Claudine Longet, the French singer and actress who underwent a 1976 trial after she shot and killed her boyfriend, Olympic skier Spider Sabich, has died, according to the Telegram. She was 84.
Longet performed pop tracks for A&M Records' albums before she sang the Henry Mancini-Don Black song "Nothing to Lose" in Blake Edwards' 1968 film "The Party", in which she portrayed an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers.
Longet married American singer and television entertainer Andy Williams in 1961 and often appeared on his NBC show, joined by their three children. After she and Williams divorced in 1975, Longet and her children began living with her boyfriend, Sabich, at his Colorado home. The pair first met in 1972 at a celebrity skiing exhibition in Bear Valley, Calif., and had been living together for a couple of years at the time of the shooting.
Longet shot Sabich on March 21, 1976, in his bathroom with a .22-caliber German‐made gun that had been purchased by his father. She claimed the gun accidentally discharged as he was showing her how it worked. Sabich died from his gunshot wound on the way to the hospital, and Longet was charged with reckless manslaughter in April, facing up to 10 years in prison. The prosecution faced hurdles due to mishandled evidence and illegal search practices, and the jury eventually convicted Longet of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor charge, in January 1977. She was given two years' probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail.
Sabich's family filed a civil suit against Longet for $1.3 million, but the case was settled out of court, with Longet agreeing to never speak publicly about Sabich or his death.
Longet was born in Paris on Jan. 29, 1942. Her career began with a production of “The Turn of the Screw” when she was 10, later appearing on French television and in plays in Milan and Venice.
She had moved to Las Vegas and was a showgirl at a Folies Bergère revue at the Tropicana in 1960 when she first met Williams.
In 1963, Longet appeared for the first time on “The Andy Williams Show” and acted in episodes of “McHale's Navy” and “Dr. Kildare.” She later guest-starred on installments of “Combat!,” “12 O'Clock High,” “Mr. Novak,” “Hogan's Heroes” and NBC's “Run for Your Life,” the latter of which helped her land a contract at Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss' new A&M label due to her singing on the show.
Her first album, titled "Claudine," was released in 1967 and sold more than a million copies.
Longet and Williams were close friends of Robert F. Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, and watched his televised primary victory speech in Los Angeles upstairs in the senator's suite in 1968. The couple joined Kennedy's family at Good Samaritan Hospital after he was shot, and named their son after him.
Longet and one of her defense attorneys, Ronald Austin, wed in June 1985 and eventually moved to Hawaii. She had three children with Williams: sons Christian and Bobby and daughter Noelle, who reportedly died in 2023.
