The wife of “American Pie” singer Don McLean claimed the famed musician is anti-Semitic and threatened to strangle her before cops showed up, court documents revealed on Thursday.
McLean, 70, was busted early Monday in Maine for domestic violence against wife of 30 years Patrisha McLean, who secured a restraining order against him the day after his arrest.
“On Jan. 17, Don terrorized me for 4 hours until the 911 call that I think might have saved my life,” she wrote, according to Rockland District Court papers cited by the Portland Press Herald.
A judge has ordered a hearing on the matter on Jan. 28.
“He was scaring me with the intensity of his rage and the craziness in his eyes,” she wrote. “When she tried to leave, he allegedly grabbed her hard and said, `I want to strangle you so bad.’ ”
Patrisha McLean said her husband was prone to rage in the first 10 years of marriage, with Don occasionally bruising her arms and legs.
He’d even use anti-Semitic slurs against her, the wife claimed.
“My husband has/had a violent temper,” according to her handwritten declaration filed in Rockland District Court, requesting the restraining order.
“For the first 10 years or so his rage was unfathomably deep and very scary — calling me horrible things like ‘hebe’ (I’m Jewish).”
She recalled a scary 1994 incident when he allegedly squeezed her temples so tight with his hands that she felt like her head was in a vise.
Patrisha McLean said she called 911 on that occasion.
Don McLean’s temper, though, has been in better control the past 20 years before his recent, alleged flip-out, according to her statement.
“I told him he needed to cool out or I would call 911. As this did not stop the physical assaults, I reached for the landline and he reached over and threw the landline to the floor.”
That’s when Patrisha McLean said she locked herself in the bathroom and called 911 with her cellphone.
“He tried to break open the door and I feel he would have succeeded and killed me but for me telling him I was calling 911, which did deflate him,” she wrote.
A rep for McLean said the wife’s statements were “patently untrue.”
“Don denies making any ethnic slurs to his wife,” defense lawyer Walter McKee said. “As with many of the statements made in the request for a protection order, this statement is patently untrue.”
The musician on Thursday released a lengthy statement acknowledging his marital implosion and insisting he’s “not a villain.”
“This last year and especially now have been hard emotional times for my wife, my children and me. What is occurring is the very painful breakdown of an almost 30-year relationship,” McLean wrote.
“Our hearts are broken and we must carry on. There are no winners or losers but I am not a villain.”
McLean begged for forgiveness and said he’d like to perform again.
“I may never recover from this but I will try and hope to continue to entertain you all as I always have,” according to his statement.
“I ask God to give us the strength to find new happiness and I hope people will realize that this will all be resolved but I hope I will not be judged in this frantic media environment.”
Don McLean wrote and performed one of the most famous songs in American musical history, the 1971 smash “American Pie.”
The song referred to “the day the music died,” Feb. 4, 1959, when a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.
