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ASPEN, Colo.ven in death he was beautiful. Those who saw him that way remarked particularly un it. Pale, the lips drained of color, but the remarkable coordination of the tautly muscled body — an expert skier’s body — was manifest even then.But it was not only the perfectly molded limbs that inspired the young ladies of Aspen or the face that once beamed on them with the widest, raunchiest grin, or even that he was a superstar, a superskier in a town surfeited with skiers and filled with stars. Spider Sabich had a reckless charm, a determined boyishness which he cultivated to great effect. He could throw his arm around a man as well as a woman, and that's a rarity in the West.“I’m never gonna grow up” he’d tell one girl friend, That’s my best line,’’ he’d laugh. That gets ’em ev-e-ry time ...He died at 31, found shot in the bathroom of his own house with a .22 pistol. There was very little blood; later they discovered he’d bled to death internally. Can’t hardly kill a squirrel with a .22, Aspen folks will tell you. If there’s one thing they know, it’s their guns. But Spider Sabich, once one of the best pro skiers around, got snuffed precisely that ftay.And so, in the end, he was absolved of growing up.Around 5:25 on the afternoon of March 21 — about 20 minutes after the emergency phone call to Aspen Valley Hospital — the ambulance drove up the unpaved road to Spider’s three-bedroom house among the expensive mountain estates just outside of town known as Starwood. Claudine Longet, 35, the French-born singer, once married to Andy Williams, was there. She and her three children lived with Spider for two years. When the ambulance arrived, she was wearing the Aspen uniform — a blouse and faded jeans — and she was in tears (on the verge of hysterics,” said an onlooker), except when the attendants asked her to do something functional, such as bringing over a glass of water.As the inert body was carted out on a stretcher to the ambulance, one of the emergency medical technicians asked for help in compressing .Spider Sabich’s heart. And when Claudine Longet asked, Can I?” he replied, Sure.” And so she performed 30 to 40heart compressions with the heels of her hands. And then she piled into the ambulance with her dead lover and regularly squeezed the oxygen bag over his face.And so it was only after the ambulance rolled out of the driveway and moved smoothly past the wild landscape of birches, fir trees, aspens and brush, past the wood-stone-and-glass houses of Starwood, where John Denver (among others) lives, past the guard house erected to fend off trespassing Denver groupies — it was only after they had passed all that that the sheriff’s deputy in the front seat turned to the ambulance driver and, indicating Claudine Longet (separated from them by a partition), said: She doesn'tBy Judy BachrachWashington PostThe players, handsome Spider Sabich and pretty Claudine Longet, acted out their drama against this backdrop — the town of Aspen, Colo., and Aspen Mountain, alsoknown as Ajax.know it yet, but she’s under arrest.”Two and a half weeks later, Claudine Longet was charged with reckless manslaughter. If convicted, she could get up to 10 years in the Colorado State Penitentiary. The only thing she’s said is that her lover was showing her how to hold a gun, and that it went off.They don’t want to talk much about Claudine Longet in Aspen,What a waste,” they say. All Spider wanted was to get out of something that wasn’tworking.” So sometimes they'll talk about Spider, but even then reluctantly because outsiders are, after all, outsiders — turkeys” as tourists are more generally known. It's very simple, though. Spider belonged. Claudine did not — not even when her loverwas alive.■Spider mixed with the cowboys at a mean-spirited bar called The Pub” and he also fraternized with an occasional movie star and with barmaids and businessmen and waiters.Claudine Longet fraternized mainly with Spider. Spider, the object of constant adulation, persistent attentions, used to say, I’m just a dirt bag. Who am I trying to fool?” Claudine Longet was bom in Paris, the daughter of a female physician and amanufacturer of X-ray equipment. Reserved, often aloof, she didn’t consider herself a dirt bag. Four years Spider’s senior, she could get, as one friend put it, “anyone she wanted,” and because she wanted Spider, there were plenty of women who disliked her.It’s a small town, Aspen — 6,000 year-round residents, as near as anyone can tell — but it’s also a tough little town if you don’t belong. If you aren’t mellow (as they say this season); if you aren’t laid back (as they said last season); if you don’t ski in the winter like the 200,000 who come here each year do; if you don’t rock climb and play tennis and trout fish and hike; if you don’t have small hips and long strong limbs and taut skin that tans to the proper shade of honeyed brown; if you aren't a sleek blonde in faded jeans; if you're over 40. Forty at the outside.The mayor here, Stacy Stanley, is 31; he was 28 when first elected, and he is decidedly laid back, having posed nude (next to a pickup truck) for an Aspen calendar-notebook.It is the end of the season now at Aspen. The lif^s are closed and all the tourists who pay $11 a day to ski on the four main mountains that fence this town in are gone. Atthe -end of the season, people change partners and one affluent young woman tried to commit suicide, it is rumored, as » result; people leave for' Florida, San Diego, Boston — any place, just to get out of Aspen when the skiing season is over.Really, everybody goes nuts this time of year,” explains Mary Peyton as she drives the taxi down Main Street, lined with squat Victorian homes and squat modem structures (three stories being the limit here) and the Jerome Hotel where everyone drinks. It’s a real pressure cooker. It’s a small town and everything is very intense, and it’s hard to earn a living; you’re surrounded by* rich people.”Drugs, says Mary Peyton, you’re also surrounded by drugs. She's practically the only person she knows who isn’t into drugs.One of the big problems, the mayor agrees, is the check-of-the-month-clubbers,” the folks that sit up on Red Mountain (the city’s northern sentinel) and snort coke and do nothing much else.I don’t know,” continues Mary Peyton. There’s something so psychologically confining about these mountains.” It was the mountains.however, that brought her here from Texas two years back. It was skiing that brought and kept her here. Maybe it’s the mountains,” she concludes.Ajax Mountain to the south, a vast tower of snow even now, looms over the valley, crushing it with its weight and assaulting you with its bulk. To the west are Aspen Highlands Mountain, Buttermilk and Snowmass. On the last day of his life Spider Sabich skied down Buttermilk. So maybe it is the mountains, after all.In the old Jerome Hotel (built in 1889), a young man who calls himself a mundane astrologer” sips his drink. He’s been coming to Aspen for several years now and evidently can afford it, having (he says) deployed astrology to great effect on commodities futures. Buy wheat, he says, the drought will be terrible.A pretty young woman, wreathed in blonde hair, surprises him from the back with a hug, but the mundane astrologer shrinks from the embrace. When she leaves, he says, I was in love with that woman. But she's been in Aspen too long. One year, all right. But four years?” He shrugs. She’s deadened. Oh, I come here to get deadened, I’ll admit that. But last night Itook some speed. Now I haven’t taken speed since I was a kid. And so I guess it's time for me to leave.”Two days after Claudine Longet was charged with reckless manslaughter, a man in Aspen received a phone call from a reporter requesting information un the town.“I’m very sorry to inform you, but my wife committed suicide last night,” says the man, who was referring actually to his ex-wife. Then his voice turns bitter. This is the crowning moment of my shining career.” He pauses, then adds very politely, But look — will you be back in the summer? We can talk then.In 1969, Leon Uris’ second wife was found dead. It was ruled a suicide. Leon Uris still has his house in Aspen — an A-frame on Red Mountain.Three days after Longet was charged, Frank Tucker’s wife left him to return to Washington, D.C.i Frank Tucker is the 34-year-old district attorney here, a pleasant, outgoing man, exceptional as much for his slight paunch (a rarity among the young armies of the lean) as for the fact that he doesn’t own a gun. Frank Tucker is undergoing the biggest catastrophe” and simply does not understand 'how his wife (or anyone, for that matter) could leave Aspen for Washington, where you can’t figure out where City Hall is.” It’s in the genes, he says, and his child, too, has Western genes,” and Tucker should know because he majored in biology at the University of Colorado — which, as it happens, is where he first met.Spider Sabich, whom he befriended.“My people came here when there was nothing here, you see.” That was in 1882, and Aspen became a boom town during that time because of the silver mines, and it was just full of rich men and whores and street brawls. Until the day the government had to go and demonetize silver. Then Aspen grew ghostlike, its houses emptied, its population dwindled; it was to stay that way for about 50 years.I’ve never handled a shoot-ing that didn’t involve a friend or a loved one,” says Tucker, who's been DA since 1972, after he returned home from Washington, D.C., where he was a lawyer for four years. We tend to shoot our friends and acquaintances. We don’t shoot strangers.”No, but they do other things in Colorado. Just ask Tucker how come he wears braces on his teeth, and he'll tell you that this was the result of an arrest of some youthful deer poachers. Their old man came out of his farm house and tried to shove Tucker's teeth down his throat. “I just beat the Jieli outta him,” says Tucker, No arrest. Swift justice is a lot better than spending two weeks in jail.” There are folks in Aspen who are pretty mad at Frank Tucker for not handing Claudine Longet a Murder Two rap. Tucker knows this, but he says he charges what he can prove, that murder connotates a state of mind which I don’t think we have.”Of Spider Sabich, his friend, Continued on page 4SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1976TUCSON DAILY CITIZENPACE 3
Newspaper Details
Tucson Daily Citizen
Tucson, Arizona, US
Sat, May 01, 1976
Page 42
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NY, USA 01 Sep 2019
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