Thomas Puccio, Ex-Prosecutor and Lawyer for Notorious Clients, Dies at 67 (Abscam, Claus von Bülow)
Thomas P. Puccio, a tigerish New York lawyer who won fame prosecuting congressmen in the 1980s Abscam scandals, then switched sides and defended Claus von Bülow, corrupt politicians, an accused rapist who ran off to the ski slopes of Europe and other notorious clients, died on Monday in New Haven. He was 67.
The cause was leukemia, his wife, Kathryn, said.
Mr. Puccio won stunning convictions of Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and several members of the House of Representatives who were videotaped taking bribes from an undercover agent posing as an Arab sheik. He parlayed those successes into a lucrative practice defending the wealthy, powerful and often unpopular.
His greatest success was the 1985 acquittal of Mr. von Bülow, a Danish-born socialite, in a second trial on charges of twice trying to kill his wife, Martha, with insulin injections at their mansion in Newport, R.I., in 1979 and 1980. Mrs. von Bülow, an heiress to a $75 million fortune who was known as Sunny, lapsed into a coma that left her in a vegetative state until she died in 2008.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/nyregion/thomas-puccio-lawyer-who-had-notorious-clients-dies-at-67.html
