Workers who got three days' notice that their factory was shutting its doors have occupied the building and say they won't go home without assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay.

About 250 union workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors plant in shifts Saturday while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind.

Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.

During the two-day peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.

"We're doing something we haven't done since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," she said, referring to a tactic most famously used in 1936-37 by General Motors factory workers in Flint, Mich., to help unionize the U.S. auto industry.

Fried said the company can't pay its 300 employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them. Crain's Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows' monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors."

Bank of America received $25 billion from the government's financial bailout package. The company said in a statement Saturday that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees.

"Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."

Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out."

Larry Spivack, regional director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, said the peaceful action will add to Chicago's rich history in the labor movement, which includes the 1886 Haymarket affair, when Chicago laborers and anarchists gathering in a square on the city's west side drew national attention after an unidentified person threw a bomb at police.

"The history of workers is built on issues like this here today," Spivack said.

Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.

Martha "Sunny" von Bulow, an heiress who spent the last 28 years of her life in oblivion after what prosecutors alleged in a pair of sensational trials were two murder attempts by her husband, died Saturday at age 76.

She died at a nursing home in New York, her children said in a statement issued by family spokeswoman Maureen Connelly.

Sunny von Bulow was a personification of romantic notions about high society - a stunning heiress who brought her American millions to marriages with men who gave her honored old European names.

But she ended her days in a coma, showing no sign of awareness as she was visited by her children and tended around the clock by nurses.

In the 1980s, she was the offstage presence that haunted her husband's two sensational trials in Newport and Providence, R.I.

At the first trial, in 1982, Claus von Bulow was convicted of trying twice to kill her by injecting her with insulin at their estate in Newport, R.I. That verdict was thrown out on appeal, and he was acquitted at a second trial in 1985.

The murder case split Newport society, produced lurid headlines and was later made into the 1990 film, "Reversal of Fortune," starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Claus von Bulow is now living in London, "mostly taking care of his grandchildren," said Alan Dershowitz, the defense lawyer who handled the appeal and won his acquittal at the second trial. He wrote the book "Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bulow Case," on which the movie was based.

Dershowitz said there was "overwhelming" evidence that her coma was self-induced - caused by a "large ingestion of drugs, and Claus had nothing to do with it," Dershowitz said.

"There are no winners in a case like this," he added.

Claus von Bulow's main accusers were his wife's children by a previous marriage to Austrian Prince Alfred von Auersperg - Princess Annie-Laurie "Ala" von Auersperg Isham and Prince Alexander von Auersperg. They renewed the charges against their stepfather in a civil lawsuit a month after his acquittal.

Two years later, Claus von Bulow agreed to give up any claims to his wife's estimated $25 million-to-$40 million fortune and to the $120,000-a-year income of a trust she set up for him. He also agreed to divorce her, leave the country and never profit from their story.

Sales of Sunny von Bulow's property brought $4.2 million from her oceanfront estate in Newport, $6.25 million from her 12-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and $11.5 million from the art and antiques from the homes.

Prosecutors contended that Claus von Bulow wanted to get rid of his wife to inherit a large chunk of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress. The defense countered by painting Sunny von Bulow, who suffered from low blood sugar, as an alcoholic and pill popper who drank herself into a coma.

Claus Von Bulow was accused of injecting his wife with insulin first in December 1979, causing a coma from which she revived. Prosecutors said he tried again a year later, on Dec. 21, 1980, and the 49-year-old heiress fell into what her children on Saturday called "a persistent vegetative state."

Her world was reduced to a private, guarded room in the Harkness Pavilion and later the McKeen Pavilion of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She died at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, her family said.

Her doctor testified that the cost of maintaining her was $375,000 the first year, 1981.

No figures were available for the years that followed, but by the early 1990s, room charges were up to about $1,500 a day - $547,000 a year - plus $200,000 to $300,000 for round-the-clock private nursing.

She was born Martha Sharp Crawford aboard a railcar in Manassas, Va., on Sept. 1, 1932, daughter of utilities tycoon George Crawford, who died when she was 4.

Sunny, nicknamed for her disposition, was raised by her mother in New York City.

While touring Europe with her mother, she met Prince Alfred von Auersperg, who was younger, penniless and working as a tennis pro at an Austrian resort catering to rich Americans. They were married in 1957 and divorced eight years later after she returned alone to New York with their young son and daughter.

On June 6, 1966, she married von Bulow, who then quit his job as an aide to oilman J. Paul Getty. He could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday.

In addition to her two children from her first marriage, Sunny von Bulow is survived by Cosima Pavoncelli, a daughter from her marriage to von Bulow. Pavoncelli sided with her father during the trials.

Diapers, latex gloves and other items found in an ex-astronaut's car can be used as evidence when the woman accused of driving 1,000-miles to confront a romantic rival goes to trial, an appeals court ruled.

But the three-judge panel said Friday that Lisa Nowak's six-hour police interview after her arrest cannot be used.

Nowak has pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping, battery and burglary with assault. She is accused of trying to abduct Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman from the Orlando International Airport in February 2007. Nowak and Shipman were vying for the affections of the same space shuttle pilot.

A lower court judge also threw out Nowak's comments from the interview, saying investigators took advantage of the former astronaut, who had not slept for more than 24 hours, coercing her into giving information.

"The trial court applied the correct legal standards in determining that Nowak neither waived her Miranda rights, nor voluntarily spoke with police," the appeals panel ruled. "Consequently, the state cannot use the statements that Nowak made during her custodial interview with police as part of its direct case."

The judges' decision to admit the car's contents reversed an earlier ruling. Besides the diapers, authorities found maps from Houston to the Orlando airport and a map to Shipman's Cape Canaveral home.

A knife, mallet and a BB gun resembling a real handgun will also be allowed as evidence.

No trial date for Nowak has been set. She is free on bail.

Her attorney has said that the diaper's were her children's and that she did not wear them during her trip from Texas.

"The police used coercive tactics, and her interview was not voluntary," her attorney, Donald Lykkebak told Florida Today in a written statement. "Captain Nowak looks forward to returning to the circuit court and defending all charges."

In the harsh light of the morning after his sentencing, O.J. Simpson's future was clear Saturday. His new home will be a prison cell in the Nevada desert with his door to freedom hinging on an appeal of a trial that his lawyers say was filled with errors.

"This is not a frivolous appeal," Yale Galanter, Simpson's lawyer, said. "There were some grave errors made by Judge (Jackie) Glass, and we think they are strong enough to overturn the conviction. We also think we have a shot at bail."

Galanter has cited six initial issues for appeal. The most significant concern could be the exclusion of blacks from the jury selection. The defense also will protest the judge allowing comments about Simpson's 1994 Los Angeles murder case in which he was acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.

On Saturday, Simpson remained at the Clark County jail where he has been housed since his conviction on Oct. 3, along with co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart. The two men were found guilty of 12 criminal charges, including kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Simpson was sentenced Friday to 9 to 33 years in prison. Stewart got 7 1/2 to 27 years.

Michael Shapiro, a New York defense lawyer who has followed the Las Vegas case, said Simpson's case may get extra attention from Nevada Supreme Court, the state's only appellate court.

"Superimposed over all of it is that he's O.J. He's not Joe Schmo," Shapiro said. The justices also could be influenced by Simpson's murder trial, he said, calling it "the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

Before any appeal winds its way to the Nevada Supreme Court, Simpson faces years in prison for a September 2007 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers over collectibles that Simpson insisted were stolen from him.

"Prison will be very taxing on him," Galanter said. At 61, Simpson is not in great health, he said.

"He'll be treated like every other inmate," said Howard Skolnik, director of the Nevada Department of Corrections. "The only issue might be whether we have to provide a little more protective custody because of his notoriety, at least at the start."

Gabriel Grasso, another Simpson lawyer, anticipated that Simpson would find friends in prison, adding that Simpson had been buying snacks for fellow inmates at the Clark County jail.

"I think when he does meet people in jail, they're going to treat him well because he treats them well," Grasso said.

Simpson could be moved within a week to High Desert State Prison, about 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where a 2004 inmate brawl killed one inmate and wounded 18 others. Skolnik said it was unlikely he would go to Nevada's one maximum security facility because he was not under a life sentence. Nevada has six medium security prisons.

Wherever he winds up, the accommodations will be spartan.

Skolnik acknowledged that adjusting to prison may be difficult for a man who once lived the high life as a football star, movie actor and advertising pitchman.

Prison cells average 78 square feet. Each cell has a narrow window about four inches wide and 30 inches long. Most have two beds, a commode, a sink, a shelf and a plastic glass window on the door that allows guards to peer inside.

He won't have much freedom at meal time either. The state allocates $2.18 for meals per day per inmate, and men get a standard 2,800-calorie diet. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken and pizza are among the most popular menu items, Skolnik said.