Von Bulow Collapses, Taken to Hospital

Socialite Claus von Bulow collapsed and was hospitalized today just 30 minutes after his stepson said on national television that Von Bulow “murdered our mother in cold blood,” authorities said.

Von Bulow’s butler, Joseph Urban, said Von Bulow passed out about 9:20 a.m. as he stepped out of the elevator into the lobby of his Fifth Avenue apartment building.

Von Bulow, 60, was admitted to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where the Danish socialite was in stable but guarded condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. It was not clear what caused the collapse.

Andrea Reynolds, Von Bulow’s live-in lover and author of a book about his two sensational trials on charges of trying to murder his wife, said Von Bulow was aware of the television interview and may have been within earshot of the broadcast but did not actually watch it.

Von Bulow suffered a severe case of shingles after his second attempted-murder trial for allegedly trying to kill his heiress-socialite wife, Martha (Sunny) von Bulow, who is comatose at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

Only 30 minutes before Von Bulow collapsed, his stepson, Alexander von Auersperg, denounced Von Bulow in an 8:50 a.m. taped broadcast of the NBC-TV “Today” program.

“It’s hard for us to really come up with a description of a man who I think really betrayed us,” Auersperg said as his sister, Annie Laurel von Auersperg Kneissl, sat by his side.

Auersperg described Von Bulow as someone “who came into our family for 14 years and had us feeling that he loved us and then all of a sudden finding out that this man behind everyone’s back had really murdered our mother in cold blood” and who plotted to “just kill her and take her money and run off with another woman.”