Leon Redbone has died. He was 127.
Well, that’s what the press release said. Most sources I see say he was 69, though Wikipedia footnotes that as “disputed”.
The “Variety” obit (hattip: Lawrence) is pretty good. If it seems like I’m giving Mr. Redbone short shrift, well, I don’t have a lot to say: I never really caught that particular gene. I’ve been told he was on “Prairie Home Companion” a lot, but since that show basically makes me want to stab myself in the thigh repeatedly with a spork…
Also among the dead: Thad Cochran, congressman for 45 years.
And finally, Claus von Bülow, who was not a murderer. Really. Two out of three courts said so.
Seriously, this was one of the great true crime circuses of the 1980s. Mr. von Bülow was charged with attempting to murder his wife by giving her an overdose of insulin. She went into hypoglycemic comas twice (in December of 1979 and December of 1980). She recovered the first time, but her second coma was irreversible.
Mr. von Bülow was convicted in his first trial, but that conviction was overturned on appeal. (His legal team included Alan Dershowitz, Eliot “Client #9” Spitzer, and Jim “Mad Money” Cramer.) He was tried a second time and acquitted.
I’m glossing over a lot of stuff here (because I don’t have time), including the testimony in the second trial from Truman Capote and Johnny Carson’s wife. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary, though you have to read both the Sunny and Claus articles. (There’s a great story in one of them about Norman Mailer and his wife attending a dinner party with Claus and Dershowitz. You have to read it: I won’t spoil the punchline.)
Sunny von Bülow never recovered from her second coma, and remained in a vegetative state until she died in 2008.