Aspen remembers...
aa
by Bob Burns with comments by A.A. (because I still want to have a life
in Aspen!)
Special to the Sports Server
ASPEN, Colo. -- Billy Kidd remembers Spider Sabich for the way he made
being a ski racer seem like the most exciting thing in the world. In
fact, Kidd's
fellow Olympian had a way of making everything seem like the most
enjoyable thing in the world -- whether it be spending the night in a
French jail on New Year's
Eve or taking a rental car out on the Grand Prix course in Monte Carlo
and living to tell about the early-morning time trial.
"Spider could make going to the grocery store a great adventure," Kidd
said.
His friends all have similar memories, of the how the party didn't start
until the dashing skier showed up. Women, kids, competitors, sponsors --
they all gravitated to
Sabich, a two-time world professional champion with an alliterative name
and dazzling smile.
For the most part, however, Vladimir "Spider" Sabich is remembered not
for his spirited life but for his sensational death.
TWENTY YEARS AGO on Thursday (March 21), Sabich was shot and killed in
the bathroom of his Aspen, Colo., home. His live-in girlfriend,
singer-actress
Claudine Longet, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide, a
misdemeanor.
Longet -- a former Las Vegas showgirl and ex-wife of singer Andy
Williams -- spent 30 days in jail. She still lives in Aspen, where she
is married to her former
defense attorney.( Who dumped his wife and kids to move into the
Starwood home with her....by the way ...isn't it againts the rules of
the bar to have a relationship
with your client?)
The trial preceded O.J. Simpson's by nearly two decades, but those who
lived through it in Aspen see many parallels. Both were media
spectacles, and both offered
an eager public glimpses into lifestyles of the rich and famous. Simpson
and Longet hired high-powered defense teams -- and got off easy, in the
minds of many.
SABICH'S LIFE BECAME ALMOST trivialized by his death. "Saturday Night
Live" ran a skit in which skiers crashed coming down the hill to the
sound of
gunshots. "Uh-oh. He seems to have been accidentally shot by Claudine
Longet," Jane Curtin would say to Chevy Chase.
Sabich's circle of family and friends closed ranks, wanting to preserve
their own memories. His younger brother, Steve, a construction executive
who lives in Auburn,
Calif., with his wife and two teenage boys, turns down interview
requests from "Hard Copy" once a year.
"Spider was a special guy," said Jim Ellsworth, a classmate at Silver
Fork Elementary in Kyburz, Calif., who served as a pallbearer at
Sabich's funeral. "I think it's a
shame to boil it all down to one thing he couldn't avoid."
An upbeat man by nature, Steve Sabich says a day doesn't go by when he
doesn't feel bitter about what happened that spring afternoon in the
log-and-stone chalet
he had built for his brother four years earlier.
"It's a shame, because Spider accomplished so much in his life," he
said. "Claudine accomplished only two things -- marrying Andy Williams
and getting away with
murder."
* * *
THE QUESTION OF WHETHER the gun went off accidentally in Longet's hands
or whether she fired a single bullet into his abdomen because their
relationship
was about to end persists to this day. (She actually shot at him five
times...but somehow this fact got lost in the cover-up!)
"I've always known she shot Spider Sabich and meant to do it," said
Frank Tucker, the district attorney who prosecuted the case. "She was an
over-the-hill glamour
puss, and she was not going to lose another man. Andy Williams had
already dumped her, and she was not going to be dumped again, thank
you." (No... No...Sabich was
caught in bed with Longet's 15 yr. old daughter....who had frequented
many adult-oriented parties...and had long lost her inocents)
Longet was 34 at the time of the shooting, Sabich 31. She and her three
children from her marriage to Williams had been living with Sabich for
nearly two years.
They met in 1972 at a race in Bear Valley, Calif., when he was at the
peak of his trade.
"It was like the nuclear fusion, the moment they met," said Jim
Lillstrom, a publicist for World Pro Skiing who became close friends
with Sabich and Longet.
Lillstrom recalled one of their first weekends together, in Steamboat
Springs, Colo.
"SPIDER AND I WERE having a beer when his eyes got as big as saucers,"
Lillstrom said. "A wine glass hit him in the chest and shattered on the
floor. He said,
'Lilly, I think Claudine wants to talk to me."'
There was no shortage of excitement in Aspen, a restored mining town
featuring some of the best skiing in North America. Sabich enjoyed
relaxing in the cafes and
bars dotting the narrow streets of what already was becoming a haven for
Hollywood types. Aspen's most prominent skier flew in and out of the
small airport in his
twin-engine Piper Aztec.
It was a lifestyle far removed from his small-town origins, but Sabich
always had a certain worldliness about him. Jimmy Heuga remembers
battling Sabich for the
same girl. Heuga was 14 years old, the girl 12. Spider was 11, a
formidable competitor even then.
"I became aware of Spider then," said Heuga, a Truckee, Calif., native
who won a bronze medal in the slalom in 1964. "I was a little envious of
him."
SABICH STARTED SKIING at the age of 5. By her best guess, Frances Sabich
figures her three children -- Mary, Spider and Steve -- broke at least
15 bones
combined.
"We had someone in a cast every winter," said Frances, who lives with
her husband, Vladimir, in Colusa, Calif.
The son of Croatian immigrants, Vladimir Sabich flew B-25 bombers for
the U.S. in World War II and spent a year in a Siberian camp after being
shot down over
the northern part of Japan.
The Soviets allowed him to escape once they declared war on Japan, and
he returned to Sacramento, Calif. In 1945 the Sabiches named their first
son Vladimir, but
he was never known by anything other than Spider.
"He was a long baby, but he had no flesh on him," Vladimir said. "He was
all skin and bones. I said, 'Geez, he looks like a spider."'
VLADIMIR AND FRANCES moved from Sacramento to Kyburz in 1950. The
handful of kids who attended Silver Fork Elementary -- a one-room
schoolhouse
to this day -- went to class in the summer and skied in the winter. The
Sabich children competed for the Red Hornet team at Edelweiss, a popular
hill that closed
down in the early 1960s.
The Kyburz kids sometimes hitched rides up the highway in Vladimir's
patrol car. There was a Catholic church across the road from Edelweiss
where Spider and
Steve served as altar boys on Sunday mornings before strapping on their
skis.
After a brief fling with high school football -- "The way he played
football, he was only going to get hurt," Vladimir said -- Sabich
accepted a skiing scholarship to the
University of Colorado in Boulder.
Bob Beattie was the coach, and his skiers included Sabich, Kidd, Jimmy
Heuga, James "Moose" Barrows and Ni Orsi -- Olympians all. Steve Sabich
also went to
Colorado on a ski scholarship, but a knee injury ended his career
prematurely.
"THERE WERE TWO THINGS interesting about Spider," Beattie said. "He had
a great sense of humor and a lot of flair. He was a great-looking guy,
very
spirited. But he also majored in engineering when he came to Colorado.
His mind worked very thoroughly, as an engineer's would. He had these
two opposite sides
to him."
Kidd and Heuga won Olympic medals in 1964, pioneering a breakthrough for
the U.S. men's team in the European-dominated sport. Sabich's shot at
Olympic glory
came four years later. The top Americans spent the latter part of 1967
training in France, and a dispute over the bill in a fancy restaurant on
New Year's Eve landed
Sabich and Kidd in a Grenoble jail.
"It was an adventure," Kidd said. "We were in pretty good spirits that
night."
Less than two months later, Sabich finished fifth in the Olympic slalom.
The race was marred by fog and mist that greatly limited visibility.
"It was so foggy, we never saw Spider," Vladimir says. "We heard him go
by, but we didn't see him."
While in France for the Olympics, Vladimir Sabich bought a .22-caliber
pistol -- an imitation of a German luger -- as a gift for Steve. Eight
years later, that same gun
wound up killing his other son.
* * *
SABICH LEFT THE U.S. SKI TEAM in 1970 to join Beattie's pro circuit. He
was the perfect ambassador -- photogenic, colorful and articulate. He
was also
unbeatable, or so it seemed in 1971 and 1972, when he achieved his
greatest results.
The competition wasn't as strong as it was on the World Cup circuit, but
Sabich finished first in the first pro race he entered and won nine of
18 events in 1972. He
earned $50,600 that year, when his combined income from prize winnings
and endorsements exceeded $150,000.
One of those 1972 wins came at Bear Valley, the Alpine County resort
where Sabich met Longet. Women found Sabich irresistible, and the
French-born entertainer
was no exception.
"Spider was a babe magnet," Steve Sabich said. "Just catching his
overflow was fine with me."
DEDE BRINKMAN, A LONGTIME FRIEND who has lived in Aspen since 1970,
explains the attraction she and other women felt toward Sabich.
"He was so charming and very sexy," Brinkman said. "It was the same type
of charisma you see in movie stars."
Sabich moved from Boulder to the Aspen area in 1971. The home that Steve
Sabich built for his brother at a cost of $90,000 in neighboring
Starwood is now worth
approximately $3 million. The beams came from an old aerial tramway the
brothers tore down.
Those were heady times, what with the view, the skiing and the
nightlife. Kidd and several of Sabich's contemporaries downplay his
widespread reputation as a
partier, but his brother doesn't.
"Spider smoke, drank and did whatever all of us did," he said. "Let's
not forget, those were the '60s and '70s. But I also remember grabbing a
bunch of poles and
setting up courses when there wasn't anyone else on the mountain at
Snowmass. He'd do his 25 runs. A lot of people who'd see Spider out
partying didn't see him
doing those 25 runs. He was serious about his training."
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN Sabich and Longet gradually soured, according
to testimony at the trial, and he issued her an ultimatum to move out.
His
racing career had been going downhill since he suffered a compressed
vertebra in the final race of the 1973 season at Aspen Highlands.
Sabich had been visiting Beattie when he headed home in the late
afternoon of March 21, 1976. Longet had spent the morning skiing and the
afternoon drinking in a
local bar. Sabich was getting ready to take a shower and go out that
evening -- apparently to see another woman -- when he was shot in the
abdomen and bled to
death on the way to the hospital.
It was unseasonably cold that evening, with the wind blowing and a full
moon out. Brinkman remembers it well.
"The airport here has a curfew, but they waived it when Andy Williams
came flying in during the middle of the night," Brinkman said. "Money
walks. That was true
from the get-go."
* * *
LONGET TESTIFIED THAT the gun discharged accidentally as Sabich was
showing her how it worked. The prosecution charged her with reckless
manslaughter, but the jury of seven men and five women convicted her on
a lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide, a crime that carried a
maximum sentence
of two years in jail and a $5,000 fine. ( A DUI will cost you about the
same in Aspen!)
District Judge George Lohr sentenced Longet to 30 days in the Pitkin
County Jail, which she served three months later, following a Mexican
vacation.
(Mind you... in a specially decorated room in the court house...just for
her !)
The prosecution's case was hurt by a ruling that Longet's personal diary
was seized illegally the night of the shooting. Blood tests that
reportedly showed drugs were
in her system that afternoon were also disallowed. (Judge Tam Scott
refused to sign a search warrent for 5 days to allow police to collect
evidence !)
HER DEFENSE TEAM -- which included Los Angeles attorney Charles Weedman
and Aspen lawyer Ron Austin, who left his family and married Longet --
provided testimony from a ballistics expert who said there was so much
grease in the firing mechanism of the gun that it could discharge
without the trigger being
pulled. (Ron Austin and Judge Scott attended law school together...And
had a very special relationship over the years)
"When I saw the way the district attorney's office was handling it, I
guess it was hard to be surprised by the verdict," Beattie said. "I was
the first witness, and the
hardest question they asked me was my name." ( When the investigators
came to Langet's daughter's school to ask about her relationship with
Sabich, only the Judge's
niece was selected to answer questions !)
Tucker, the district attorney, left office in 1978 after being convicted
of fraud and embezzlement. The charges were later overturned, but Tucker
was disbarred and
has never practiced law again. He now runs a mortuary business in
Montrose, Colo. ( Well after the "Mop-up" at the residence there was
very little evidence to be used
against her)
"The whole case was bungled very badly, but we don't a lot of murders in
town," Brinkman said. "We had Ted Bundy, and he escaped."
(yes ...bungled delibrately so...)
INDEED, THAT WAS a rough period for the Aspen Chamber of Commerce. Six
months after the Longet verdict, serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from
the same
Pitkin County Courthouse, jumping out of a window from the second floor
of the 19th-century building.
Austin declined a request to be interviewed for this story. His wife has
never discussed the case publicly after signing a confidentiality
agreement that led Sabich's
parents to drop their $1.3 million civil suit against her.
(Indeed...even the those the most close to those involved...he will
ignore)
"I wasn't looking for money," said Vladimir Sabich, who is 80 and in
failing health. "I just wanted the truth. I kept her from publishing a
book. Let's not talk about it."
(The truth was she killed him for having sex with her daughter, and a
"justifiable homocide" reasoning was used to justify the overt
corruption in the case)
Of Sabich's friends, Lillstrom has remained the closest to Longet. He
believes the shooting was an accident.
"I've come up with nine million theories as to what kind of accident it
was, but I can guarantee you it was an accident," Lillstrom says. "A
terrible, terrible accident."
(How much did he get wired to his account in the Caymens?)
SABICH'S MEMORY LIVES in a framed display at the Hard Rock Cafe in
Aspen. There is also a Spider Sabich Ski Racing Arena on Snowmass
Mountain. If it
seems strange that Longet chose to stay in Aspen, Steve Sabich sees
nothing particularly surprising about it.
"Aspen is one of the places she'd be allowed to live," he said. "They
make a business of minding their own business." (That's an
under-statement!)
But Brinkman resents Longet's presence, even if she seldom appears in
public.
(he is not the only one...but don't say anything...or you'll be
railroaded by her slim-ball now millionaire husband and his
life-tenured Judge friend who has now zero
credibility after letting J. Denver's duble jeopardy defense fly)
"I'd feel better if this woman wasn't walking around, living an
elaborate lie," she said. "It was one of the greatest tragedies I've
endured in my lifetime. I'd feel better if
there was some retribution." (How long before she kills again ?)
Tragedy struck the Sabich family again in 1988, when Mary died of brain
cancer. She was a doctor, just 45 years old. She is buried next to her
brother in
Placerville, Calif.
"I don't know how my parents have handled it," Steve Sabich said. "The
only thing we can do is take the positive, high road and make sure
Spider is remembered
for his accomplishments rather than as a victim. He was no victim. He
was a very strong guy."