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Aspen Was a Playground for the Rich Until Darkness Crept In · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to really take a second and try
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to build this environment in your mind's eye.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, really, picture it.
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Speaker 1: Right, You're standing in what is basically a geographic anomaly.
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It's a spot that is equal parts rugged, unforgiving alpine
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wilderness and well an unapologetic billionaire's playground.
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Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, the contrast is just staggering.
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Speaker 1: It really is. Like if you look to your left,
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you see the kind of jagged, snowcapped peaks that require
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just absolute physical resilience just to survive, pure survivalist terring exactly.
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But then you look to your right and you see
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these sprawling, just massively overgrown masterpieces of real estate.
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Speaker 2: These mansions that honestly look like the obese love children
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of Emily Post and grizzly Atoms.
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Speaker 1: Yes, that is exactly what they look like. It's like
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someone took a rustic log cabin and scaled it up
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to I don't know, twenty thousand square feet with a
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heated ten car garage.
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Speaker 2: It's a profound architectural and cultural paradox. You have the
1:01
aesthetics of a harsh frontier camp, but the whole thing
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is funded by hedge fund capital and Hollywood residuals.
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Speaker 1: And you see that contradiction everywhere you look. I mean,
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you walk down the main street and the people strolling
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past you are wearing goat fur boots that frankly cost
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more than most people's cars easily, and they shop with
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this kind of casual detachment, right like currency is just
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another natural resource falling from the sky like the.
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Speaker 2: Snow, right like money is just a weather pattern there exactly.
1:29
Speaker 1: And the culinary scene completely reflects that bizarre dual identity too.
1:33
When these folks get hungry, they don't just you know,
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grab a tuky sandwich out a deli.
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Speaker 2: No, No, they retreat into heavily guarded private clubs.
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Speaker 1: Right and they order a reuben. But it's not made
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with pistromi. It is constructed from a homemade black pumpernickel
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and finally cured thinly sliced buffalo.
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Speaker 2: Tongue, usually accompanied by a side of fried quail eggs,
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of course.
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Speaker 1: Because obviously it's frontier food, but totally filtered through this
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lens of extreme luxury.
2:01
Speaker 2: So you have just stepped into modern day Aspen.
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Speaker 1: Colorado, undeniably the ritchiest ski town in the American West. Okay,
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But and here's The absolute crux of why we are
2:13
taking this deep died today. Aspen wasn't always this curated
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snow globe for the ultra rich.
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Speaker 2: No, it definitely wasn't. It wasn't always a place where
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you had to literally take a number and wait for
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the next available hot tub.
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Speaker 1: Right, and we are going to explore the precise mechanics
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of how that massive transformation happened.
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Speaker 2: Huh.
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Speaker 1: On its surface, the story we're unpacking today is a
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true crime tragedy.
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Speaker 2: We are examining the nineteen seventy six death of a
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highly revered local speed hero at the.
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Speaker 1: Hands of a glamorous Hollywood actress.
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Speaker 2: Right, But you know this is far more than just
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a murder mystery. We are essentially performing an autopsy on
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a cultural watershed moment.
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Speaker 1: I love that phrasing. An autopsy of a culture.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're looking at a localized sociological collapse. This
2:54
single shooting acted as a really violent catalyst.
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Speaker 1: It took a town that functioned as this sanctuary for
3:00
ski bums and societal dropouts and rugged individualists.
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Speaker 2: And forcibly transitioned it into a celebrified suburb of Los Angeles.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. The contrast between the you know, the lerigits of
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today's Aspen and the really gritty reality of its origins
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is just staggering.
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Speaker 2: It's night and day.
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Speaker 1: So to understand why this specific death in nineteen seventy
3:21
six completely shattered the town's identity, we first have to
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establish what that identity even was.
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Speaker 2: Right, how it was built, and why it was so
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incredibly fragile to begin with.
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Speaker 1: Right, So I want to take us back way back
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before the goat for boots and the private aviation fleets.
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Let's look at the foundational DNA of Aspen in the
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nineteenth century.
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Speaker 2: Well, the origin story of Aspen is fundamentally tied to extraction.
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It began as a silver mining outpost back in eighteen
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seventy nine.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so a rough and tumble boom town exactly.
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Speaker 2: You really have to picture this incredibly harsh mountain settlement.
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It was populated by prospectors, braving brutal winters and complete
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geographical ice, all to feed the West's massive silver boom.
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Speaker 1: Right. But what makes Aspen unique compared to one hundred
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other mining camps is that it wasn't just a temporary tensity.
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Speaker 2: No, it attracted serious capital from people who wanted to
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build a permanent monument to their own wealth.
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Speaker 1: They weren't just extracting silver and skipping town. They were
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building a localized empire, and the primary architect of that
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empire was Jerome Wheeler.
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Speaker 2: Jerome Wheeler is such a fascinating figure in economic history.
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He was an entrepreneur and financier, and he was heavily
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tied to the Macy's department store family.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, so serious.
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Speaker 2: Established money, huge money, and he made an absolute fortune
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investing in the Aspen mining boom. But unlike a lot
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of prospectors who just took their money back to New York,
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Wheeler had this grand, somewhat hubristic vision for Aspen.
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Speaker 1: He knew the silver veins wouldn't produce forever.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, so to sustain his empire, he started reinvesting his
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wealth directly into the town's permanent infrastructure.
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Speaker 1: He was trying to artificially engineer a sustainable city in
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a completely inhospitable environment. I mean, he planted trees, he
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funded civic causes, he built an opera house.
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Speaker 2: But the crown jewel of this whole endeavor was the
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hotel Jerome built in eighteen eighty nine.
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Speaker 1: I want to spend a second on the Hotel Jerome
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because you know, understand of this building is so crucial
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to understanding Aspen's inherent obsession with luxury.
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Speaker 2: Oh, totally getting building materials up to that elevation eighteen
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eighty nine was an absolute logistical nightmare.
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Speaker 1: It must have been an act of extreme financial force.
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The Hotel Jerome wasn't just some place for miners to
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sleep off a bender. It was designed to rival the
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finest hotels in Europe.
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Speaker 2: This was widely considered the very first hotel west of
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the Mississippi River to feature hot and cold running water, electricity,
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and a working elevator.
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Speaker 1: A working elevator, Just think about the engineering required to
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generate and maintain electricity in a remote, rocky mountain valley
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in eighteen eighty nine.
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Speaker 2: It was a massive flex of industrial power.
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Speaker 1: They were at bragging in their marketing about having a
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couple of shared bathrooms on each floor, which I mean
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sounds terrible to us now, but back then that was
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the absolute height of opulence.
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Speaker 2: It really was an incredible display of wealth. But Wheeler's
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underlying fear that the silver wouldn't last that proved to
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be incredibly prescient. Didn't it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because the boom didn't just slowly fade away, it
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violently collapsed.
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Speaker 2: It was essentially an overnight economic catastrophe. In eighteen ninety three,
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the federal government repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and
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that act.
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Speaker 1: Had basically been propping up the entire price of silver exactly.
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Speaker 2: So the resulting panic of eighteen ninety three completely decimated
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the town's economy. The mines closed, the capital evaporated, and
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Aspen went from being this booming, wealthy enclave to a
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veritable ghost town.
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Speaker 1: I mean, the population, which had peaked in the thousands
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plummeted to roughly three hundred residents.
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Speaker 2: Just three hundred people left.
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Speaker 1: You really have to put yourself in their shoes for
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a second. Imagine being one of those three hundred people.
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You are living in a freezing, isolated valley, surrounded by
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the rotting husks of massive Victorian.
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Speaker 2: Homes and a state of the art electrified hotel that
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is just sitting there, completely empty.
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Speaker 1: It's basically post apocalyptic. You know, all this massive infrastructure
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and literally zero economy.
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Speaker 2: So how does a town with three hundred residents just
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holding on for dear life? Eventually mutate into a billionaire's playground.
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Speaker 1: Well, the environment that nearly killed them ended up being
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their salvation.
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Speaker 2: The geography completely dictated the rebirth. By the nineteen thirties,
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the remaining locals realized their only real asset was the
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massive snow covered peaks surrounding them, Right.
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Speaker 1: So in nineteen thirty one they somehow managed to scrape
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together enough resources to construct this very rudimentary boat tow
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ski lift.
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Speaker 2: It was an act of sheer desperation. They were trying
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to invent a tourism economy out of thin air.
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Speaker 1: But you know, while that lift proved that skiing was
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technically possible there, it didn't really bring the necessary capital
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to save the town.
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Speaker 2: No, it didn't. The true engine of Aspens resurrection was,
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ironically the machinery of World War Two.
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Speaker 1: This is where this story pivots from just like quirky
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local history to actual national history. You have the US
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Army coming into train troops for winter.
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Speaker 2: Combat, specifically the tenth Mountain Division. The War Department realized
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they needed troops capable of fighting in the really harsh
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alpine conditions of Europe, Right.
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Speaker 1: So they set up Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, which
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is just over the mountains.
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Speaker 2: From Aspect, and the recruitment for this division was incredibly specific.
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They brought in college athletes, avid outdoorsmen, and European expatriates who.
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Speaker 1: Had fled the war, basically men who already knew how
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to ski and survive in extreme cold exactly. But think
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about the physical toll of this training. We aren't talking
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about like taking a few runs and getting hot coco.
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These soldiers are carrying ninety pound rucksacks, rifles, heavy gear,
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navigating treacherous terrain at ten thousand feet of elevation.
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Speaker 2: It was grueling. But during these training maneuvers, they would
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frequently undertake these multi day tracks that led them right
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down into the practically abandoned town of Aspen.
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Speaker 1: And that visual contrast is so vital. You have these elite,
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highly conditioned soldiers totally exhausted from training for a global war,
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skiing down into this quiet, forgotten valley.
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Speaker 2: And it had perfect terrain.
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Speaker 1: Right It had a profound psychological impact on them. They
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looked at the mountains, they felt the snow, and many
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of them made a pact right then and there.
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Speaker 2: The pact was if they survived the battlefields of Italy,
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and Europe. They were going to return to this specific
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valley and build a premier ski destination.
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Speaker 1: They weren't corporate developers looking at topographical maps in some
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boardroom in New York. They were combat veterans seeking a
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peaceful sanctuary, and they were building a resort based on
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a deep, almost spiritual connection to the terrain.
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Speaker 2: And we really need to dig into the physical reality
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of that terrain, specifically the snow.
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Speaker 1: Yes, the snow's crucial because there is this meteorological phenomenon
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in Aspen that creates a very pacific type of powder,
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and it essentially became the foundational product of their new economy.
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Speaker 2: The famous ski merchandiser Klaus Obermeyer has an anecdote that
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captures this perfectly.
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Speaker 1: Oh, I love this story.
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Speaker 2: Obermeyer's arrival really encapsulates the romanticism of that era. He
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arrived and asked Ben at night in the late nineteen forties,
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right as this massive storm was rolling through, dropping about
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eight to ten inches of snow.
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Speaker 1: So it's totally dump snow overnight, right and.
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Speaker 2: The next morning the sun comes out and he steps
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outside to test his skis. He described the snow as
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being like down, like goose down, feathers exactly. It had
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virtually no moisture content. It was so incredibly light that
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as he moved, it just plumed and flew around him.
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Speaker 1: The physics of that dry snow create a sensation of
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almost total weightlessness when you ski.
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Speaker 2: He experienced that once and literally decided right on the
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spot to spend the rest of his life there.
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Speaker 1: It's the mid century equivalent of a tech startup incubator.
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But instead of writing code in a garage in Silicon Valley,
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these veterans and European expats are innovating lifestyle and recreation.
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Speaker 2: They are inventing the modern American ski industry entirely from
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the ground up.
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Speaker 1: But that rais is a really interesting sociological question for you.
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When you look at the people who migrated to Aspen
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in the nineteen fifties and sixties, were they ambitious pioneers
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building an industry or were they fundamentally just people looking
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for a permanent escape from mainstream American society.
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Speaker 2: Well, they were absolutely a hybrid of both, and honestly,
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that duality is exactly what created the friction we see.
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Speaker 1: Later on the clash of cultures.
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Speaker 2: Right by the late nineteen sixties, Aspen had become this
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massive magnet for the disillusioned. You had a huge influx
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of people who are actively dropping out of the corporate
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rat race.
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Speaker 1: They were completely rejecting the post war American dream, you know,
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the suburban house, the two kids, the nine to five
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job exactly.
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Speaker 2: Instead, they were chasing adrenaline, personal freedom, and a really
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raw connection to nature.
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Speaker 1: They were establishing a sanctuary for the disillusioned, provided, of course,
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that you really really loved downhill skiing.
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Speaker 2: That was the mandatory entry fee. And you end up
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with this incredibly bizarre demographic stew You have beat poets
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and counterculture hippies living right next door to trust fund
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kids and sidetracked PhDs.
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Speaker 1: The intellectual and artistic energy must have been palpable. I mean,
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you had figures like Hunter S. Thompson, the founder of
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Gonzo journalism, hunkering down there to write.
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Speaker 2: So he actually ran for local sheriff on the freak
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power ticket, which is just wild.
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Speaker 1: And you had John Denver writing anthems about the Rocky Mountains.
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And in the summers, this community would meticulously restore those
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rotting Victorian homes left over from the Silver Boom.
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Speaker 2: They planted community herb gardens. They would gather in the
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town square for afternoon music.
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Speaker 1: That summer culture is so fascinating to me because it
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implies a community built on extreme high trust. There's a
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detail in the sources about those afternoon concerts that just
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blew my mind.
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Speaker 2: About the shops closing.
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Speaker 1: Yes, when the music started in the park, two thirds
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of the retail shops in town would just close their doors.
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They would hang a handwritten sign in the window saying
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closed until the concert is over.
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Speaker 2: No un locked their doors. No one worried about losing
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an hour of revenue.
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Speaker 1: They prioritize the shared communal experience over the accumulation of capital.
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Speaker 2: It sounds incredibly utopian, doesn't it.
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Speaker 1: It really does. It sounds idyllic.
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Speaker 2: But we have to look closer at the underlying economics
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because while the surface culture was very bohemian and egalitarian,
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the economic reality was creating a deeply entrenched, although completely
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unwritten class system.
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Speaker 1: Right the town was quietly splitting into two distinct, highly
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polarized camps.
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Speaker 2: The servers and the served.
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Speaker 1: Let's really break down the mechanics that divide. Yeah, because
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this isn't just about who has more money in their
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savings account. It's about how you function within the town's
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ecosystem exactly.
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Speaker 2: So the served were the incoming wave of ultra wealthy elites.
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These were corporate titans and the idle rich flowing in
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from places like Los Angeles and New York.
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Speaker 1: They were the words buying up the massive log palaces
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and driving the real estate prices into the stratosphere.
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Speaker 2: And the servers were the foundational locals, the bartenders, the
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ski patrollers, the waiters, the ski instructors.
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Speaker 1: The people who actually made the town function right.
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Speaker 2: But because the served were inflating the cost of living
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so aggressively, the servers had to work incredibly long, grueling
14:22
hours just to make rent.
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Speaker 1: So you have a dynamic whereas ski instructor is waiting
14:26
on a billionaire at a restaurant at night, just so
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the instructor can afford to wake up the next morning
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and ski the same mountain as the billionaire.
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Speaker 2: That kind of economic subservience, especially in a town that
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prides itself on being rebellious and anti establishment, it breeds
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a very specific type of psychological defense mechanism.
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Speaker 1: It resulted in intense gatekeeping and a really fierce localized
14:49
arrogance the locals developed a whole vocabulary to demean the
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wealthy outsiders.
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Speaker 2: The most prominent term was the turon, which.
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Speaker 1: Is a portmanteau of tourists moron, I love that.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty brutal. And the core identity of a
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true Asponite became tied to their ability to completely ignore
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fame and opulence.
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Speaker 1: Its reverse snobbery as a survival tactic, like if I
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can out earn you, I will outcool you. I will
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pretend your money doesn't exist exactly.
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Speaker 2: There was an unwritten but fiercely enforced local law you
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never approach a celebrity.
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Speaker 1: If someone asks a famous actor for an autograph in
15:28
a bar, the entire room immediately categorized that person as
15:32
a Turan. The locals didn't care about your box office numbers.
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They only cared about your technique. On the mountain, the
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dedication to.
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Speaker 2: The outdoor lifestyle was paramount bordering on the fanatical. We
15:42
see this perfectly in the story of Dan mckechen.
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Speaker 1: Oh, this story is amazing.
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Speaker 2: He moves to Aspen, gets a menial job washing dishes,
15:48
specifically so he can ski every single day. But then
15:51
he discovers dogs, letting, and.
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Speaker 1: His reaction to finding a new passion is just extreme.
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He completely gives up skiing for twenty.
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Speaker 2: Years in a town built entirely aroun on skiing. Giving
16:00
it up is basically a religious heresy, but his logic is.
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Speaker 1: What's so revealing. He realizes that if he tears his
16:07
acl or breaks his leg on the ski slope, he
16:10
physically won't be able to run his dog.
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Speaker 2: Sled team, So he just completely abstains from the town's
16:16
primary activity to protect his ability to pursue his niche obsession.
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Speaker 1: That is a level of hyperfixation on a specific lifestyle
16:24
that you simply do not see in normal municipal populations.
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Speaker 2: And you have to constantly contrast that extreme dirt under
16:31
the fingernail survivalist dedication with the staggering hedonism happening simultaneously
16:37
just a few blocks away.
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Speaker 1: Right while guys like Dan are out freezing in the
16:40
wilderness with their dogs, you had the emergence of places
16:43
like the Caribou Club.
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Speaker 2: The Caribou Club was explicitly designed to be an impenetrable
16:48
fortress for the ultra rich, entirely insulating them from the
16:51
bohemian locals.
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Speaker 1: This is where we get back to the buffalo tongu
16:54
ruben we mentioned earlier. You have Chef Angelo in the
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kitchen at the Caribou Club, curing bison tongung, frying quail eggs,
17:01
and delivering a level of culinary excess that ribles Manhattan.
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Speaker 2: Or Paris, and he's serving it to a clientele that
17:07
is so oversaturated with wealth that they literally have to
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take a physical number and wait in line just to
17:13
get into the next available hot tub.
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Speaker 1: It's the utter commodification of the mountain experience. But the
17:18
collision of that immense bored wealth with the adrenaline fueled
17:22
lifestyle of the locals created a very dangerous synthesis.
17:26
Speaker 2: When you have a population completely dedicated to chasing high
17:29
risk thrills and you suddenly introduce vast amounts of disposable
17:32
income in the nineteen seventies, you inevitably get a massive,
17:37
catastrophic drug culture.
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Speaker 1: The economic and psychological impact of cocaine on aspen in
17:42
the nineteen seventies really cannot be overstated. We often hear
17:46
the phrase like a pig going through a boa constrictor
17:48
used to describe demographic trends, like, you know, the baby
17:51
boomers aging, But here that exact metaphor is used in
17:54
our sources to describe cocaine moving through the town's economy
17:58
and social structure. I really want to unpacked the mechanics
18:00
of that metaphor. How exactly did cocaine alter the town?
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Speaker 2: Well, think about the economics of an isolated mountain town.
18:07
You have service workers who are exhausted from working multiple jobs,
18:11
and you have wealthy tourists who want to party all night.
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Speaker 1: So it starts as a utility exactly.
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Speaker 2: Cocaine was initially embraced, not as a destructive narcotic, but
18:21
as a functional utility. It was an energy booster. People
18:24
didn't fully grasp the neurochemical hooks of the addiction.
18:27
Speaker 1: Back then. They were literally filling the sugar bowls in
18:30
their kitchens with cocaine.
18:32
Speaker 2: They treated it like a highly concentrated espresso.
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Speaker 1: But the economic impact was devastating. Service workers were suddenly
18:39
pouring their hard earned rent money into the drug trade.
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Speaker 2: The underground economy of distribution actually began to rival the
18:46
legitimate tourism economy.
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Speaker 1: One local profoundly noted the psychological trap. You'd snore a line,
18:53
you'd feel like a brand new man. But the very
18:55
first thing that brand new man wanted was more cocaine.
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Speaker 2: It completely rewired the dopamine reward system of an entire community.
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Speaker 1: It turned the town into a behavioral pressure cooker. Imagine
19:06
a high school with very rigid clicks, but instead of
19:09
just sitting at different lunch tables, the burnouts and the
19:12
rich kids are all engaged in the exact same reckless,
19:16
adrenaline chasing, hyper stimulated behavior on the weekends.
19:19
Speaker 2: Everyone is completely out of control. They just happen to
19:22
be in different tax bracket.
19:23
Speaker 1: There's an environment of extreme volatility. The guard rails of
19:26
normal society had been completely removed.
19:29
Speaker 2: And that specific toxic environment was the incubator for the
19:33
tragedy we are examining today. The collision of the bohemian locals,
19:37
the Hollywood elite, the drug culture, and the gate keeping mentality.
19:41
It all centralized in the relationship of two highly visible.
19:44
Speaker 1: People, the golden boy and the interloper. This is where
19:48
the sociology becomes a narrative. Let's start by dissecting the
19:51
golden boy of Vladimir Spoiuder Sabach. How did this guy
19:55
manage to navigate that massive chasm between the servers and.
19:58
Speaker 2: The Serveder's Jevich was the idealized manifestation of the Aspen ethos.
20:03
He was the son of Croatian immigrants raised in the
20:05
Sierra Nevada Mountains of.
20:06
Speaker 1: California, so he had real mountain pedigree.
20:09
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and he was a prodigious athletic talent. He attended
20:13
the University of Colorado on a ski racing scholarship and
20:16
ultimately represented the United States in the nineteen sixty eight
20:19
Winter Olympics.
20:20
Speaker 1: And after the Olympics he turns professional and makes Aspen
20:24
his physical and spiritual home.
20:26
Speaker 2: He was often referred to as the John Elway of skiing.
20:29
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just that he was good at the sport, right,
20:31
It was how he skied and how that fit into
20:34
the evolving business of skiing.
20:36
Speaker 2: Precisely, he was a slalom specialist, and he helped pioneer
20:39
a very specific sloughering skating technique that allowed him to
20:43
maintain incredible speed through the gates.
20:46
Speaker 1: Plus, this was the exact era when his former coach,
20:49
Bob Beatty was essentially inventing the professional ski racing.
20:53
Speaker 2: Door, and Spider was the charismatic face of that new
20:56
lucrative industry. He was ruggedly handsome, perpetually smiling, and wildly charming, but.
21:01
Speaker 1: His true superpower was his social mobility. Within Aspen's rigid
21:05
class structure, he was a bonafide world class athlete who
21:09
genuinely loved the sport.
21:10
Speaker 2: Which gave him absolute, unquestioned credibility with the hardcore ski bums,
21:15
the servers. They viewed him as one of their own
21:18
who had made it big.
21:20
Speaker 1: But simultaneously, his professional success and his natural charisma made
21:25
him wealthy and famous, which allowed him to move effortlessly
21:29
through the elite high society circles of the served.
21:32
Speaker 2: He could drink sheep beer with the lift operators in
21:34
the afternoon and eat quail eggs at the Cariboo Club
21:37
at night. He was the vital bridge between the two.
21:39
Speaker 1: Aspens, and grossing that bridge from the other direction, you
21:42
have Claudine Longat. If Spider was the unifying hometown hero,
21:47
Claudine was a walking representation of everything the old guard
21:50
Aspenites despised about the new wealth.
21:53
Speaker 2: Let's look at her trajectory because it is essentially a
21:56
master class in mid century Hollywood paradynamics.
21:59
Speaker 1: Claudeine Longet was a French born actress and singer, fiercely
22:02
ambitious and classically beautiful with these striking green eyes.
22:05
Speaker 2: Her origin story in American entertainment is the stuff of
22:08
Hollywood legend. She was working as a showgirl in Las
22:11
Vegas when her car broke down on the side of
22:13
the road.
22:14
Speaker 1: And a passing motorist pulls over to a sister, And
22:17
that motorist just happens to be Andy Williams.
22:19
Speaker 2: Who was at the time one of the most powerful
22:22
and famous singers in America, the absolute king of easy listening.
22:26
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate Hollywood meet cute, but it immediately
22:30
established as a very specific power dynamic. She is discovered, rescued,
22:35
and elevated by a man who already possesses massive cultural capital.
22:39
Speaker 2: Exactly they mary have three children, and Williams uses his
22:43
considerable industry influence to launch her acting and singing career.
22:47
Speaker 1: She appeared on his variety shows and eventually landed her
22:50
most prominent film role in nineteen sixty eight, starring opposite
22:53
Peter Sellers in the comedy of the Party.
22:56
Speaker 2: The irony of that role is profound, as she essentially
22:59
played a naive I want to be French actress trying
23:01
to navigate the absurdities of the Hollywood elite.
23:04
Speaker 1: A role that closely mirrored her own reality very much so.
23:07
But the marriage to the King of Easy Listening eventually fractures,
23:11
they separate, she moves to Aspen, and they eventually divorce.
23:14
Andy Williams stays anchored in the Hollywood studio system and
23:17
Claudine attempts to establish a new life in the Rockies.
23:20
Speaker 2: But when she arrives in Aspen, she runs headfirst into
23:24
that wall of reverse snobbery we talked about earlier. They
23:27
fiercely judged her.
23:28
Speaker 1: And I really want to dig into the y because
23:31
they claimed to ignore fame, yet they actively despised hers.
23:35
Speaker 2: It comes right back to the concept of the Turan
23:38
and the strict rules of Aspen gatekeeping. To the old Guard,
23:41
fame was only legitimate if it was extracted from the
23:44
mountain itself.
23:45
Speaker 1: You had to earn your status through physical bravery or
23:49
athletic supremacy.
23:50
Speaker 2: And Claudine's fame was viewed as entirely manufactured. The locals
23:55
dismissively viewed her as a third tier celebrity who was
23:58
merely riding the coattails of her powerful ex husband.
24:01
Speaker 1: She didn't earn her wealth by freezing in the snow.
24:03
She earned it on a sound stage in Burbank.
24:06
Speaker 2: It's the sociological equivalent of being blackballed from an exclusive
24:09
country club. It's not that you don't have enough money,
24:11
it's that your money comes from the wrong bloodline.
24:13
Speaker 1: They didn't respect network television fame. They respected downhill velocity.
24:18
So you have Spider, the apex predator of the mountain hierarchy,
24:21
and Claudine, the glamorous Hollywood interloper. How do these two
24:25
totally opposed forces collide?
24:27
Speaker 2: They met away from the pressure cooker of Aspen at
24:30
a ski race in Bear Valley, California, in the winter
24:32
of nineteen seventy two.
24:34
Speaker 1: Spider had just secured a first place finish and Claudine
24:37
was attending the event.
24:39
Speaker 2: The chance meeting ignited an immediate, highly passionate, and ultimately
24:43
volatile romance. She eventually relocated back to Aspen, uprooting her
24:47
three children, and moved directly into Spider's massive, custom built
24:52
chalet in the ultra exclusive Starwood development.
24:55
Speaker 1: On paper and certainly in photographs, they were instantly the
24:59
most glamorous couple in the state, but.
25:01
Speaker 2: The localized Aspen gossip mill, which remembers fueled by tight
25:05
quarters and massive amounts of cocaine, immediately weaponized their relationship.
25:10
Speaker 1: The town was vicious in its assessment. The locals viewed
25:13
the pairing as a fundamental mismatch of status and trajectory.
25:16
Speaker 2: Spider was at the absolute zenith of his physical prime
25:19
and his earning potential. Claudine, who was slightly older, was
25:22
cruelly assessed by the local culture as being past her prime.
25:26
Speaker 1: A fading star desperately trying to attach herself to a
25:28
rising one.
25:29
Speaker 2: It became a blood sport in the opreskey bars. People
25:33
were literally taking bets, putting money down on exactly how
25:36
long it would take for Spider to tire of her
25:38
and kick her out.
25:39
Speaker 1: They were actively rooting for the emotional destruction of this interloper.
25:43
Speaker 2: And as the years progressed, the relationship deteriorated, which just
25:47
fed those rumors. There were whispers of intense jealousy, screaming matches,
25:52
and heavy substance abuse.
25:53
Speaker 1: The pressure of living in that fish bowl, combined with
25:56
the inherent volatility of their personalities, turned the Starwood shell
26:00
into a literal powder kick.
26:02
Speaker 2: And by the spring of nineteen seventy six, It appeared
26:04
the town was finally going to win its bet. The
26:06
breakup was functionally happening, but it.
26:09
Speaker 1: Didn't end with moving boxes in a polite separation. It
26:13
ended in blood. Let's examine the timeline of March twenty first,
26:16
nineteen seventy six. Walk me through the mechanics of that
26:19
final day.
26:20
Speaker 2: It was a Sunday, late in the ski season. The
26:22
snowpack was deep, but the temperature had plummeted. It was
26:25
unseasonably bitterly cold.
26:27
Speaker 1: Spider goes out to ski the mountain alone.
26:29
Speaker 2: Right. He is skiing without Claudine, because he had recently
26:33
crossed a point of no return. He had given her
26:36
a hard ultimatum to pack her belongings, take her children,
26:39
and vacate the Star with Chalet.
26:42
Speaker 1: The eviction notice had been verbally served. Their romantic and
26:45
logistical partnership was terminated.
26:48
Speaker 2: That was the operative reality that day. Clauding also heads
26:51
to the mountain independently, but the bitter cold quickly gets
26:54
to her. She skis for only a couple of hours
26:57
before retreating indoors, and she.
26:59
Speaker 1: Eventually grabbed ivitates to at a press key party being
27:02
hosted by Bob Beatty, Spider's former coach and business.
27:05
Speaker 2: Partner, and Spider eventually comes off the mountain and arrives
27:08
at that exact same party.
27:10
Speaker 1: So you have two people in the middle of a
27:12
hostile breakup in a confined space, surrounded by alcohol and
27:16
the very locals who have been betting on their demise
27:18
for years.
27:19
Speaker 2: The tension was palpable. Witnesses at the party reported that
27:22
there was heavy drinking and that Spider and Claudine engaged
27:25
in a terse heated argument.
27:27
Speaker 1: Though the exact words exchanged were lost to the noise
27:30
of the room.
27:30
Speaker 2: What is firmly established is the sequence of departures. Spider
27:34
leaves the party abruptly. His stated plan was to return
27:37
to the Starwoods chalet just long enough to shower, change clothes,
27:41
and pack a bag for a trip out of town.
27:43
Speaker 1: A trip out of town where he is allegedly planning
27:45
a rendezvous with a new, younger woman.
27:47
Speaker 2: Correct Spider is actively moving on with his life. Claudine
27:52
leaves the party shortly after Spider and drives back up
27:54
the mountain to the Starwood estate. She is waiting for
27:57
him when he arrives.
27:58
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly what was said when he walked
28:00
through the door, but we know exactly how it ended.
28:02
Speaker 2: A short time later, the Pitkin County nine to one
28:04
to one dispatch receives a frantic, hysterical call from the
28:08
Starwood residence. It is Claudine Longett and what does she say?
28:12
She tells responding deputies in no uncertain terms, I shot Spider.
28:17
Speaker 1: When law enforcement arrives at the estate, they find a
28:19
catastrophic scene. In the master bathroom, Spider Sabech is lying
28:23
dead on the floor next to a sunken stone bathtub.
28:26
Speaker 2: The forensic reality of the crime scene was brutal. He
28:29
had been struck by a single point two two caliber bullet,
28:32
but the placement of that shot was devastatingly precise.
28:36
Speaker 1: The bullet severed his descending a order.
28:38
Speaker 2: The medical examiners later concluded that the trauma to the
28:41
vascular system was so massive that even if the gun
28:45
had gone off while Spider was lying on an operating
28:47
table in an emergency room, the surgeons still wouldn't have
28:51
been able to stop the bleeding in time.
28:52
Speaker 1: He bled to death in a matter of minutes on
28:54
his bathroom floor.
28:55
Speaker 2: It is an instantaneous, non survivable injury.
28:59
Speaker 1: So the hood, he is transported down to Denver for
29:02
a full autopsy, and the local investigators are left standing
29:05
in this sprawling chalet with a Hollywood actress who has
29:09
just confessed to pulling the trigger.
29:10
Speaker 2: This is where the truth fractures into two wildly divergent narratives,
29:15
and I really want.
29:15
Speaker 1: To aggressively challenge the logic of both sides here, Starting
29:19
with Claudine's immediate defense to the police, what is her explanation?
29:23
Speaker 2: Her narrative, which she established almost immediately, was that the
29:26
shooting was a horrific mechanical accident.
29:29
Speaker 1: Okay.
29:29
Speaker 2: She claimed that because Spider was preparing to leave town,
29:32
she felt vulnerable alone in the house. She asked him
29:35
to show her how to operate his point two two
29:37
caliber pistol for her own protection.
29:39
Speaker 1: So it's a safety lesson.
29:41
Speaker 2: According to her statement, Spider was in the middle of
29:43
demonstrating the safety mechanisms of the firearm in the bathroom
29:47
when it simply slipped or misfired, discharging that fatal round.
29:51
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop you there, because the behavioral
29:54
logic of that scenario is completely absurd. I want you,
29:57
the listener, to really picture this. You have a man
30:01
who has just forced his ex girlfriend out of his house.
30:04
He is in a massive rush, rushing home to take
30:07
a quick shower and pack a suitcase so he can
30:09
drive out of town to sleep with another woman. Right,
30:12
and we are expected to believe that as he is
30:14
stripping down for a shower, he decides that this exact moment,
30:18
standing next to a sunken bathtub is the perfect time
30:21
to conduct a detailed firearm safety seminar for the woman
30:24
he is trying to evict.
30:25
Speaker 2: It defies basic human psychology and common sense, and the
30:28
Picking County investigators recognize that absurdity immediately.
30:32
Speaker 1: It's just not how people behave.
30:33
Speaker 2: Exactly, when they began to process the scene and gather
30:37
collateral intelligence, a much more sinister, premeditated picture began to emerge.
30:43
They were convinced that she knew Spider was finally permanently
30:46
slipping from her grasp, and in a moment of desperate rage,
30:50
she executed him.
30:51
Speaker 1: So what is the tangible evidence they uncover to support
30:54
the theory of a rage fueled homicide.
30:57
Speaker 2: It started with witness testimony at the perimeter. The security
31:01
guard manning the gate at the Starwood development reported that
31:04
when Claudine drove through shortly before the shooting. She was
31:08
visibly enraged, describing her as being on the warpath.
31:11
Speaker 1: But the most damning evidence was found inside the house,
31:13
wasn't it?
31:14
Speaker 2: As investigators searched the property, they discovered a notebook one
31:17
of Claudian's diaries, actively smoldering in the fireplace. Someone had
31:22
just tried to burn it.
31:23
Speaker 1: Actively trying to destroy your own diary minutes after your
31:25
boyfriend dies in a supposed accident is indicative of massive consciousness.
31:30
Speaker 2: Of guilt precisely, And they found a second diary in
31:33
addresser drawer that hadn't been burned. When they read it.
31:36
It provided the exact motive they suspected.
31:38
Speaker 1: What did it say?
31:39
Speaker 2: The entries revealed a woman who was psychologically spiraling. She
31:43
was obsessing over her fading youth, her stalling career, and
31:46
her agonizing inability to maintain control over a man of
31:50
Spider's youth and local stature.
31:52
Speaker 1: It painted a portrait of a woman pushed to the
31:55
emotional brink.
31:56
Speaker 2: So they have motive and state of mind, what about
31:59
the physical foreends. They mandated a drug test on the
32:02
day of the shooting, and the toxicology screen showed trace
32:05
amounts of controlled substances in her system, pointing to potential
32:09
impairment or chemical volatility during the argument.
32:12
Speaker 1: But the absolute lynchpin of the prosecution's theory came from
32:15
the ballistics lab. Let's talk about the mechanics of the gun.
32:18
Because a point two to two caliber pistol is generally
32:21
a rim fire weapon, often with a relatively heavy trigger
32:25
poll depending on the model. It doesn't just go off
32:27
if you look at it wrong exactly.
32:29
Speaker 2: When the States forensic experts examined the internal mechanisms of
32:33
the pistol, they found physical evidence indicating that the trigger
32:36
had been pulled or at least attempted to be pulled
32:39
multiple times.
32:39
Speaker 1: Wow, multiple times.
32:41
Speaker 2: It wasn't a single accidental slip of the finger. It
32:44
was a repeated mechanical action.
32:46
Speaker 1: Multiple trigger poles. Completely incinerates the it just went off defense.
32:51
You don't accidentally pull a trigger two or three times
32:53
while learning where the safety is.
32:55
Speaker 2: No, you don't.
32:56
Speaker 1: So the local authorities look at this spread of evidence.
33:00
They have a confessed shooter, a documented motive of jealousy
33:04
in the diary, the destruction of evidence in the fireplace,
33:07
toxicology results, and physical ballistics proving multiple trigger pulls. They
33:12
believe they have an impenetrable, open and shut case of homicide.
33:16
Speaker 2: They felt supremely confident, but that confidence was rooted in
33:20
a fatal misunderstanding of their opponent. The Pitkin County prosecutors
33:24
were local lawyers. Their daily docket consisted of duy's bad
33:29
checks and the occasional bar fight. They had absolutely zero
33:32
institutional experience dealing with a high visibility, high stakes homicide,
33:37
let alone one where the defendant had the financial backing
33:40
and public relations machinery of the Hollywood elite.
33:42
Speaker 1: They were local mechanics suddenly tasked with building a Formula
33:45
one car.
33:45
Speaker 2: They were completely out of their depth exactly, which brings
33:49
us to the collision of the legal system and celebrity power.
33:52
Speaker 1: Let's look at the charges. Pitkin County authorities eventually charged
33:56
Claudine Longuet with involuntary manslaughter. First of all, explain the
34:00
legal mechanics of that charge to me, With all that
34:03
evidence of rage and diaries, why not murder in the
34:06
first or second degree?
34:07
Speaker 2: It was likely a pragmatic, albeit timid calculation by the prosecution.
34:12
To prove first degree murder, you have to prove premeditation
34:16
that she planned to kill him before she pulled the trigger.
34:19
Speaker 1: Right, which is hard without a confession of intent.
34:22
Speaker 2: Given that there were no eyewitnesses in the bathroom, proving
34:24
what was in her head at that exact microsecond is
34:27
incredibly difficult. In Voluntary manslaughter in the context of nineteen
34:32
seventies Colorado law essentially argues that her reckless or criminally
34:36
negligent actions directly resulted in a death, even if she
34:39
didn't sit down and plan a murder.
34:41
Speaker 1: They thought manslaughter was a guaranteed conviction that would put
34:43
her away for up to ten years.
34:45
Speaker 2: But the tension in Aspen wasn't waiting for a trial.
34:48
It boiled over almost immediately.
34:50
Speaker 1: A few weeks after the shooting. In April, the town
34:53
organizes a massive memorial service for Spider Sabage, and Claudine
34:57
has the audacity to attend.
34:58
Speaker 2: Her appearance at the memorial was a sociological flashpoint. She
35:02
arrived at the service holding a single flower.
35:05
Speaker 1: Which from a Hollywood pr perspective, was likely orchestrated to
35:09
project an image of a grieving, innocent widow.
35:12
Speaker 2: But to the fiercely loyal old guard aspenites, it was
35:16
a grotesque insult. They were utterly enraged. They viewed her
35:20
as a parasite who had murdered their golden boy, and
35:23
now she was parading her manufactured grief in front of
35:26
the very people who loved him.
35:28
Speaker 1: The battle lines are completely drawn. The locals want blood
35:31
and the Hollywood machine wants an acquittal. So we moved
35:35
toward the trial. But before the jury even gets seated,
35:38
the judge makes a series of pre trial rulings that
35:41
absolutely decapitate the prosecution strategy.
35:44
Speaker 2: This is where the vast disparity in legal resources becomes
35:47
painfully obvious. Claudine's defense team, which is highly paid and
35:50
incredibly sharp, begins attacking the procedural mistakes made by the
35:54
small town police force.
35:55
Speaker 1: Okay, what did the attack First?
35:57
Speaker 2: The judge rules at the seizure of the diaries, both
35:59
the one in the fireplace and the one in the drawer,
36:01
was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
36:03
Speaker 1: Wait, I need to understand the legal mechanics of that.
36:06
She is actively burning a diary in the fireplace of
36:09
a house she shares while the police are standing there
36:11
responding to a fatal shooting. How is securing that diary
36:16
in a legal search and seizure.
36:18
Speaker 2: It comes down to the strict boundaries of a search
36:20
warrant and the expectation of privacy. The police were legally
36:24
allowed in the house to respond to the emergency of
36:26
the shooting, right, but the defense successfully argued that rummaging
36:31
through her closed dresser drawers, or even seizing her personal
36:34
writings from the fire without securing a specific, highly detailed
36:38
warrant for those personal documents constituted an overreach. In the
36:42
judge of greed, the judge agreed the diaries were thrown
36:45
out as fruit of the poisonous.
36:47
Speaker 1: Tree, so in a single ruling, the prosecution loses their
36:52
entire narrative of motive. The jury will never know she
36:55
was spiraling about her age or enraged about losing him.
36:58
Speaker 2: It gets worse. The judge also throughout the results of
37:01
the drug test, citing procedural errors and how the blood
37:04
er urine was collected and processed.
37:06
Speaker 1: So the jury isn't allowed to know what she was thinking.
37:09
They aren't allowed to know she tried to destroy evidence,
37:11
and they aren't allowed to know what substances were in
37:13
her system. The prosecution is essentially forced to go to
37:17
trial blindfolded.
37:18
Speaker 2: While the prosecution is being stripped of its evidence, the
37:21
defense mounts a brilliant, highly technical counter offensive regarding the weapon.
37:26
Speaker 1: They don't just rely on Claudine's tears.
37:29
Speaker 2: No, they hire a specialized firearms expert who completely deconstructs
37:34
the point two two caliber pistol. This expert manages to
37:38
convince the court that the internal mechanics of the gun,
37:41
specifically the seer engagement, had a minute mechiatical flaw, so.
37:45
Speaker 1: They create a scientific foundation for reasonable doubt. They argue
37:49
that because of this microscopic defect, the gun could theoretically
37:53
have misfired without a deliberate trigger pull, perfectly aligning with
37:56
Claudine's story of a botched safety lesson exactly.
37:59
Speaker 2: It was a masterclass in establishing reasonable doubt, But the
38:03
legal maneuvering was only half of the strategy. Was the
38:05
other a relentless campaign of psychological warfare utilizing the sheer
38:10
spectacle of celebrity. When the trial finally begins in January
38:15
nineteen seventy seven, the atmosphere at the Pitkin County Courthouse
38:18
is something completely alien to the locals.
38:21
Speaker 1: So the scene for me, what does a celebrity trial
38:24
look like in a small mountain town in nineteen seventy seven.
38:27
Speaker 2: It was a surreal inversion of reality. On the second
38:31
day of the trial, the doors to the gallery open
38:33
and Jack Nicholson walks in. Jack Nicholson, at this moment
38:36
in history, he is arguably the most famous, most bankable
38:40
movie star on the planet. He sits in the front
38:42
row of the gallery, directly behind Claudian.
38:44
Speaker 1: Longit, and the jury is right there.
38:46
Speaker 2: The judge can see him, the jury can see him,
38:48
The local reporters are staring at him. His mere physical
38:51
presence fundamentally alters the gravity of the room.
38:54
Speaker 1: It's an intimidation tactic, pure and simple. It's as if
38:58
a Hollywood sound stage just ash landed into a municipal building.
39:02
Imagine being a local jur You're trying to focus on
39:05
ballistics and blood spatter, and you look up and the
39:07
star of Chinatown is staring you down, silently vouching for
39:10
the defendant. The actual tragedy, the violent death of a
39:14
human being, becomes a secondary subplot to the vip seating
39:17
arrangements in the.
39:18
Speaker 2: Gallery, And amidst all this manufactured star power, Claudine played
39:23
her role with chilling perfection. She was heavily coached by
39:27
her defense team on her wardrobe, her posture, her tone
39:30
of voice.
39:30
Speaker 1: She appeared composed, demure, softly spoken, and played the part
39:35
of the traumatized, grieving victim flawlessly.
39:38
Speaker 2: But the serenity inside the courtroom was a complete illusion
39:41
because outside on the streets, the town is practically in
39:43
a state of civil war.
39:45
Speaker 1: The media invasion was catastrophic for Aspen's infrastructure, wasn't it.
39:48
Speaker 2: This was the dawn of a new era of celebrity journalism,
39:51
and every major network in tabloid descended on the town.
39:55
Massive television broadcast trucks clogged the narrow snow filled street.
40:00
Speaker 1: And the locals, both the old guard ski bums and
40:04
the new wealthy elites who valued their privacy, fought back viciously.
40:09
There is a detail in the sources about Claudine's sister
40:13
that perfectly captures this chaos.
40:15
Speaker 2: Yes, Claudine's sister rented an open air jeep and spent
40:19
hours driving it in continuous circles around the.
40:22
Speaker 1: Courthouse block, just driving in circles.
40:24
Speaker 2: Right. Whenever a television reporter would stand in front of
40:27
a camera to record a segment, she would lay on
40:30
the jeep's horn, incessantly completely ruining the audio for the
40:34
national broadcasts.
40:35
Speaker 1: It's guerrilla warfare against the press. The locals were physically
40:39
confronting reporters in the streets, screaming at them, calling them
40:42
vultures and parasites.
40:44
Speaker 2: The town effectively enacted an embargo against the media. Journalists
40:48
suddenly found that they couldn't secure a table at any restaurant.
40:51
Hotel reservations were mysteriously canceled or unavailable.
40:54
Speaker 1: The community was waging a coordinated cold war against the
40:57
outside world, desperately trying to protect the illusion of their
41:01
isolated utopia, all while the reality of their changing town
41:05
was on trial inside.
41:06
Speaker 2: It is a stunning, violent collision of worlds and so,
41:10
after navigating the circus, after the diaries are suppressed, after
41:13
the drug tests are thrown out, after the gun expert
41:16
confuses the mechanics, and with Jack Nicholson watching from the
41:19
front row, the jury finally retreats to deliberate.
41:23
Speaker 1: This is the moment of truth for Aspen.
41:26
Speaker 2: The jury deliberation was shockingly brief. They were behind closed
41:29
doors for just three hours and forty minutes.
41:32
Speaker 1: Three hours and forty minutes for a complex homicide trial
41:36
with forensic testimony that implies they weren't really debating the evidence.
41:39
They had already made up their minds.
41:41
Speaker 2: It was incredibly fast while they deliberated. The atmosphere in
41:44
town was incredibly tense. Reporters, locals, and off duty prosecutors
41:48
all gathered at the legendary Jbar inside the Hotel Jerome.
41:52
Speaker 1: The very Hotel Jerome wheeler built to launch the town's
41:55
luxury economy.
41:56
Speaker 2: One source noted the cinematic quality of it. Everyone was
41:59
drinking in this historic saloon, waiting for someone to run
42:02
through the swinging doors to announce that a verdict had
42:04
been reached.
42:05
Speaker 1: The runner comes in. They all rush back up the
42:08
icy street to the courthouse. The jury takes their seats.
42:11
What is the final verdict?
42:13
Speaker 2: The jury did find Claudine Longet guilty. However, in a
42:17
massive devastating twist for the prosecution, they did not convict
42:21
her of involuntary manslaughter.
42:23
Speaker 1: What are they convict her of?
42:24
Speaker 2: They convicted her of a drastically reduced charge, reckless enangement.
42:30
Speaker 1: Explain the legal distinction there, Because to a lay person,
42:33
shooting someone in the chest seems inherently like manslaughter.
42:37
Speaker 2: The distinction lies in the perceived level of culpability. Involuntary
42:42
manslaughter implies that your actions were so criminally negligent that
42:45
you beared direct responsibility for a death right. Reckless endangerment,
42:49
which is merely a misdemeanor, simply means you engaged in
42:52
conduct that created a substantial risk of a serious physical
42:55
injury to another person.
42:57
Speaker 1: So they separated the action from the result.
42:59
Speaker 2: The jury essentially ruled that she was careless with the firearm,
43:02
but they refused to hold her fully legally responsible for
43:05
the homicide itself.
43:06
Speaker 1: A misdemeanor. She receives a misdemeanor conviction for shooting a
43:10
man through the heart. What does the judge hand down for.
43:13
Speaker 2: Sentencing under the original manslaughter charge. She was facing a
43:16
decade in a state penitentiary for the misdemeanor of reckless endangerment.
43:21
The judge sentenced her to a maximum of thirty days
43:23
in the county jail.
43:24
Speaker 1: Thirty days. It's the equivalent of a severe traffic violation, and.
43:28
Speaker 2: The execution of that sentence was even more insulting to
43:31
the locals who felt justice had been subverted. She didn't
43:35
go to a state facility. She was allowed to serve
43:37
her time right there in the Pitkin County jail.
43:40
Speaker 1: And the conditions were pretty.
43:41
Speaker 2: Relaxed, incredibly lenient. She was permitted regular visits from her
43:45
high society friends. In a detail that almost defies belief,
43:50
she complained about the esthetic color of her jail cell,
43:53
and the authorities actually allowed her to bring in her
43:55
own paint and redecorate the cell to her liking.
43:58
Speaker 1: She gentrified her own jails.
44:00
Speaker 2: Essentially yes, and ultimately she didn't even serve the full
44:03
thirty days. She was granted nine days off for good behavior.
44:06
She walked out a free woman after serving exactly twenty
44:09
one days for the death of Spider.
44:11
Speaker 1: Savage, twenty one days for a life. It is almost
44:15
impossible to comprehend the depth of the betrayal. The locals
44:18
must have felt. They believe the mountain made everyone equal,
44:21
but the legal system just proved that wealth and fame
44:25
made you untouchable.
44:26
Speaker 2: The rage was deep, simmering, and permanent. The illusion of
44:30
Aspen was shattered. The old guard locals realized that the
44:34
game was rigged right. One resident offered a quote that
44:37
perfectly encapsulated the cynicism that washed over the town when
44:41
the celebrity thing walks in the courtroom, Justice packs up
44:44
very quickly and runs right out the back door.
44:47
Speaker 1: They realized that Hollywood had colonized their town and the
44:50
criminal justice system had simply bowed down to the new landlords.
44:54
Speaker 2: And Claudine's behavior immediately following the trial only reinforced that
44:58
arrogant colonization her. The post trial statement to the press
45:01
is staggering in its lack of self awareness.
45:04
Speaker 1: Oh, this quote, it was.
45:05
Speaker 2: A masterclass in tone deafness. She emerged onto the courthouse
45:09
steps surrounded by flashing cameras, looking perfectly quaffed. She smiled
45:13
at the reporters and delivered a statement that sounded like
45:16
an Oscar acceptance speech.
45:17
Speaker 1: What did she say?
45:18
Speaker 2: She said, I feel good about Aspen because people were
45:22
sensitive and warmed toward me and giving. And because of that,
45:25
I really realized that people are beautiful.
45:27
Speaker 1: People are beautiful. She just utilized an army of lawyers
45:31
to avoid prison for killing the town's most beloved native son,
45:35
and she is speaking to the national press as if
45:37
she just returned from a highly rejuvenating wellness retreat. The
45:41
absolute gall is breathtaking, it really is. But her statement
45:45
and this entire trial acted as the final nail in
45:48
the coffin for the old Aspen.
45:50
Speaker 2: Didn't it It was the absolute point of no return.
45:53
Andy Williams, her ex husband, observed the fallout and correctly
45:56
noted that the massive media attention was a harsh lesson
45:59
for Aspen.
46:00
Speaker 1: Because it put them on the map in a new way.
46:02
Speaker 2: The trial broadcast the town's unparalleled beauty, its immense wealth,
46:07
and its concentration of celebrity power to the entire globe.
46:11
The days of leaving your door unlocked and closing your
46:13
shop to listen to a folk singer in the park
46:15
were instantly erased.
46:16
Speaker 1: It put a giant, flashing neon sign over the Rocky
46:19
Mountains that said, welcome to Hollywood's new playground. The secret
46:22
was out, and the Capitol flooded in.
46:24
Speaker 2: The transition into the nineteen eighties was violent in its speed.
46:28
The historical sources marked the end of the bohemian era
46:31
with the sudden, ubiquitous arrival of silk shirts and disco chains.
46:36
Speaker 1: The culture inverted. People were no longer moving to Aspen
46:39
to escape the spotlight. They were moving there to stand
46:41
in it.
46:42
Speaker 2: Hollywood publicists began actively issuing press releases to the tabloids
46:47
just to announce that their celebrity clients would be holidaying
46:50
in Aspen. The celebrification of the town was complete and irreversible.
46:55
Speaker 1: The servers were permanently conquered by the served. So as
46:58
we look at the aftermath of this ceological collapse, what
47:01
happened to the key players? Where did Claudie Long get
47:04
go after she packed up her paint brushes and left
47:06
that jail cell.
47:07
Speaker 2: In a final, almost cinematic twist of irony, she ended
47:11
up entering into a relationship with and eventually marrying Ron Austin,
47:14
the very defense attorney who had successfully kept her out
47:17
of prison.
47:18
Speaker 1: You cannot write a script like.
47:19
Speaker 2: That, You truly can't. And despite the bad blood with
47:22
the locals, they chose.
47:23
Speaker 1: To stay in Aspen really after all that, Yes.
47:27
Speaker 2: They retreated behind the walls of their wealth, living a
47:30
very quiet, highly private, heavily guarded life, slowly fading into
47:35
the background of the sprawling billionaire metropolis she had inadvertently
47:39
helped create.
47:39
Speaker 1: And the town itself just kept accelerating. It became a
47:42
runaway freight train of luxury real estate. It ceased to
47:45
be a genuine geographical community.
47:48
Speaker 2: We mutated into a psychological destination.
47:50
Speaker 1: A place where incredibly wealthy people go with the deeply
47:53
flawed assumption that buying a twenty million dollar log cabin
47:56
will magically solve their internal emptiness. Exclusivity, the gatekeeping, the
48:01
staggering cost of a simple sandwich. It all traces back
48:05
to the momentum generated by this era.
48:07
Speaker 2: But the most poignant legacy of this entire saga belongs
48:11
to Spider Savage, the man who actually bled to death
48:14
on the bathroom floor.
48:15
Speaker 1: How does modern Aspen remember the golden Boy.
48:18
Speaker 2: He is remembered, but the nature of that remembrance perfectly
48:21
highlights the tragedy of Aspen's transformation. There is a facility
48:24
called the Spider Savage Center located at the nearby Snow
48:27
Mass Mountain, which includes a dedicated ski race area named
48:30
in his honor.
48:31
Speaker 1: Okay, so his name is still there.
48:33
Speaker 2: But the oral history from the people who work there
48:35
is absolutely heartbreaking. A former ski company employee noted that
48:39
the vast majority of the new tourists, the wealthy transplants,
48:42
and the celebrities who ski that mountain today have absolutely
48:45
no idea who he was.
48:47
Speaker 1: They don't know the history They don't know about.
48:48
Speaker 2: His Olympic runs, his slashing speed, or his violent death.
48:52
They regularly walk up to the resort staff and casually
48:55
ask if Spider is still around, or if he might
48:58
be out skiing on the mountain that day.
49:00
Speaker 1: That is just gut wrenching. They are standing in goat
49:03
fur boots on a mountain literally named after a man
49:07
whose blood fundamentally altered the real estate beneath their feet,
49:11
and they think he's just a local guy. I'll grab
49:13
at a coffee.
49:13
Speaker 2: It's tragic.
49:14
Speaker 1: It makes you realize why dissecting this history is so vital.
49:18
This isn't just about a nineteen seventy scandal. Is a
49:21
terrifyingly clear case study in how a community soul can
49:25
be hijacked and overwritten. Aspen was originally beloved because the
49:30
mountain offered a rugged, dangerous equality.
49:32
Speaker 2: An avalanche doesn't care if you are a dishwasher or
49:35
a ceo.
49:36
Speaker 1: Right. But the moment that immense outside wealth and Hollywood
49:40
machinery established a legal and cultural foothold, the original egalitarian
49:45
spirit of the town was forcefully evicted, just as violently
49:49
as Spider tried to evict Claudine.
49:51
Speaker 2: Which brings us to a profound, lingering dilemma, and I
49:54
think it is the exact thought we should leave the
49:56
listener to examine today.
49:58
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
49:58
Speaker 2: Think about your own community, or any place you hold sacred.
50:02
When the mythology of a location becomes so powerful and
50:05
its real estate becomes so breathtakingly expensive that it prices
50:08
out the very people who built it. What does it
50:11
mean when the new inhabitants don't even know the history
50:13
of the blood that was spilled to make it famous. Wow,
50:16
When a town successfully sells its soul to the highest bidder,
50:20
does its tragic history simply get sterilized and packaged as
50:23
just another branded amenity.
50:25
Speaker 1: Does the violence and the loss of a hometown hero
50:29
just become another selling point under real estate brochure, right
50:34
next to the heated driveways in the private chefs. It's
50:37
a dark, unsettling thought, but it brings us right back
50:40
to those massive mansions we talked about at the beginning,
50:43
the Obese love children of Emily Post and Grizzly Atoms.
50:47
They look spectacular, inviting on the outside, but when you
50:49
understand the history of how the ground they sit on
50:52
was conquered, you really have to wonder what kind of
50:54
ghosts are wandering those halls. Thank you all for joining
50:57
us on this deep dove. Take care,