Claudine Longet & Spider Sabich
Aspen Outrage
She needed the support.
When friends of Sabich began whispering that the skier had grown weary of Longet, public opinion in laid-back Aspen turned against the Frenchwoman.
“Everybody hates her,” one resident told Newsweek.
Longet did not help her personal P.R. by going around Aspen wearing a T-shirt stamped with the sports logo "No Sweat."
She attended the Sabich funeral and burial in California, then returned to Aspen to learn she was being charged with reckless manslaughter, a felony with maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and a $30,000 fine.
Longet hired Charles Weedman, a hired-gun criminal defense attorney from
The cops said Longet told them she aimed at Sabich and made a gunshot sound — “boom-boom” or “bang-bang.”
Longet pleaded not guilty, and a trial was scheduled for January 1977.
It was a modern prototype of the celebrity-crime spectacle, played out over a couple of weeks at the Pitkin County Courthouse in
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who lived in Aspen, said the trial was “like fouling your own nest."
