Claudine Longet, the French-born singer and actress whose life moved from pop stardom to a killing that shadowed her name for decades, has died at 84. Her death was reported Thursday by her nephew, Bryan Longet, who gave no immediate details.

Longet first became known for recording breathy pop albums for A&M Records and for appearing in Blake Edwards’ 1968 film The Party, where she sang Henry Mancini and Don Black’s “Nothing to Lose” as an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers. Before that, she had already built a performer’s life that began in Paris on Jan. 29, 1942, included a production of The Turn of the Screw at age 10, work on French television and stage roles in Milan and Venice.

Her best-known public role in the United States came after she met Andy Williams in 1960 while dancing in a Folies Bergère revue at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. They married in December 1961, and Longet became a familiar face on his long-running NBC variety show and Christmas specials before the couple divorced in 1975.

The story that overtook her life began after that divorce. Longet and her children were living with skier Spider Sabich in Starwood, Colorado, when she shot him on March 21, 1976, in his bathroom with a.22-caliber German-made gun that had been purchased by his father. She said the gun went off by accident as he was showing her how it worked. Sabich was 31 when he died from a single gunshot wound to the abdomen.

She was charged a month later with reckless manslaughter and faced as many as 10 years in prison. At her Aspen trial, Williams escorted her to and from the courtroom, testified on her behalf and provided legal assistance. Williams later said, “I thought it was unfair, I thought she was innocent, I thought it was an accident,” and described helping her as a gallant gesture.

A jury convicted Longet of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor, in January 1977. She received two years’ probation, a $250 fine and a 30-day jail sentence, though she was allowed to serve most of that time on weekends. The Sabich family later filed a civil suit against her for $1.3 million, and the case was settled out of court.

That settlement ended the public chapter of her life as a singer and actress. As part of the agreement, Longet promised not to speak publicly about Sabich or the murder and not to publish a book about her life and the trial. The legal fallout, and the restrictions that followed, effectively closed the door on the career that had once taken her from Paris and Las Vegas to television, film and popular music.

Her death leaves behind a record of early promise, tabloid fixation and one of the most enduring courtroom stories in celebrity history. Bryan Longet’s report Thursday closes the account of a woman whose name remained tied to both Andy Williams and Spider Sabich long after the stages and cameras had gone dark.