Thomas Puccio - Telegraph Puccio had his greatest triumph in 1985, when he was hired to defend Claus von Bülow who, in 1982, had been convicted of trying to kill his wife, "Sunny," the heiress to a $75 million fortune, at their mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, on two occasions, in 1979 and 1980. After the second "attempt," Mrs von Bülow went into a coma that left her in a vegetative state until her death in 2008. The prosecution had alleged that von Bülow wanted his wife dead so he could inherit her fortune and marry his then mistress, the former soap opera actress Alexandra Isles, who became a key prosecution witness. Meanwhile Puccio had the prosecutor in the first trial, Stephen Famiglietti, summoned to court, claiming to have uncovered evidence of misconduct. The judge disagreed, but only after Famiglietti had been subjected to what Puccio himself described as "a rough going-over." The trial ended with the jury declaring von Bülow not guilty. In his memoirs, In the Name of the Law: Confessions of a Trial Lawyer (1995, written with Dan Collins), Puccio set out the three principles which had guided his career: "Go for the jugular"; "Not losing is more important than winning"; and "Always tell reporters things are going great - even if 14 nuns have just taken the stand to identify your client as the man who pulled the trigger." Thomas Philip Puccio was born in Brooklyn on September 12 1944, the only child of a middle-ranking federal government employee. After Fordham Law School, he joined the United States Attorney's office in Brooklyn as an assistant prosecutor in 1969, and became chief of its criminal division in 1973. In 1976 he became head of the Organised Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn. He went into private practice in 1982. Most of his cases as a defence attorney were big-business disputes, securities cases or white-collar crimes. After the von Bülow case, he became a partner in two of New York's leading law firms, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, then Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. In 1992 he established his own firm. Puccio's take-no-hostages approach won him many enemies, and there was barely concealed glee in 1986 when he sustained the biggest loss of his career. He represented Stanley Friedman, the former Bronx Democratic leader, who was convicted of conspiring to transform the city's Parking Violations Bureau into a vehicle for graft. Puccio's adversary in the case was the future mayor Rudy Giuliani, then the United States Attorney in Manhattan. After the case, as one New York writer recalled, "up in the Yale Club, guys were buying drinks for each other." But if Puccio was chastened by his defeat he did not soften his style. In 1996, defending a man on trial for rape, he outraged women's groups by describing his teenage accuser as a flirt and "very unvictim victim," and berating her family for coming to court "totally coiffed and dressed to kill." "My job is to defend people and to defend them well," Puccio maintained. Every possible legal angle that can be exploited to their advantage I will use. Puccio's first marriage, to Carol Ziegler, was dissolved. They had a son who drowned aged 16 when the car in which his father was teaching him to drive plunged into a marina. Puccio, who had not been wearing his seat belt, escaped. He is survived by his second wife, Kathryn. Thomas Puccio, born September 12 1944, died March 12 2012