A Slap on the Wrist

 Today, I read the news that a convicted killer who got a slap on the wrist, had once been married to Andy Williams, had a mediocre singing and acting career, and finally disappeared from view in disgrace, had died.  Claudine Longet, 84, had died sometime this month, her nephew announced.  She and her second husband (from 1985),  Ron Austin, had moved full time to Hawaii upon his retirement from the legal profession.  They had lived in Aspen, Colorado, where Claudine gained permanent infamy.

Fifty years ago, on March 21, 1976, Claudine Longet went from being a somewhat lucky woman who traded on her looks to snare rich men  to being a permanent pariah.  This was a result of being charged with the killing of her live-in boyfriend, Olympic skier Vladimir "Spider" Sabich, who helped popularize skiing to millions of people.  He was tall, good-looking, charismatic, and articulate on top of being a top athlete.  He had millions in endorsements, with his brother built his house which he owned free and clear, and seemed to have everything going for him.  He did like the freewheeling lifestyle Aspen had to offer.  He had relocated there in the early 1970s.  He had previously lived in northern California, where he was born in 1945.  After Longet and Williams split up, she moved to Aspen with their three children (at least one of whom, Christian, passed away in 2019 at age 54 in Costa Rica, and I know nothing about her daughter having died as well, and, contrary to the link provided, there is nothing to indicate she did pass away).  Not long after she relocated, she met Sabich and soon the two became an item and eventually shacked up at his house.

Anyway, tiring of Longet's possessiveness, Spider had given Longet an ultimatum to move out of his house by April 1.  She moved in with him a couple of years prior with her three children.   Longet was furious and wasn't about to be dumped.  She wasn't the type of person who was going to be tossed out.  She would move only on her terms.  Then on the evening of March 21, 1976,  she snuck behind him with a gun while he was in the bathroom either shaving or brushing his teeth and shot him dead.  According to her, it was an "accident."  She just "accidentally" shot him from behind while he was showing her how to use the gun.  It was a total bullshit story, but the Aspen police so bungled the investigation by mishandling her diary and the gun involved, neither could be admitted as evidence.  Because of that, she was convicted of the most minor thing imaginable, practically a misdemeanor when in fact it was premeditated murder.  Since Longet had little support in Aspen,  she turned to the one person she could rely on for help: ex-husband Andy Williams.  He helped her in her defense; after all, she was the mother of his three children.  He was loyal to her.  

Longet served only 30 days in jail, at her convenience, and because Aspen was a rich person's town, she got the privilege of being able to paint her cell pink.  The public was outraged.  Sabich's family eventually sued her for over a million dollars, with the parties settling out of court.  The amount of money was undisclosed, but she agreed she would never speak publicly, let alone write a book, about her time with Sabich.  She never did.  She did create a scandal of sorts by taking up with her defense lawyer, Ron Austin, right after the trial.  He ditched his wife and family for her, and, after several years of shacking up, they married in 1985.  Amazingly,  he survives her given her checkered past.

Years ago, Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege and Justice had a good episode on this case:

Obituary: Rex Reed

Caustic film critic, journalist, and sometime actor Rex Reed, 87, died today.  He died at his home at the fabled Dakota,  the apartment which he bought for $30,000 way back in 1969.  Now only the megarich can afford to live there.  

For his part, Reed died after a short illness.  He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1938, and, thanks to his father's job, lived all over the southern U.S.  He received a journalism degree from Louisiana State University in 1960.  He had wanted to become an actor, but he ended up writing newspaper columns.  

It is just as well he did.  As  bad film fanatics remember, he starred or rather co-starred in one of the all-time worst movies, 1970's Myra Breckenridge.  Of course, he played the "Myron" part while Raquel Welch actually played the title role.  It was a shit movie, more stupid than offensive. Yes, I have that movie on DVD and have had it for years.

Reed fared way better with criticism.  One of his most famous screeds was his evisceration of Frank Sinatra when the latter performed at Madison Square Garden in 1974.  The San Francisco Chronicle reprinted it, and I liked the particular column so much, I saved a copy of it for decades.  I think I still have that scrapbook and that column.  Reed said Sinatra looked like Porky Pig and his wardrobe made him look like Elmer Fudd. He said his ego was bigger than the Sahara, "the desert, not the hotel in Las Vegas, although either comparison applies."   He declared this about Sinatra's ability as a singer, "The grim truth is Frank Sinatra has had it."  I remember entire sentences from that column fifty years later.  My favorite line was this:  "When you looked into the ol' blue eyes, you saw the River Stix."  When Reed wanted to, he could really write.  Sinatra, meanwhile, wasn't happy with the column, but he and Reed continued with their careers.

Snip:

Reed was not the typical dowdy or frumpy critic. With his nasally drawl and fashionable attire, he was front and center in a profession where most writers of his time were behind-the-scenes personalities who shied from public exposure. His hauteur could be endearing or off-putting.

Some considered him to be representative of “New Journalism” — his 1966 piece about an angry Ava Gardner for Esquire made it into Tom Wolfe’s noteworthy 1973 anthology — while others decried him as being a celebrity monger. (He was a judge on The Gong Show in the 1970s, after all.)

Pilot Rock Trail Hike

Today, I went on an interpretative hike with a small group sponsored by Friends of the Cascade-Siskiyou Monument to the base of the geological landmark Pilot Rock. It is located near Ashland, Oregon. Of course we didn’t go on the rock itself; people have been injured and even killed up there, but we got about as close as it gets. Some of us stayed behind because of the scrambling necessary to get to the base. A few photos:

Good Riddance

I woke up this morning and read about the death of convicted double murderer Betty Broderick, 78, who died yesterday of undisclosed causes.   She gained international headlines back in the late 1980s-early 1990s because she was this rich, divorced socialite who got revenge on her ex-husband, prominent San Diego attorney Dan Broderick, and Broderick's second wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, while the pair slept in their bed.  Betty had stolen a key from her daughter and let herself in Dan and Linda's house and shot them dead.  It was as cold-blooded a murder case as there has ever been.  She tore the phone cord from the wall when Dan tried to reach for it, but it was too late for him.  Later on, Betty turned herself in to police.

Broderick was one of the most undeserving-of-sympathy killers in modern American crime.  She never expressed remorse for killing her ex because he had dumped her several years prior in favor of  Linda Kolkena, who had once been a flight attendant and later worked as Dan's legal assistant.  They had an affair, so Dan and Betty's marriage was over with.  Cheating spouses are as common as flies to shit, but few jilted ex-spouses decide to retaliate by killing them and the third parties involved.  Worse still, Betty committed a crime against her children by robbing them of their father, who had custody of the four children at the time of the murders.  She didn't care what they thought.  Betty Broderick was a classic narcissist, a sociopath, who never once expressed remorse for what she did. It was always Dan and Linda's fault, never hers.

Broderick was tried twice.  The first trial ended with a hung jury, but she was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in her second trial.  She was clearly a head case and was long before Linda Kolkena came into the picture.  Dan put up with a lot from her.  That doesn't justify the cheating or his use of the legal system and connections against Betty.  However, she was a lunatic.  Her narcissism gave her a tremendous sense of entitlement.  No matter if Dan wanted out, she felt entitled to the lavish lifestyle and "prestige" being married to a lawyer supposedly entailed.  (I worked for years around attorneys and know it isn't any great thing to be connected with.  In my experience,  I observed that almost the only marriages to lawyers that worked out were those where both spouses were lawyers.  Many attorneys, especially the men, were married several times.  It is a fairly miserable way of life despite the potential of making good money.  Many lawyers I knew hated their jobs but couldn't afford to get out.)  Back then, though, being married to a professional man, especially a rich one, carried lots of prestige. Women were making inroads as attorneys in their own right, but it was still "easier" to marry a lawyer than to be one.  Betty subscribed to the latter.  When Betty grew up and then married Dan in 1969, she was more than willing to work to put him through medical school at Cornell and law school at Harvard.  She naively thought his life would be her life, plus she had a total of four kids to raise.  She got to live an affluent lifestyle in the San Diego area, with skiing trips and vacations all over the place, with volunteer work in her community, and so forth.  Because of this, many women started believing the story put forward by Betty and her lawyers that Dan "stole" her best years, and, when the big money started rolling in (well over a million a year), dumped her for a younger version of herself.  Seemingly millions of women could see themselves in Betty's shoes and felt Dan and Linda deserved what they got.  It was a great con job by Betty and her legal team.  This notion still persists to this day.  These groupies as I call them are still very vocal in their continued misguided support.  

Reality was a bit different.  Betty literally dumped the kids at Dan's house trying to make a point, but it backfired when he ended up with custody.  She harassed Dan and Linda constantly with insane phone calls and voice mails, and, I believe at one point, she drove her vehicle into Dan's house.  Dan and Linda feared for their lives.  Dan's friends recommended he leave San Diego, but he felt that would have been pointless, for Betty would have found him.  Although the divorce was highly contentious, Betty did receive a very generous settlement by most standards.  She could well afford to live on $13,000 a month, 1989 dollars, had a career in real estate, and a new boyfriend, who stuck by her for years after the killings.  That wasn't enough.  Dan and Linda got married earlier in 1989, but Betty wasn't about to let Dan "win" by moving on with his life.  

That was what the murders were all about--getting in the last word and "winning."  It was all about revenge.  Dan and Linda didn't "make her do it."  That was bullshit by the defense team in order to try and get her sentence reduced or even have her walk free.  It didn't work.  Most people then and now saw through the ruse.

The California parole board rejected her claims time and again, noting she never showed any remorse over what she did.  

Justice did prevail in this case, unlike so many other high-profile murder cases.

Snip:

Born in 1947, Betty was raised in a strict Catholic home in Westchester County, just outside of New York City. She often took care of her four siblings and wrote in her 2015 memoir Telling On Myself that her parents had primed her to grow up to be a housewife. After trying her hand at modeling and working at a restaurant and a department store, she enrolled at the University of Mount Saint Vincent in 1965, where she studied English and early childhood education

Some Wednesday Reads

 There will be no Triple Crown winner this year.

It's understandable this year as in last year because the Belmont is run at a shorter distance, something not available to the previous 13 Triple Crown winners.

_________________________

Obituary:  Cable news pioneer and founder of the great channel Turner Classic Movies, Ted Turner, 87, has died after a lengthy battle with the dread Lewy Body Dementia.

He started WTBS in the 1970s before launching CNN in 1980. After he acquired the MGM film library, he started a great cable channel, Turner Classic Movies.  This channel is about the only thing I miss over no longer getting cable/dish television.

Turner had an "aw shucks" type of demeanor that fooled people into thinking he wasn't smart, but he was, shockingly so.

Snip:

Robert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from Brown University for sneaking a female student into his room, Turner came to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard company.

His ambitions at that point were broad, he later recalled: “I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.”

After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the company. In 1970, he bought an independent UHF station with a signal so weak it didn’t even cover Atlanta.

On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems across the country via satellite. It became TBS Superstation. “It was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,” Turner said.

TBS’ collection of old movies and “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted fans across the nation and declared themselves “America’s team.”

Monday Reads

 What else is new?  The GOP are up to no good, as usual.

______________________________

Some MAGA cultists are upset because Trump can't admit he lost fair and square in the 2020 election.

_______________________________

The antiabortion nutjobs aren't happy with Trump, either.

_______________________________

Speaking of the issue, mifepristone, aka RU-486, is still legal in this country.

_______________________________

Kentucky Derby 2026 Results

 Golden Tempo has won the 152nd Kentucky Derby.  Jose Ortiz is the jockey.  It is his first Derby win.   This race is historic, for the  first woman trainer has won the Kentucky Derby.   Her name is Cherie DeVaux.   She is the second woman to win a Triple Crown race.   Renegade was second, with Jose's brother Irad aboard.   2:02.27 was the time.  The Phipps family owns this son of Curlin.   The Phipps family has been in the sport for decades.  Actually, a century.  They were the family at least half responsible for Secretariat, thanks to having owned Bold Ruler, the sire of Secretariat and the greatest sire of all time as far as I am concerned.  They owned Discovery, Bold Ruler, Easy Goer, Personal Ensign, Buckpasser, and other greats too numerous to mention.

So much of what women in this game as jockeys and as trainers have to do deal with is connections. The Phipps family is about as good as it gets in horse racing.  If women can't form connections with owners and/or trainers, they won't get far in this sport.  There is still a lot of prejudice out there. 

As for Golden Tempo, he came from behind, actually dead last,  to win the race by a neck.  Ocelli was third.  

Great White had to be scratched at the last minute for rearing and going over backwards, throwing his jockey.  There was a delay in the running as a result.  Both horse and jockey seemed okay.

Jose Ortiz also won the Kentucky Oaks yesterday.

The race:

Kentucky Derby Day 2026

 Earlier:  Here is the current odds.  There were many scratches this year with the result of no clear favorite.  Renegade and Commandment are the favorites going into this year's race at 5-1, the 65th I have seen since I was six years old in 1961 and watched Carry Back.

___________________________

Earlier in the day:

American Turf Stakes:

_____

Churchill Downs Stakes, which had a stunning surprise:

_____

From yesterday, the Kentucky Oaks:

_____

Old Bourbon Turf Classic: