Sonny Bono told Cher he was going to kill her

Cher has revealed how her ex-husband Sonny Bono said he “seriously thought” of killing her at the end of their turbulent marriage.

It happened after Cher was so unhappy that she considered jumping from the balcony of their Las Vegas hotel room, she writes in “Cher: The Memoir (Part One).”

Cher, now 78, called time on their marriage during a stay in Las Vegas at the Sahara Hotel in October 1972 – when she told her husband she wanted to sleep with Bill, a guitarist in their band.

She didn’t actually mean it, writes Cher, but Sonny did – as she claims was so controlling that she was banned from wearing perfume — hadn’t listened to her earlier pleas to let her go.

“The silence was deafening. Then (Sonny) said, ‘How long do you think you’re going to need?’

“Two hours,” she replied. Sonny left as Cher cried on Bill’s shoulder.

The couple – who starred in “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,” one of the biggest TV shows at the time – broke up but agreed that Cher would continue to live with Sonny during the week of not to spoil their public image.

One morning at breakfast, Sonny surprised her by saying, “You know, after you left with Bill that night in the Sahara, I seriously considered throwing you off our balcony.

“He kind of laughed about it and so did I. It was crazy that he told me that,” writes Cher.

“He continued, ‘I figured I’d plead insanity like Spade Cooley and get seven years in prison before they let me out. Then I’d get a book deal and my own show.’

But Cher then surprised him with her own admission, telling her estranged husband “there would have been no need to push me because I wanted to jump!”

Faced with such a harsh reality: “Within seconds we were howling. No one who saw our reaction to what had been the darkest moment of our marriage would have understood.”

Cher writes: “I don’t think for a second that Sonny would have actually pushed me off the balcony, but I’m sure it crossed his mind and he knew that jumping off had gone over mine too. What else could we do but laugh?”

And while Cher eventually broke up with Bill, the guitarist, she also found out that Sonny had slept with Bill’s girlfriend as revenge.

Sonny and Cher met when she was just 16 and he was 27. She moved in with him after he offered her a bed in exchange for being his cook and housekeeper, and they were married from 1964 to 1975.

Cher also reveals in the book that Sonny was unfaithful throughout their marriage.

Cher caught him with her assistant and fled to her mother’s home – only for her mother to tell her that she had heard stories of Sonny’s infidelity.

When Cher confronted him, he told her it was her fault because they weren’t having enough sex.

Sonny died in 1998 after a skiing accident.