Claudine Longet, the Paris-born singer and actor whose life and career became intertwined with one of the most sensational public trials of the 20th century, has passed away at the age of 84. Her death was first announced Thursday in a heartfelt social media tribute from her nephew, Bryan Longet, who remembered her as a lasting personal inspiration, calling her “another star in the sky” when sharing the news. When contacted by The Associated Press via phone, Bryan Longet confirmed the death but declined to share any details about the cause of her passing.
Longet began her performance career as a child performer in her native France before building a public profile in Hollywood and the American entertainment industry. Over the course of her career, she guest-starred on dozens of popular television series, released multiple studio albums including the charted hit LP *Claudine*, and earned widespread recognition for her bossa nova ballad “Nothing to Lose”—a standout track from the 1968 comedy film *The Party*, where she starred opposite legendary actor Peter Sellers.
In the early 1960s, Longet met iconic American singer Andy Williams while performing as a dancer in a Las Vegas stage revue. The pair married and raised three children together before divorcing in the mid-1970s. Following her split from Williams, Longet relocated to a community near Aspen, Colorado, where she began a relationship with Vladimir “Spider” Sabich, a celebrated American alpine skier who had competed for the United States at the 1968 Winter Olympic Games.
It was in that Aspen home that the event that would define Longet’s public legacy unfolded on March 21, 1976. Longet fatally shot Sabich, 31, in the abdomen with a vintage Luger pistol; she maintained from the beginning that Sabich had been showing her the weapon when the shot fired accidentally, and she accompanied Sabich in the ambulance to the local hospital as he received emergency care.
The subsequent trial held in Aspen drew intense global media attention, turning a local criminal case into a worldwide tabloid sensation. Notably, Longet’s ex-husband Andy Williams stood by her throughout the proceedings: he escorted her to and from the courthouse every day, covered all her legal expenses, and publicly maintained his belief that the case against her was unjust and the shooting was an accidental tragedy, a position he reaffirmed in a 2009 interview with *CBS This Morning*.
Longet was originally charged with reckless manslaughter, but a major procedural error by law enforcement—collecting a blood sample from Longet without a required search warrant—weakened the prosecution’s case. After four days of deliberation in January 1977, the jury found Longet guilty on the lesser charge of negligent homicide. Her sentence included two years of probation, a $250 fine, and a 30-day jail term that she was allowed to serve on a flexible schedule of her choosing.
Despite the relatively lenient sentence, the trial and its surrounding media frenzy effectively ended Longet’s entertainment career. For years after the verdict, she became a target of public mockery in mainstream American pop culture: she was parodied in a sketch on *Saturday Night Live*, and the Rolling Stones even recorded an unreleased taunting track titled *Claudine* with the refrain “Claudine’s back in jail again.”
After the trial, Longet married her lead defense attorney Ron Austin and remained a private resident of Aspen for the rest of her life. In 1977, Sabich’s family filed a $1.3 million wrongful death civil suit against Longet; the two parties reached an out-of-court settlement that included a permanent gag order, barring Longet from ever publicly discussing the 1976 shooting or the subsequent trial.