She and Andy had three children and were married for like thirteen years, then divorced in the mid-seventies. That’s when she hooked up with Spider. Moved with the kids into his mansion in Starwood. Which was like Aspen’s version of Beverly Hills. Seemed like a sure second chance for love, but it turned deadly. One night, with all the kids in the house, Spider was shot dead with a replica World War II pistol. That is a real fact. Claudine said it was a horrible accident. They were in the bathroom. She was just showing him the gun, or he was teaching her how to use it? Anyway, it went off. He died on the way to the hospital. She was charged with manslaughter and the trial became national news. On the cover of People and everything. Andy was by her side the whole time, walking her in and out of the courthouse. “She needs me very much right now,” he told the magazine. “I’m going to be as supportive as I can.” He had nothing but nice things to say about Spider. But, there was hot gossip. Seems Spider had been preparing to end things; lately their relationship had been stormy. The police even seized her diary, which supposedly contained a lot of details that didn’t make her look very good. It was thick with anxiety. The court ruled it inadmissible, though, and after a four-day trial Claudine was convicted of negligent homicide, a misdemeanor, and given like a twenty-five-dollar fine and thirty days in jail, which she could do “at a time of her own choosing.”

I read everything I could about the trial. Bought a copy of that People on eBay and even paid for a subscription to the New York Times to access their digital archives. I really hated giving them money, since their review of my first album was a total hit piece, but I had to know everything I could about this woman. Whenever anyone thinks of Aspen, they always think of that old, dead dude Hunter who they shot out of a cannon and his flameout pirate sidekick Johnny who—ew, gross—tried to mack on me once in London at a Soho House. But those guys are boring compared to Claudine Longet. Not only did she beat a murder rap, she then married one of her defense lawyers. You can’t get more gonzo than that.

Then? Crickets. There isn’t much out there about her life after the trial. That’s because Spider’s family filed a civil suit against her. She settled it out of court, with the agreement that she would never give an interview or write a book about her story (which is its own tragedy).