Claudine Longet, the French singer and actress who was at the centre of a manslaughter trial after she was charged with the fatal shooting of her Olympic skier boyfriend, has died aged 84.
Longet’s nephew, Bryan Longet, announced her death in a social media post on Thursday.
“You have been a true inspiration in my life and you will always be,” he wrote. “Another star in the sky. Thank you for everything, my aunt.”
He confirmed Longet had died but did not reveal the cause of her death.
Claudine Longet was married to singer Andy Williams (AP)
Longet was a native Parisian who had been acting since childhood. She appeared in numerous TV shows, recorded such hit albums as Claudine and was widely known for the bossa nova-style ballad Nothing To Lose, a highlight of the 1968 movie The Party that starred Longet and Peter Sellers.
At the time, she was married to singer Andy Williams, whom she had met in the early 1960s while dancing in a Las Vegas revue. But by the mid-1970s, she and Williams were divorced and she was living near Aspen, Colorado, with skier Vladimir “Spider” Sabich, who had competed for the United States in the 1968 Olympics.
On March 21 1976, she shot Sabich at their home with a Luger pistol that she would contend he had been showing her and fired accidentally.
Sabich, 31, died of a single shot to his abdomen; Longet had accompanied him in an ambulance to hospital.
Williams supported his former wife throughout the manslaughter trial (AP)
Her trial in Aspen attracted worldwide attention. Williams was among those present, escorting her to and from the courthouse, paying for her legal fees and otherwise supporting his former wife and the mother of their three children.
“I thought it was unfair, I thought she was innocent, I thought it was an accident,” Williams told CBS This Morning in 2009.
Longet had been charged with reckless manslaughter, but law enforcement officials made critical errors such as taking a blood sample from Longet without a warrant.
Longet claimed Sabich had been showing her the weapon when it accidentally went off (AP)
After four days of deliberation in January 1977, the jury found her guilty of negligent homicide. She was given two years’ probation, fined 250 dollars and sentenced to 30 days in jail, eventually served on dates of her choosing.
Longet’s career in entertainment was effectively over, though, and for a time she was the subject of mockery in popular culture, from a skit on Saturday Night Live to the Rolling Stones rocker Claudine, which featured a taunting refrain: “Claudine’s back in jail again.” The song was unreleased for decades.
She later married her defence lawyer, Ron Austin, and lived with him in Aspen.
After Sabich’s family filed a 1.3 million dollar lawsuit in 1977 against her, the two sides reached a settlement that barred Longet from ever discussing Sabich or the trial.