]

I don't know who Vaughn. It's hard. It's hard to Vaughn.

[Alaina]

It's hard to Vaughn.

[Ash]

That's why it's exclusive.

[Alaina]

That's why if you get a name that you can. Vaughn with Vaughn.

[Ash]

Vaughn all the long. Vaughn.

[Alaina]

Yeah, Vaughn.

[Ash]

So, Von Buella. So by the time they reunited in 1966, Klaus had graduated from law school and he was working as an assistant to the notorious oil magnate, J. Paul Getty.

[Alaina]

Oh, we know him.

[Ash]

You remember him.

[Alaina]

We know him.

[Ash]

Remember when you know, remember that?

[Alaina]

He's gonna get his ass beat. Yeah. Remember that time?

[Ash]

But Klaus worked with him for a little while.

[Alaina]

I do remember that.

[Ash]

Do you remember that? Remember butthole changed.

[Alaina]

Vividly.

[Ash]

Remember butthole changed. That's what it was, right? Butthole change.

[Alaina]

I think.

[Ash]

Imagine if I was Just misremembering.

[Alaina]

You were just like, remember that? No, I don't. I do remember. You say I would beat your ass.

[Ash]

Listen, I stand 10 toes down, eat your grandpa's ass if he doesn't pay your ransom after your ear gets sliced off your head in the world to beat your grandpa's ass.

[Alaina]

I don't.

[Ash]

I don't advocate violence often.

[Alaina]

10 toes down.

[Ash]

I'll put my hands down.

[Alaina]

Yeah. I stand on business.

[Ash]

Phalanges down. Yeah. Let's ask if your ear gets cut off and he doesn't pay your rent.

[Alaina]

Say that with my whole chest.

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[Ash]

Titties out. I love when our cases connect, though.

[Alaina]

Like, whatever that is, you can go back. It's like, whoa.

[Ash]

So he worked for the good for that. After the wedding, Klaus and Sunny settled in a large apartment on 5th Ave. In New York, Right. Overlooking Central Park. It must have been gorgeous. But a short time later, Sunny purchased Clarendon Court, which was a massive mansion in Newport, Rhode island, and I believe still is. And obviously, at that time, the wealthiest families in the nation were vacationing in Newport, like the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and Doris Duke, who we also covered. So from that point forward, they split their time between New York and Rhode Island.

[Alaina]

Makes sense. Also, the Astors. Makes me think of Titanic. John Jacob Astor.

[Ash]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alaina]

And his new wife, who was with child, I believe. Yeah.

[Ash]

Oh, yeah.

[Alaina]

I think. Was she, like, a mistress? Yeah. I'm looking at Debbie for answers because I'm like, you and I watched this movie a hundred thousand times together.

[Ash]

I've only watched Titanic like, three or four times, and I can't watch it anymore because it literally makes me ugly. Sob. Yeah.

[Alaina]

I mean, I feel like watching it now would destroy myself.

[Ash]

I can't do it.

[Alaina]

But I was thinking about this. Just a little sidetrack, because John and I were talking about it last night, actually. I don't know why it came up.

[Ash]

You talk about the Titanic pretty frequently.

[Alaina]

We do. I don't know why, but he was talking about how he saw that movie in theaters. Oh, damn. For the first time. And he saw it with his mom, and his mom did not know.

[Ash]

Oh.

[Alaina]

That that was going to be part of it. Oh. So he was like. He was like. So here I am. He's like, those are the first boobs I ever saw were Kate Winslett boobs he ever saw. And he's, like, sitting in a movie theater with a million other people and his mom. But I was like, if you're getting your first boobs, Being Kate Winslo in that movie, I was like, good for you.

[Ash]

That's a good first set of movies. That is.

[Alaina]

I was like, that's pretty elite. And I was saying how I feel bad that kids that like young people today don't get to experience that era of Leonardo DiCaprio. The Romeo and Juliet Titanic era is a very specific era that nothing will ever replicate it and it will never come back. So it's just like one of. It's this very specific era where it was just like. Yeah. A very specific kind of Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Ash]

You know what, though? We experienced a very different Leo DiCaprio. And we have fun Leo. Stories that are alleged.

[Alaina]

What?

[Ash]

You know, like all the crazy stories about, like, headphones and stuff.

[Alaina]

Oh, yeah. No, that's what I mean. Like, the Leonardo DiCaprio of now is a very different situation than we had when we were younger. Again, I'm looking at Debbie like, like, confirm this for me because that was him and his, like, nothing. No one was like him.

[Ash]

We have, like, that point. Lucas Matson, because remember, they say that about him.

[Alaina]

I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ash]

And succession.

[Alaina]

Yeah, yeah. See? Yeah, that's different.

[Ash]

Different, different, Different.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

I'm. I'm. I'm chinning. I'm chin chinning. Your point?

[Alaina]

It was so, so pure then. I know.

[Ash]

And so, I mean, you know what, though? He has stayed so attractive.

[Alaina]

Who? Leo?

[Ash]

You don't think he's attractive anymore?

[Alaina]

Nothing beats Romeo and Juliet. Leonardo. No, he was literally.

[Ash]

No, I know.

[Alaina]

No, look up Romeo and Juliet, Leonardo DiCaprio. Just look at that. Specific.

[Ash]

I mean, I've seen that.

[Alaina]

But. But you need to visualize it again. No, I know, because that was a moment in my life that Watching that movie. And when he came on the screen, I said, what is this world all about? Yeah. I said, what do you. I said, what do you mean?

[Ash]

My closet still said Leonardo DiCaprio. I love Leonardo DiCaprio. From you.

[Alaina]

Him and the chain mail. That's. I feel like Titanic. And poor John was like, at that age, he thought it was just gonna be this, like, action packed movie.

[Ash]

And he's like, I didn't know that.

[Alaina]

There was gonna be like a full love story involved in it.

[Ash]

And Karen also probably was like, oh, we'll just go witness history together.

[Alaina]

Just wasn't. He wasn't ready.

[Ash]

Well, they didn't witness history. Weren't ready.

[Alaina]

They did, and that was it.

[Ash]

I can't imagine having to watch paint me like one of your French girls with my family.

[Alaina]

The car scene with the hand. Yeah. Oh, ruined me.

[Ash]

Yeah, that would ruin me. I would probably leave. I think I'd go to the bathroom.

[Alaina]

Yeah, I think that would be the end of me.

[Ash]

That'd be upsetting. All right, well, but how did we get there?

[Alaina]

Oh, John Jacob asked.

[Ash]

Oh, the asterisk, the asteroids?

[Alaina]

Because I had a weird moment of remembering that entire conversation. Good for you, though.

[Ash]

I love it. All right, so. So back to Sunny and being Vons. In 1967, a year after she married Klaus, she gave birth to their only child. Cosima, I believe is how you say her name. So at first, things in the von Bulow's life together were pretty much going great. Like, things were great. Klaus was no stranger to high society. You know, he was that, like, Jay Gatsby type, which is also funny because then we went into a whole Leonardo. But he mixed in easily with Sunny's friends and associates. Everybody found him charming, entertaining, I don't know, probably hot. But not long after Cosimo was born, things seemed to change. Sunny didn't love how Klaus was working very long hours and carrying on with other women in full view of the public.

[Alaina]

That would also be something I would be pissed off about.

[Ash]

Yeah, I would be pretty pissed.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

He, on the other hand, complained that she had completely lost interest in their relationship together after their daughter was born, which, like, maybe give her a minute.

[Alaina]

Yeah, just like a quick. A hot minute.

[Ash]

Yeah, just a sec. But eventually, they reached an impasse and they decided to move into separate bedrooms, keeping up appearances for the sake of the public, but leading very separate lives. I feel like that's, like, such a thing in high society. Like, they just, like, don't. Richard and Emily. Do they have the same bedroom?

[Alaina]

They do, yeah.

[Ash]

Oh, they do.

[Alaina]

Okay. Yeah.

[Ash]

Well, anyway, throughout the 1970s, suffering at one point. They do. I can't talk about it.

[Alaina]

Don't worry. It's. It's fine.

[Ash]

In the end, it's.

[Alaina]

Yeah. I don't want to besmirch the Richard and Emily.

[Ash]

Don't you dare. You never would.

[Alaina]

I never would.

[Ash]

Oh, gosh. So throughout the 1970s, Klaus and Sunny appeared to the outside world to be the very picture of American aristocracy. But behind closed doors, they continued to have very little to do with each other. And In March of 1979, Klaus started having an affair with former soap opera actress Alexandra Isles. And before long, they had fallen very deeply in love with each other. But Alexandra had absolutely no intention of being somebody's mistress or carrying on an affair behind Sunny's back. And she repeatedly pressed Klaus to divorce his wife. Which, you know, sorry.

[Alaina]

Something about that, like the moral high ground of being like, I will not continue fucking you unless you divorce your wife. Who do you think I am? Yeah, like, I love that. She was just like, I have no intention of being a mistress. Babe. You are.

[Ash]

I know.

[Alaina]

I will not carry on an affair. You are.

[Ash]

I know.

[Alaina]

Divorce your wife.

[Ash]

Wow. Yeah, it's all very messy. It's all very high society, shaky ass.

[Alaina]

Moral high ground to be standing.

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[Ash]

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[Alaina]

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[Ash]

So for months, Klaus talked about leaving Sunny, promising Alexandra that he was. I think that name is so pretty. I'm not talking about like her being a mistress or anything, but the name Alexandra.

[Alaina]

So pretty. Oh, it is. It's a very pretty name.

[Ash]

But I don't like the nickname Alex very much. Like, I don't dislike the name Alex, but if I had an Alexandra. I would only want people to call her Alexandra.

[Alaina]

Well, it's such a pretty name altogether. I don't mind the nickname, but the name. All I was gonna say all the way.

[Ash]

Yeah, all the way. All the way name.

[Alaina]

The all the Way name.

[Ash]

Yes. It's so pretty. But anyway, so he kept promising Alexandra that he was planning to break up with Sunny when the time was right. But the time, obviously, is never that great to leave your spouse.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So their affair dragged on, with Klaus making promises of getting a divorce that he seemed pretty unlikely to keep. Then, in December, 1979, a health scare kind of threw a wrench into Klaus and Alexandra's plans, causing Klaus to at least temporarily recommit to Sunny. It was about a week before Christmas, and Maria Schrelhammer, the maid at Clarendon Court, was cleaning the hallway outside of Sunny and Klaus's bedroom when she heard Sunny moaning on the other side of a locked door. So she tried to enter the room, but from the other side of the door. Clouse insisted that Sunny was fine and that they didn't need any help. When she was finally able to get into the room, Maria found Klaus and Sunny lying in bed. And Sunny, she said, did not look very good. When she suggested that they call the doctor, she said that Klaus strongly objected. Said Sunny was fine, she was just sleeping. And actually, she had gotten up a few times to go to the bathroom, so everything was fine. But by the end of the day, it was very clear that Sunny was essentially comatose and Klaus was not doing anything to help her, according to Maria. So Maria called for an ambulance, and Sunny was taken to Newport Hospital. At first, doctors couldn't figure out what had caused her to slip into the coma in the first place. But after several blood tests, they determined that she had very unusually high levels of insulin in her blood.

[Alaina]

How did that get there?

[Ash]

Great question. Doctors at Newport managed to bring her out of the coma in a pretty short amount of time. And they said the incident was hypoglycemia, but they noted no other irregular irregularities. Thank you so much. Irregularities at the time. So that was all very strange. But they were like, okay, I guess you, you know, ate too much something. Yeah, I don't know how any of that works.

[Alaina]

You just did some too much of something.

[Ash]

You hypo ed?

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You hypoed near the glycemia. So in the months after Sunny's return from the hospital, things basically went back to normal. But by the middle of the year, Klaus's affair with Alexandra had started. Once again. But it had reached a breaking point. Klaus argued that it would have been pretty cruel to propose a divorce to his wife since she had just been in a coma, and that he needed to be there for her recovery.

[Alaina]

Valid.

[Ash]

Me. I would argue that it's pretty cruel that you're still carrying on an affair with your wife, on your wife when she was just in a coma.

[Alaina]

Also valid.

[Ash]

Maybe could end that.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Yeah. But by June, Sunny was in good health, and Alexandra was once again getting the feeling that Clouse was not going to leave her. So she didn't want to continue on. No, it's not. She didn't want to continue on with the affair, so she gave Clouse an ultimatum. Divorced Sunny within the next six months, which I was like, damn, that's a nice ultimatum.

[Alaina]

Holy.

[Ash]

Or I'm done here. So that put Clouse in a difficult position. The family's attorney, Richard Q. Said he had no money, and so divorce, as he saw it, was not an option. It would leave him penniless. But if Sunny was dead, then he would have her title to her house in Rhode island, her wonderful apartment in Manhattan, and a great deal of money.

[Alaina]

Oh, this is always when it gets a little sticky.

[Ash]

Yeah. And that's a quote, by the way. That's not my words.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So the months passed on, and Klaus dragged his feet, promising Alexander that he was going to go through with the divorce as soon as he felt like the time was right. But in December 1980, another emergency occurred at Clarendon Court, and this time, it was a lot more serious than the last one. So on December 20th, sunny son Alex arrived home and found his mother on the first floor, struggling to get up the stairs. It was less than a week before Christmas, and Sunny had spent the last week just preparing for the holidays. And, yeah, you know, I was gonna say, you know, mom's on holidays. You just got done with that and you got sick as a dog. So Alex assumed that she was just very exhausted from all the work that she was putting into it. So he scooped her up and he carried her upstairs to her room and he laid her in her bed, said goodnight, and just. Just gave her some time to rest. But the next morning, when he went back to check on her, he found her face down on the floor of her bathroom.

[Alaina]

Oh, geez.

[Ash]

She was unconscious. Her nightgown was gathered up around her waist and there was a small amount of blood around her mouth.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

So he was panicked now and called for an ambulance, which luckily got there in just a few minutes. Former paramedic Paul Ripa said, I knew as soon as I walked into the room and knelt beside her, she was in trouble.

[Alaina]

Ooh.

[Ash]

So the paramedics made a quick evaluation of Sunny's condition, and they noted that cut that she had on her upper lip, which appeared to be where the blood around her mouth had come from. And the presence of blood now made sense. But neither Ripa or his partner could find any explanation for the cut itself. There was nothing on Sunny or near her that could have caused the cut. And if she had hit her head during the fall, it would have caused more damage than just that small cut on her lip. So the scene didn't really necessarily make sense.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So they couldn't revive her there. So they loaded her back into the ambulance and took her again back to Newport Hospital, and Klaus rode in the back with her. Now, Paul Ripa had been a paramedic for a long time at this point, so he had seen all kinds of different behaviors from people in very stressful situations, not unlike this one. And he found Klaus's demeanor to be very odd, in his opinion. He said Mr. Von Bulow looked at his wife with ice cold blue eyes, and there was absolutely no feeling. Oh, and it's like, in most cases, we're generalizing, but in most cases, somebody in this position where, like, their spouse is unconscious and nobody knows why, maybe you would make, like, an attempt to comfort your loved one, no matter. And, like, maybe you'd continue talking to them even if they can't hear you. But according to Paul Ripa, Klaus just seemed very removed from the situation and never said a word which you can understand would look a little bit weird. But also, like, sometimes people disassociate in stressful situations. Yeah, for sure. And honestly, like, I mean, I've never been in a situation like that with my spouse, luckily. But I. I feel like we've been in similar situations in other. With other families, with other family members, and I. I kind of, like, do disassociate a little bit.

[Alaina]

Yeah, I definitely go into, like, straight up, like, just, like, what needs to be done.

[Ash]

Yeah, same exactly.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So maybe that's where he was. Who's to say?

[Alaina]

Who's to say?

[Ash]

But at the hospital, Sunny's situation, unfortunately, did take a turn for the worse. The doctors in the ER weren't able to revive her, and they couldn't determine what had caused her to slip into a coma in the first place. But when the results of her blood test came back a couple days later, they were mostly normal. But There was the exception of her insulin level, which was 216 micro units per milliliter.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

The normal range is between 5 and 15.

[Alaina]

Holy.

[Ash]

And hers was at 216.

[Alaina]

That's wild.

[Ash]

Like bananas. So the amount of insulin in Sunny's blood was obviously extremely high for any person, regardless of circumstance. But it was especially peculiar for Sunny, who, aside from the one incident the previous year, wasn't known to have any health problems whatsoever. So under the circumstances, the doctors concluded that her body hadn't just generated that amount of insulin on its own. Yeah, that insulin had to have been administered either by Sunny or somebody close to her. But, like, why would somebody do that?

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So weeks passed, and unfortunately, she just seemed to slip deeper and deeper into her coma, and she wasn't showing any signs of improvement. So in early January, she was transferred to a long term care unit at Columbia Hospital in Manhattan. Meanwhile, back in Rhode Island, Alex and his sister Allah started to grow suspicious of their stepfather. The tension, which, like. Yeah, I can't blame them because they knew, like, the tension between Klaus and Sunny wasn't a secret. And I don't think the affair was a secret either. So, I mean, they're probably pissed. You know, like, that is going to make you pretty suspicious.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So, among other things, within a few weeks of Sunny being admitted to the hospital, Klaus was taking a lavish vacation with Alexandra Isles. Like, nothing had happened.

[Alaina]

Ew.

[Ash]

In a few weeks.

[Alaina]

That's icky.

[Ash]

Like, your wife is lying. Yeah, that's on both their part.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So while Sunny's children from her first marriage may have grown suspicious of Klaus, there was nothing about Sunny's condition to doctors at that point that suggested foul play for, like, enough for the police to investigate the situation, which is really weird to me, but, like, I don't know. Different time.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So still, Alex and his sister were convinced that Klaus had done something to their mom. So they reached out to the family lawyer, Richard Q. And he was a former Manhattan district attorney, and the family is, like I said, personal lawyer. So he suggested that while they really had no cause yet to go to the police, there was nothing preventing them from looking into things on their own.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So Alex kind of started looking into Klaus's behavior in the months leading up to Sunny's coma. Like, kind of like looking back on a few things.

[Alaina]

This, these. These are some kids right here.

[Ash]

Yeah, these are the kind of kids you want to have. So, like I said, it wasn't shocking or new information that their dad was having an open affair, but what was surprising was that in the months before the incident, Klaus was allegedly spreading rumors about Sunny, including a rumor that she was struggling with a drinking problem and an addiction to prescription pills, which he said had started long before he met her. But as far as her own children knew, Sunny was never much of a drinker. And this rumor kind of seemed to come out of nowhere. It's like, why are you. Like, why would you even do that?

[Alaina]

Yeah. Why are you setting her up to.

[Ash]

Be, like, tarnish her name, you know, and, like, make it look like she has.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Issues with substances.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So the next and possibly the most consequential aspect of their investigation came in Alex's casual discussions with the maid Maria. At the time of Sunny's incident, both Alex and Maria remembered seeing Klaus regularly in possession of a small, black leather bag, which he used to carry his own medications.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

Alex became absolutely convinced that the bag had something to do with his mother's coma now, and he was determined to find out what was in that bag. But knowing that he might need some help, Richard Q. Suggested that Alex not search the house alone. So he hired a private detective and a locksmith to accompany him as he searched the house. So one afternoon, a few months after Sunny had been transferred to New York for care, Alex and the other two private detectives searched the entire house in Rhode island, and they found nothing out of the ordinary. But when they came to Klaus's room, because, remember, they had separate bedrooms, they discovered that the closet where the housekeeper Maria said she'd seen the black bag. That closet was locked.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

So at Alex's direction. And he has every right in the world because this is his house.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

The locksmith broke the lock, and inside the closet, they found the black bag.

[Alaina]

What's in the black bag?

[Ash]

At the time, it didn't occur to Alex or the private detective that they should photograph the bag as they found it or that they could have dusted it for fingerprints or anything like that. They just wanted to look inside and find out what was in there.

[Alaina]

I mean, private detective.

[Ash]

Yeah, like Alex. I understand Alex.

[Alaina]

I get not thinking of that. Private detective.

[Ash]

There's two private detectives. But Alex took the bag to Richard Q. And at his office, they opened the bag, and they found several bottles of pills, mostly sedatives, a used syringe, and a bottle of insulin.

[Alaina]

Ding, ding, ding. Weird.

[Ash]

So even though Sunny's coma had obviously been caused by an insulin overdose, Richard Q. Still didn't think that there was enough evidence to suggest that a crime had been committed. So he I think. I mean, you like. To us, it's like he literally has everything that you would think caused that, but you do need a lot.

[Alaina]

Well, it's like the way it was found, all this kind of stuff. Could get a little hair.

[Ash]

Yeah. It's shaky. Yeah, exactly. So he believed that the police would probably decline to investigate. And also, you have to remember, these are connected people. Like in high society.

[Alaina]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ash]

So instead, he sent the contents of the bag to the family's doctor, who immediately noticed that the needle appeared to have been used.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

So, based on his suspicions, the doctor sent the needle out to be tested, and the results showed that it had contained insulin at one point. Oh. But as far as the family doctor knew, Klaus nor Sunny had ever been prescribed insulin, so neither of them would have a need for it to be in their possession.

[Alaina]

Huh.

[Ash]

So, given the result of the test, the doctor brought his suspicions back to Alex and the family attorney and said either they could go to the police at this point or he was going to.

[Alaina]

Good for him.

[Ash]

He's like.

[Alaina]

He's like, this is weird.

[Ash]

Exactly. So a few days later, Alex and Richard took everything that they knew to the Rhode Island State Police, and they handed over the black bag and its contents. They gave the detective the entire backstory on Klaus and Sunny's entire relationship leading up to her coma, including the fact that this was not the first time that she had mysteriously slipped into a.

[Alaina]

Coma with high insulin levels.

[Ash]

With high insulin levels. Exactly. And based on the evidence he'd been given, Detective Jack Reese started speaking to the other members of the family, including Klaus, who was very cagey, he said. Reese said there was a lot of inconsistent statements, and the more we got into it, the more they pointed toward Klaus.

[Alaina]

Ooh.

[Ash]

So the first thing that struck him as strange was the way that Sunny had been found on the bathroom floor. According to the paramedics, her head was positioned under the toilet. There was that blood on her face. And like I said, her nightgown was pulled around her waist. And so it was kind of. It looked like she had been placed there, not that she had fallen right there.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So feeling that Sunny's position on the bathroom floor was one of the keys to understanding everything, Rhys actually enlisted the help of his wife, who was right around Sunny's height and weight. And they used their own bathroom as, like, kind of an informal crime lab to. To test these things out.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Ash]

So over and over, they went through various scenarios that could have led to Sunny landing in that position, and none of them resulted in Rhys's wife landing.

[Alaina]

The way that Sunny did, especially under the toilet.

[Ash]

Yeah, like, head under the toilet seat. But then, to test another hypothesis of his, Jack carried his wife into the bathroom and slowly let her slip out of his arms and onto the floor. And when he did that, not only did she land on the floor in the exact position that Sunny had, but as she slipped from his arms, her nightgown got hung up on his arm, and. And it bunched around her waist.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Ash]

So.

[Alaina]

Holy shit.

[Ash]

Interesting.

[Alaina]

That is very interesting.

[Ash]

I just love, like, that kind of detective work when they bring it up.

[Alaina]

And go, like, really down deep in it.

[Ash]

Yeah. So, given everything that they learned, Rhys was pretty confident that it was time to have a formal interview with Klaus. But he also didn't want to give Klaus any advanced notice to, like, get answers ready or anything like that, or craft a story. So he surprised him outside of his Manhattan office and brought him in for an interview.

[Alaina]

Oh, damn.

[Ash]

For the most part, his answers to the questions were to be expected. He maintained that he didn't know how Sunny landed in a coma. He did confirm that he and Alexandra Isles had been having an affair for the last two years. So he was honest about that. So at that point, the interview, like, was pretty standard. Nothing. Nothing big was popping out. And at the time, Klaus was unaware, though, that Sonny's son Alex had found the black bag of medication at Clarendon Court and was also unaware that the family lawyer had been investigating him. So when Rhys offhandedly asked if Sunny would have any reason to use insulin, Klaus replied, by God, that's the last thing she would need. Oh, it's like the mind bag of medications.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So at. Now, at this point, he tipped them off to the fact that he was being investigated. And Reese was pretty confident that Klaus was going to go back to Rhode island to go get his black bag. So he quickly filed a request for a search warrant for Clarendon Court. And a few days later, state police met Klaus in the house in Newport before setting him down for the second time. Reese participated in the search of this home, which is literally a mansion. So it was, like, intense.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And throughout the search, he made multiple important observations. So they're listed. One, Klaus hadn't been living at the house since before Sunny fell into a coma. So the bedroom closet was still locked, just like Alex and the locksmith had left it when they found the bag. Two, on a pad on Klaus's desk in the bedroom, there was a note in his writing that simply said, black box.

[Alaina]

Ooh.

[Ash]

And three, during the search of the closet, investigators found a black metal lock box where Klaus was known to keep his bag of medications.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

So while technicians and troopers continued the search of the house, Jack Reese sat down with Klaus for another interview. And that's when he brought up the bag of medications. Now, right after the question was ra. Was raised, Klaus excused himself very abruptly, just for a moment, and then returned a few minutes later. When the interview was over, Rhys went into his bedroom. Klaus's bedroom, and found that the note on the pad was now gone and that the closet had been re. Locked.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

He said, we surmised that he hadn't found the black bag and was probably a little concerned that he may have misplaced it.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Ash]

So, based on his possession of the insulin and the used needle and the statements from friends about his affair with Alexandra Isles and the ultimatum that she'd given him.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Jack Reese was like, yeah, I think Klaus von Bulow probably had the means and motive to kill his own wife.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

So in early 1981, Rhys took everything he had to the Newport County District attorney, who quickly convened a grand jury to review the evidence. And a week later, Klaus von Bulow was indicted on two counts of attempted murder.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

Because, remember, Sunny's literally in a coma during all of this.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like, she's still alive, so they can't get murder. So on July 31, 1981, Klaus was arraigned in a district court of Providence, Rhode island, on 2 charges of attempted murder. One for the attempt on Sunny's life in 1979, and then the most recent one. He pleaded not guilty to both charges. And in a statement to the press, his lawyer, John Sheehan, said Klaus was devastated by the accusation and the children's belief that he tried to kill their mother. He told reporters, I can't conceive of a doctor saying with reasonable certainty what happened to cause the coma. Like, I think that's literally a doctor's entire job, babe.

[Alaina]

It's like, isn't it? Is this the attorney being like, I can't even fathom that. Yeah. Like, well, that's not for you to fathom, so don't worry.

[Ash]

But it's also pretty. Pretty fathomable.

[Alaina]

That's literally his job.

[Ash]

Yeah. That's literally why he went to medical school.

[Alaina]

I can't imagine how he would know this medical thing.

[Ash]

I can't conceive of it.

[Alaina]

Like, okay, yeah.

[Ash]

I'm like, have you heard of medical tests?

[Alaina]

Like, he's a doctor.

[Ash]

But he insisted that whatever the reason was and that Sunny had slipped into a coma. Had nothing to do with Klaus.

[Alaina]

No.

[Ash]

And in their own statement to the press, Sunny's two children, Alex and Allah, told reporters, we feel very strongly that he tried twice to murder our mother. We believe that he deprived her of life, as we now know. Why do I keep saying as we know it, as we know it deprived her of many years of happiness.

[Alaina]

You're like, I really want now to be.

[Ash]

I know when I think, when I see. No, I just want to say now, too. So as far as the prosecution was concerned, the case was pretty straightforward. And it was just a matter of greed because of. Like I said, if Klaus was to divorce Sunny, he was going to be written out of her will. He would have lost access to the $15 million that he felt he was entitled to. But if she died, he would have received $5 million immediately, and the rest would have been placed into a trust fund, and he would have been able to access that after a period of a few years. So basically, they were saying that faced with losing either his relationship with Alexander Isles or access to Sunny's fortune, he decided to kill his wife so that he didn't have to give up either.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Ash]

He could keep his affair and get.

[Alaina]

All the money, have his cake and eat it, too.

[Ash]

Exactly. So within days of the indictment, Klaus von Bulow's criminal team was already planning their defense strategy that not only refuted the prosecution's charge of attempted murder, but also then pinned responsibility for the coma on Sunny herself.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Ash]

Which is like, that's nice.

[Alaina]

Cool.

[Ash]

Real shitty.

[Alaina]

Classy.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Hella yeah.

[Ash]

So in an interview with the press, one of his lawyers, Harold Faringer, told reporters, we're not trying to prove Sunny deliberately tried to kill herself those two times a year apart, but she was so very sick and reacted. Reacted so badly to so many foods and drugs that whatever happened was clearly her own fault. Nice.

[Alaina]

Wow. Nice. Wow. And they're like, and since she's not here to defend herself, seems like we can just close this book.

[Ash]

Yeah, we'll just all over.

[Alaina]

That's fine.

[Ash]

And to prove his claim, Fenger said there was an incident a few weeks before Sunny fell into the coma the second time, where she went to the emergency room after fearing that she had taken too much. Much aspirin. He said, that may have been a suicide attempt or just a up. I'm like, I don't think that she would have tried to end her life by taking aspirin.

[Alaina]

No.

[Ash]

Like, and probably not. Also, why would she then go to the. The er Exactly.

[Alaina]

Like, okay, yeah.

[Ash]

So by the time the trial started on February 1, 1982, obviously the story was plastered across the front pages of, like, every newspaper from one side of the country to the other. And everybody had their own opinions on whether or not Klaus was guilty. Some news outlets maintained an objective, even tone, but a lot of people didn't really have that much trouble accepting that Klaus probably tried to kill his wife for money.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

I mean, it's a tale as old as time.

[Alaina]

It is, it's true.

[Ash]

But what was surprising for people, especially outside of Newport, was the composition of the jury, because most people knew Newport to be full of very, very wealthy people who lived in town. So it came as a surprise when the jury actually turned out to be made up of a lot of middle class residents. Actually, people were like, wait, middle class people live in Newport?

[Alaina]

What?

[Ash]

So prosecutor Stephen Famiglietti asked rhetorically in an interview, where are you going to get a jury of his peers? It's almost impossible to get 12 people with his socio. Socioeconomic background valid, which is valid. But honestly, you probably could find them in your.

[Alaina]

I know that's true.

[Ash]

So despite the evidence against Klaus, the prosecution had no illusions that it was going to be quick or an easy trial. Steven said, I thought it was an extremely difficult case, primarily because it was a circumstantial evidence case, meaning there was no eyewitnesses to the alleged criminal conduct. There was so much medical testimony which I wasn't sure I was ever going to be able to tie together in order to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Alaina]

Well, that he's like, I did not know if I could do my job here.

[Ash]

Pretty much. I mean, it's a tough one. So in their case to the jury, the prosecution did their best. They presented multiple medical experts, experts who explained that the only way for Sunny's insulin level to be that high would have had to have been for somebody to inject her with insulin.

[Alaina]

Yeah. Which is. Yeah.

[Ash]

I mean, you. All you have to do is say what a normal one. Normal insulin level is and then say what hers was. Yeah.

[Alaina]

And that's pretty compelling.

[Ash]

I say it was compelling to me when I first read this.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

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[Ash]

Now. When one of the doctors was asked directly whether he thought foul play was involved in Sunny's condition, he replied that he believed the coma was caused by the surreptitious administration of insulin, AKA like overdose of insulin. And her own physician testified that she was in very good health and as far as he knew, she again had no need for insulin.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And he also testified that to his knowledge, and contrary to rumors that were believed to be spread by Clouse himself, Sunny didn't have any kind of drinking problem or any problem with drugs.

[Alaina]

And that's her doctor.

[Ash]

That's her literal doctor. Like that's big. So the most critical testimony came from the maid. It's like a game of Clue. Yeah, Maria Schrelheimer or Hammer, who told the jury about her previous experience with Klaus when she said he refused to help his wife. And then she went into that coma that first time in 1979. So both Maria and Sunny's son Alex testified that after Sunny's first coma, that's when they started seeing Klaus with that black bag of medications which they now knew contained medications, including insulin.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

So the biggest blow to Klaus von Bulow's claims of Innocence came a little over two weeks into the trial when Alexandra Isles was called to testify.

[Alaina]

Oh.

[Ash]

She confirmed that, yes, she had given Klaus an ultimatum because she didn't want to be involved in an extramarital affair anymore. And she said at no point did she encourage he do anything other than divorce his wife. And when she learned that he was under investigation for attempted murder, she told the court, I thought it was a pack of nonsense. But then when the prosecutor asked her whether she still thought it was nonsense, she looked away and then replied, I don't know.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

And when the prosecutor asked her whether or not she was still in love with Klaus, she said, I don't know.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

So it was very clear that her feelings had shifted in a big way.

[Alaina]

And that hearing, what was going on.

[Ash]

And that's gonna hit with a jury. Of course it is. So when the prosecution rested their case, obviously the defense took over for what would be a pretty short presentation. In his opening statement, Sheehan told the jury what happened to Sunny was not anyone's fault but her own. And that sad fact will emerge in this case if the truth is to prevail. I would like. I'd be a little pissed off at this.

[Alaina]

That's a dick move.

[Ash]

It really is.

[Alaina]

I know it's his job, but I'm like, damn, you sound like an.

[Ash]

Yeah, I would not want to. I would not want to find him innocent just because of that statement.

[Alaina]

And that's like, it's their own fault.

[Ash]

That's really wrong of me, but I feel that way.

[Alaina]

But, like, don't put me on this jury.

[Ash]

Yeah, don't. So if you're mean, don't put me on a jury.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Maybe that's how I could get out of jury duty.

[Alaina]

Yeah. You're like, I'll immediately think that it's.

[Ash]

If you're mean, I'll. I'll just go the other way.

[Alaina]

I'll convict your client.

[Ash]

They're like, okay, you can go now, miss. So I'll convict your client.

[Alaina]

Jesus Christ.

[Ash]

So the defense alleged that Sunny was a psychologically disturbed woman, they said, who took insulin in a reckless attempt to lose weight.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

They also argued that if it appeared that Klaus was responsible for his wife's condition, that was because her family had gone out of their way to make it happen seem that way.

[Alaina]

Oh, we're pulling the family in now.

[Ash]

Yeah. And the she in there even called into question the discovery of the black bag and went as far as to suggest that Alex had planted it himself in order to frame his stepfather. And make sure he was cut out of the will.

[Alaina]

Team Alex, Absolutely. Because no, that's so fucked up.

[Ash]

I don't believe that.

[Alaina]

If I know Alex, which I don't at all. Never even seen a picture of him. I don't even know if he's real.

[Ash]

He is real, but I can confirm.

[Alaina]

Team Alex, Yeah. If I know Alex, he didn't do that.

[Ash]

I'm like, come on, that's really shitty.

[Alaina]

Plant it.

[Ash]

I don't think so.

[Alaina]

No.

[Ash]

So after almost two months of testimony and evidence, the case went to the jury for deliberation in mid March. And in his closing statement, Harold Faringer made his case one final time. He said, I don't know what happened here. I don't know if anybody ever will. Then, as if to undermine what he just said, he basically went over and whispered to the jury, suicide. Like, what a douchebag.

[Alaina]

Is he a 12 year old boy? I'm fully confident that's the most insane behavior I've ever heard. He's just like, like, I feel like it was like, like, it's just what?

[Ash]

It's like a performance.

[Alaina]

It's like he. Did he tiptoe over there probably and like, like twiddling his mustache like a villain?

[Ash]

What did. And like, just so you know, like.

[Alaina]

I don't know what could have happened.

[Ash]

Yeah, I do. Mind you, this woman is laying in a coma.

[Alaina]

That's like, what is wrong?

[Ash]

And she has, she's a mother to three children. And you're like, you, you literally just said you don't know what happened, but then you're gonna go suicide.

[Alaina]

That's circus.

[Ash]

You're a douchebag.

[Alaina]

Circus behavior.

[Ash]

Yeah, ridiculous.

[Alaina]

That's dumb as hell.

[Ash]

The case may have all been circumstantial, but in the end, the jury could not deny that all of the evidence did point to Klaus. So after deliberating for six days, they returned to the court and they found Klaus Von Bulo guilty on two counts of attempted murder. And the judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

Now, everybody was actually very shocked by this, because if we know anything, wealthy people do get away with a lot of things, especially back then.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But Klaus Von Bulo had no intention of staying locked up. And within a few days of the verdict, he had already placed a call to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. By that time, Dershowitz had built a reputation as a very capable lawyer representing clients like Patty Hearst, adult film star Harry Reams. And he represented people in cases where the odds of an acquittal were Slim. In the years after the Von Bulo case, he actually would go on to become a pretty controversial figure. He represented Mike Tyson, O.J. simpson, Jim Baker, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein. And I'm just gonna leave that right there.

[Alaina]

And I'm gonna leave the room.

[Ash]

Bye. After speaking with Klaus. Yeah, like I said, controversial.

[Alaina]

Gross.

[Ash]

After. I'm gonna leave it there. After speaking with Klaus and reviewing the evidence used to convict him, Dershowitz actually agreed to take on the case. Shocked later, he said, I hadn't followed the case very closely. I knew he'd been convicted. Like most people reading the newspapers. Sounded to me like the evidence was convincing.

[Alaina]

Wow, Alan.

[Ash]

But from his office at Harvard, he assembled a legal team, mostly made up of his law students, and they broke up into smaller teams, each focusing on specific pieces of the prosecution's case. He said, first meeting, I knew this case was going to turn on those Q notes, meaning Richard Q. Ah. So when the district attorney took the case to trial, nobody had actually bothered to subpoena Richard Q's notes.

[Alaina]

That's kind of wild.

[Ash]

That's a little wild. Even though he had been involved in the investigation with the family even before they had gone to the. The police.

[Alaina]

Yeah, that was a choice.

[Ash]

Yeah, it really was. So Dershowitz believed that the notes must have had some kind of information vital to clearing Clouse's name. But now Richard Q Was refusing to hand them over, and he cited the previous trial judge's orders not to surrender them. So he was doing what he believed was right.

[Alaina]

Judge tells me not to. I'm not.

[Ash]

But Dershowitz was like, okay, now I definitely have to get those. Yeah.

[Alaina]

That just made them so much more enticing.

[Ash]

Yeah, exactly. So he worked on subpoenaing them while another team evaluated the medical evidence used in the trial. According to the prosecution, originally, the lab test showed that Sunny's insulin level was 216 when she arrived at the hospital. But it turned out while one test did show 216, the lab had actually run three additional tests, and the results of those tests varied between 0 and 350.

[Alaina]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, what? 0 and 3 fit. None insulin and all the insulin.

[Ash]

It's. That's actually exactly. Exactly what it translates into. None insulin and all.

[Alaina]

How is that none insulin? What medical test is that? Beats me.

[Ash]

What? I don't know. I don't know a lot about medical tests, but those seem.

[Alaina]

That seems inconclusive. That seems.

[Ash]

I would go wildly. I would go ahead and stamp inconclusive across that Maybe retest.

[Alaina]

That's. That's. I don't know what to say about that. Yeah, I didn't see that coming.

[Ash]

I didn't either. None.

[Alaina]

I don't think Dershowitz did either idea.

[Ash]

So Dershowitz's team questioned the reliability of those tests. Now, I mean, I can't.

[Alaina]

I can't blame them on that one.

[Ash]

And then now they were also questioning the test conducted on the syringe, which, remember, they were like, oh, yeah, it's been used, and it definitely was used with insulin. So they decided to test the lab by sending several. Just random needles for tests. And within a few weeks, the results came back showing several false positives, which suggested that if they had been wrong in Dershowitz's test, they also could have been wrong when they were tested originally in Klaus's case.

[Alaina]

This is slumpy as hell.

[Ash]

It gets worse. Finally, Dershowitz turned his attention to the biggest piece of evidence, the black bag itself. As a resident of Clarendon Court, like I said, Alex was within his rights to search the house and even to hire a locksmith to open Klaus's closet.

[Alaina]

It.

[Ash]

He was also within his rights when he handed over the bag to Richard Q. But Dershowitz would later argue that even though Alex was in his rights, Jack Reese and the other investigators had no legal right to accept the bag as evidence without a warrant or with Klaus's consent. And in doing so, they had violated his constitutional rights.

[Alaina]

How did no one catch that?

[Ash]

Yeah, the chain of custody was a.

[Alaina]

Little up here, like private detectives on this thing, and they weren't like, hey, this is getting a little sloppy with the chain of evidence here.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Like, no one called that out and was like, we could this whole thing up.

[Ash]

I don't know if maybe, like, chain of custody became bigger later, but it's.

[Alaina]

Like, they should know that that could be a potential issue, you would think, and they should have at least accounted for that. I mean, this is like. This is like a smoking gun situation. So it's like, that's your biggest piece of evidence. You don't want to risk that being thrown out. So you. I would think you would go above and beyond to be like, let's just make sure. We are doing all the things to make sure that every T is crossed I is dotted, and we don't fuck this up. So this gets thrown out. Yeah, well, they do, because that's not like Alex's.

[Ash]

No, it's not Alex's fault. He thought he was calling the right. I mean, he's like, A regular citizen. He's technically calling.

[Alaina]

Technically, he did call the right.

[Ash]

The detectives, you know.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

So in April 1984, Alan Dershowitz presented Klaus von Bulow's appeal to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island. By that time, he narrowed his appeal to just two areas. One, he argued that the black bag of medication should never have been admitted into evidence in the first place because it had been obtained through questionable means. And two, that the notes taken by attorney Richard Q should have been admitted in the previous trial since they were detailed as a critical part of the investigation before the proper authorities became involved. Based on those two things, he argued that Klaus should be granted a new trial. After reviewing the evidence, hearing the testimony, the Supreme Court sided with his team. They agreed the black bag, which was the motivation for the arrest in the first place, had been obtained illegally and should have been deemed inadmissible at trial. And honestly, if that was deemed inadmissible at trial, who knows what if they would have been convicted? So now he was entitled to a brand new trial. And in the spring of 1984, the prosecution and defense prepared for that new trial, this time without the black bag in evidence.

[Alaina]

Oh, no.

[Ash]

That's huge.

[Alaina]

That's. Yeah.

[Ash]

Now, just as importantly, the family attorney Richard Q. Had been ordered to hand over his notes from his initial meetings with Sunny's first two children. In the notes were Alex's mention of the black bag. And in subsequent notes, Q cataloged the contents of the bag before handing it over to the state police. Missing from that list of contents that he originally wrote down was the vial of insulin, meaning that the notes directly contradicted the testimony given at the previous trial by the housekeeper, who stated that she saw insulin in the bag. And the defense said, if she saw insulin among the other medications, then surely it should have been on Richard Q's list.

[Alaina]

Oh, no.

[Ash]

So the omission of the insulin on that list turned out to be one of the most significant aspects of the defense. And I can't imagine being on the jury and hearing that, I'd be like, you're here.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

The black bag had been a critical piece of evidence during the first trial. But now the prosecution's case was that much weaker without it. And in its absence, they were hoping that testimony from the maid, Maria Schrelheimer, would now be sufficient enough to establish that the insulin was in Klaus's possession. But now that the notes basically undermined the credibility of that testimony, a second conviction was pretty unlikely at this point.

[Alaina]

Oh, no.

[Ash]

So prosecutor Stephen there pinned his Hopes. Stephen. Stephen F. Pinned his hopes mostly on the testimony of Alexandra Isles, whose relationship with Klaus ended long ago by that point, at, like, at the time of the second trial, as she had in the trial before, she told the jury about the ultimatum that she gave Klaus. But this time, she heavily implied that Klaus had done something to cause Sunny's first call. She said under oath. He said the next day, when she was unconscious, he watched her, knowing she was in a bad way. And finally, when she was on the point of dying, he said he couldn't go through with it, and he called an ambulance and saved her life.

[Alaina]

Which does check with what the maid, like, yeah, observed. Absolutely. She was saying, like, he wasn't helping her, and she was being like, something needs to be done here.

[Ash]

Yep.

[Alaina]

And, like, wouldn't let her do anything.

[Ash]

But also, it looks a little weird that Alexander's now, like. And I'm not saying she's lying, but you also sitting on that jury, have to take into account that she didn't say that the first time around. That's very true. They've broken up, there's bad blood. And now she's saying that. But you.

[Alaina]

And then you also have to flip it and say, are you lying under oath, though?

[Ash]

Exactly. Like, who knows?

[Alaina]

Because if you get caught lying like that under oath, you're.

[Ash]

You're fucked. Both of us are like, you're fucked. So similarly, she told the judge that prior to the trial in 1981, Klaus begged her not to testify. And she said under oath that he said, if you testify that we were more than friends, you'll be putting nails in my coffin.

[Alaina]

Whoa. Yeah. And remember that first time she was on the stand, she was in a relationship with him.

[Ash]

She was still. And she was very.

[Alaina]

Maybe she didn't reveal that because. Yeah, that was told her in confidence by someone she's in a relationship with, somebody she loved.

[Ash]

And also, she was very, like, pretty cagey. She just said, I don't know. Yeah. So on June 7, 1985, both sides made their final arguments to the jury, with the prosecution alleging that Klaus had attempted to kill Sunny for the inheritance, and the defense arguing that Sunny's coma was a result of her own actions. After just a few days of deliberation, the jury returned and they found Klaus von Bulow not guilty of attempted murder. So now that he was acquitted of attempted murder charges, he was never going to face criminal charges for what happened to Sunny. But that didn't mean that he was free of all potential consequences.

[Alaina]

Civil suit. Civil suit.

[Ash]

You know, you always know in these cases. A civil suit's coming. A month after he was acquitted, Alex and Allah filed a civil suit against KLAUS For. For $56 million.

[Alaina]

I can't blame them.

[Ash]

And it was in a complaint that the press described as mirroring the charges raised by Rhode island prosecutors. So they're just saying the same things. In addition to the $56 million in damages, the suit sought to invalidate his claim to any part of Sunny's fortune and required him to return any money or property that he had received from the estate since Sunny first fell into a coma in 1979. So that's a big deal.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Unfortunately, the civil suit was unsuccessful for them, and there wasn't a lot else they could do. But rather than pursue additional legal challenges, they decided to take a different approach. And this is intense. They convinced their grandmother to remove their stepsister from her will.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

So as the only member of the family to have supported Klaus, they felt that Cosima betrayed their mother and wasn't deserving of any money. So that both sides argued back and forth for years until late 1987, when Klaus finally agreed to drop any claim he had to Sunny's money on the condition that Cosima be written back into the will because she was written out at one point.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

And both parties agreed.

[Alaina]

Whoa.

[Ash]

So he gave up his claim so that his daughter could get her. Could get hers.

[Alaina]

Whoa. Yeah.

[Ash]

In the years that followed, he kept a pretty low profile. Even though he'd been acquitted. The charges against him brought a. A whole bunch of scandal, and it tarnished his reputation, and he was basically ousted from New York's high society. In 1987, Klaus and Sunny were officially divorced, and he just moved back to London, where he lived until he died in 2019.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Ash]

Unfortunately, Sunny Von Bulow remained in a coma in the nursing home in Manhattan.

[Alaina]

I couldn't.

[Ash]

I.

[Alaina]

For some reason, my brain was saying, like, she had died.

[Ash]

Oh, no. That's why I was trying to say, like, a couple times, like, remember, she's still lying in a coma.

[Alaina]

Like, she is still in a coma at that point.

[Ash]

She remained in a coma for 28 years.

[Alaina]

Holy.

[Ash]

Until she died at 77 from cardiac arrest on December 6, 2008.

[Alaina]

28 years. Can you imagine how utterly horrific that for her family?

[Ash]

No.

[Alaina]

Not even to be waiting for someone to wake up, still wake up. Up.

[Ash]

Strangely, like, grieving at the same time.

[Alaina]

I would think for, like, decades at that point.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

That's so hard.

[Ash]

Yeah. It's a tragic story. It's A really, really tragic story.

[Alaina]

You never know what happened. Like, you can have ideas about what happened, but you don't.

[Ash]

When it's, like, actually know what happened here. It's awful that. Because we don't know what happened to you and I. But it's like. It's awful that, like, people who were closer to it feel like they do. Feel like they probably do know and that justice wasn't sought out, or people who were close to it feel like they do know and that justice wasn't. Even though, like, I think, like, Cosima probably feels like her dad got in all of this.

[Alaina]

Yeah. Of course.

[Ash]

And then Allah and Alex feel like their mother.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like, was lost in all of this.

[Alaina]

Justice wasn't served for who they believe did this.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Alaina]

But the. But we don't know.

[Ash]

And how sad is that, too, that, like, the sibling relationship was obviously fractured.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You know, and. And the family in general. Exactly. Holy.

[Alaina]

That's a gnarly. Gnarly story. And. Wow. Yeah. Like, that's. That's a tragic family tale. Right?

[Ash]

It really is.

[Alaina]

Because it, like, trickled down to the kids, too.

[Ash]

Yeah. Like, multiple generations.

[Alaina]

And for Sunny to be in a coma for that many years, like, 28.

[Ash]

That's my entire life. Almost.

[Alaina]

Holy.

[Ash]

That's literally almost my entire life.

[Alaina]

That's unbelievable.

[Ash]

I just, like, think of everything I've done in my life, and I'm like. And she was just laying in a.

[Alaina]

Coma in Manhattan, and we still don't know so much about, like, coma states.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

And, like, what people experience in them and what they don't. Like, we know certain things, but, like, we're always finding out new stuff. And I feel like everybody's is different. And you don't know if she's experiencing all these things or hearing all these things or.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Any kind of. It's just like. Holy.

[Ash]

It's a lot.

[Alaina]

Damn.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

I feel really bad. I feel really bad for the kids.

[Ash]

I do, too. All of them.

[Alaina]

Because it's. None of them obviously have anything to do with the. What occurred.

[Ash]

Right.

[Alaina]

It's just like they had to eat up the aftermath. Yeah. And they were just trying to defend their parent.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

You know, both of them.

[Ash]

Right.

[Alaina]

Or all three of them.

[Ash]

Yeah. No, it's. It's really, really. It's tragic.

[Alaina]

Yeah. That's really sad.

[Ash]

Holy high society, man.

[Alaina]

Damn. That was really high society.

[Ash]

It was honestly one of the most high society we've ever.

[Alaina]

It really was like. Holy.

[Ash]

Well, we have to end on a fun fact.

[Alaina]

We do.

[Ash]

And Mikey, Found one. So we'll credit Mikey for this one.

[Alaina]

That's also high society.

[Ash]

Yeah, it's pretty high society. Allegedly. According to Cosmopolitanly. Allegedly. And according to Cosmopolitan, yes. Kim Kardashian has a glam clause in her will, and it states that if she is ever in a position where she cannot get ready herself, cannot communicate, or is unconscious, somebody has to make sure her hair, nails, and makeup are all perfect. And when I do my will, I will be adding that to mine. And that's a fact.

[Alaina]

I. I don't know what to say about that.

[Ash]

I'm obsessed.

[Alaina]

I literally don't know what to say.

[Ash]

I am obsessed with that.

[Alaina]

I.

[Ash]

It kind of reminds me of our nanny. Like, she. When she was in her nursing home, her hair and her nails and her makeup were dead. And I respect that.

[Alaina]

It's true.

[Ash]

I respect that.

[Alaina]

I'm just thinking of you comparing my nanny to get a Kardashian. Kardashian. I'm like, those are two different ladies.

[Ash]

Two very different ladies.

[Alaina]

Nanny is wherever she is right now going, are you fucking kidding me?

[Ash]

No, but I'm putting respect on that. The fact that she was done, those nails were dead, that hair was perfect, and her skin and makeup were flawless. That's true. I remember thinking she was, like, the most beautiful woman. She was a gorgeous lady. She was.

[Alaina]

She was Laverne.

[Ash]

Laverne.

[Alaina]

Love that.

[Ash]

Love that lady.

[Alaina]

But, yeah.

[Ash]

And that's your fun, fun alleged fact.

[Alaina]

Allegedly. It's your fun to Cosmo.

[Ash]

It's your fun reporting.

[Alaina]

Yeah. According to Cosmo.

[Ash]

Who knows?

[Alaina]

They said it.

[Ash]

Would you put that in your will?

[Alaina]

No. No.

[Ash]

Would you adhere to it? In my will?

[Alaina]

Yeah. Good. Of course. I always listen to everybody's wills. Good. You know, I'm not here to try to tell people what to do with their wills.

[Ash]

Would you judge me?

[Alaina]

No. Really? You can do whatever the fuck you want with your will.

[Ash]

Hell, yeah. I'm gonna. I haven't written my will yet, but I'm gonna.

[Alaina]

I'm judge what's important to people, you know?

[Ash]

No. And being. Being a 10 is important to me.

[Alaina]

There you go. Yeah.

[Ash]

Or trying, at least.

[Alaina]

Being real cozy is important to me, so I don't want people judging me.

[Ash]

Oh, I'd like to be cozy. Cozy and beautiful.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Ash]

That's my goal.

[Alaina]

Always be the 10.

[Ash]

Be it a cozy 10. And with that, we leave you.

[Alaina]

We hope you keep listening. Please. And we hope you keep it weird.

[Ash]

But not so weird that you don't add whatever the you want to your will, baby.

[Alaina]

Yeah, you're yours. Be a cozy 10. No. One's if you want. I won't judge you.

[Ash]

Nope.

[Alaina]

Me either. Nope. Nope.

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