Music legend Phil Spector found guilty of murder six years after actress was shot dead

By David Gardner
Last updated at 10:21 PM on 13th April 2009

Phil Spector was tonight convicted of murder of a struggling actress shot dead at his Hollywood home six years ago.

Tonight the diminutive 69-year-old pop millionaire faced spending the rest of his life behind bars.

The guilty verdict came six years after Spector shot B-movie Hollywood actress Lana Clarkson through the mouth in the driveway of his sprawling castle-style California mansion.

And it took two trials lasting more than ten-and-a-half months to reach a verdict.

Spector’s first trial ended in September 2007 with jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favour of a conviction.

And today's verdict came after almost 29 hours of deliberations.

In the end, his violent past caught up with the ageing producer, who worked with stars like the Beatles, Tina Turner, The Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers in his heyday and was credited with revolutionising pop production in the 1960s.

It was only when Lana Clarkson’s body was discovered in a pool of blood in the early hours of February 3, 2003 with Spector standing over her with a gun that his previous victims began to come forward.

Then, one after another, five women told the court a variation on essentially the same story; how Spector, a normally charismatic if rather strange man, went into a rage after drinking too much and threatened them with guns when they tried to leave.

Among them was Dorothy Melvin, a former Spector girlfriend who managed comedienne Joan Rivers.

‘Phil is a very brilliant and charming man,’ she said.

‘Only when drinking he snaps and becomes a lunatic.’

Another ex-girlfriend, Diane Ogden, testified that Spector seemed to undergo a personality change as she tried to leave a party he threw in 1989.

‘He was screaming at me, the F-word,’ she said.

‘He wasn't my Phil, not the man I loved. It wasn't him. He was demonic. It scared the hell out of me.’

British-born musician Deyra Robitaille, another Spector love interest, said he twice pulled a gun on her, once in the 1970s and again in the 1980s.

On one occasion, she said, Spector told her: ‘If you leave, I’ll blow your f***** head off.’

Although none of them claimed to know what happened on the night Lana Clarkson died, the pattern of his behaviour was ultimately too similar for the jury to ignore.

The parallels with the night the 6ft tall actress died were chilling even if the stories were very old - 30 years in one instance.

The second jury found Spector guilty after a retrial during which the eccentric millionaire’s high-priced defence team tried to claim Miss Clarkson killed herself in a fit of despair over her fading film career.

Although he adamantly maintained his innocence outside the courtroom and through his phalanx of lawyers, Spector chose not to put his side of the story to the jury from the witness box in either trial.

Prosecutor Alan Jackson accused him of throwing money at a problem in the belief that will make it go away.

‘How does a homicide become a suicide? You write a big, fat cheque,’ he said in his summing up.

Mr Jackson said that one expert forensic witness was paid 'a horse-choking’ £125,000 for testifying for the defence.

Spector presented a bizarre spectacle throughout the court drama.

During the first trial, he sported three hairstyles in three different shades, a colour wheel of pastel ties and pocket hankerchiefs topped at times by flowing morning coats.

But his style became more sombre as media interest in the retrial waned and by the time the case drew to a close he looked haggard and tired.

Nevertheless, in the annals of celebrity crime, the case will certainly stand as one of the strangest.

The saga of a forgotten music icon and an over the hill cult B-movie actress found dead in his Victorian hilltop mansion in the Al Hambra suburb of Los Angeles is the stuff of film noire.

Miss Clarkson’s main claim to fame was a starring role in the 1985 film ‘Barbarian Queen’, but her Marilyn Monroe dreams had fallen so far she was reduced to taking a job as a £5-an-hour hostess at the House of Blues restaurant on LA’s fabled Sunset Strip.

Ironically, she became more famous in death, her picture splashed across newspapers and TV screens around the world after she was found with a bullet through her mouth in the foyer of Spector’s home after agreeing to accompany him home for a nightcap.

It took eight months for police to charge the record producer and four years to bring the case to trial the first time around.

When the jury couldn’t break their impasse after twelve days of deliberating a second trial became inevitable.

Haunted by their failures in past celebrity cases, Los Angeles prosecutors had to fight a determined bid by defence lawyers to claim Miss Clarkson turned the gun on herself.

Experts tried to claim forensic evidence from the scene pointed to a self-inflicted wound.

The chauffeur who delivered Spector and Miss Clarkson to the mansion testified that he waited outside and heard the ‘pow’ of a gun some two hours later.

Adriano De Souza would recall Spector emerging from the house, a gun in his hand, declaring, ‘I think I killed somebody.’

Defence experts tried to suggest De Souza’s poor English and noise from a waterfall in the grounds meant he had somehow misheard Spector’s confession.

But the jury’s guilty verdict was heard loud and clear by Spector as he was led off to prison.
[Edited 4/13/09 14:25pm]

This has been going on so long that I forgot this happened in 2003!

RipHer2Shreds said:

Yeah they had a mistrial the first time I think it was 2007.

Timmy84 said:

Yes, 2007. I knew about the mistrial. I just forgot how long ago the murder was.

Anyway he looks like Marcia Clark in this photo

shit he even looks crazy

InsatiableCream said:

Just "looks"?

He IS crazy.

I'm still trying to see if they posted the verdict yet. Maybe Phil and 'em gotta get there, lol.

If his name was O.J.....

Graycap23 said:

...he'd be in prison.

Timmy84 said:

i actually believe he's killed lots of people before

InsatiableCream said:

Or attempted to kill, lol...

Convicted of 2nd degree murder:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/C...index.html

I'm sure Ronnie Spector is somewhere doing the double dutch.

Ya know, I was watching this documentary about him last year and something about him....gave this vibe

Graycap23 said:

"And the detective that found the glove just HAPPENED to be in the Nation of Islam, he be home eating cereal right now!" - Chris Rock

bboy87 said:

Every time I saw his pictures I thought "that's one crazy diabolical mothafucka..."

Timmy84 said:

it was a miniseries that was released on PBS called "The Renegades" that talked about rock, pop, and soul from the 50s to the 90s. It came out in '95, and when they got to the segment about Spector, you could tell dude was few bites short of a full snack

bboy87 said:

Right. Hell he was crazy from birth. His parents were actually cousins.

InsatiableCream said:

He looks even crazier when he's wearing that Richard Simmons 'fro.

uPtoWnNY said:

Warning: crazy-ass man picture about to be posted with ridiculous hair:

^^^^

Celebuzz.com said he was ALSO convicted of involuntary manslaughter ALONG WITH second-degree murder so either way you look at it, Phil's life is over.

Timmy84 said:

I'd be interested to hear Ronnie's take on this. She'd probably say it's a long time coming.

uPtoWnNY said:

Yeah. I'm sure Ronnie's glad she survived him. Mothafucka kept the poor girl locked in her own house for the tenure of their marriage.
[Edited 4/13/09 15:31pm]

Great documentary with interview.
The Agony and Ecstacy of Phil Spector by Vikram Jayanti. 2008
It use to be streaming but I can't find it at the moment.

Timmy84 said:

Didn't this fool pull a gun on Darlene Love?

RipHer2Shreds said:

OMG

uPtoWnNY said:

Yep.

Joan Rivers had a great interview on Howard Stern once.
She said Phil was walking around at parties waving his gun at everybody.
John Lennon told Phil that Martin Scorsese used his "Be my little baby" song the Ronettes recorded in the opening scene of meanstreets without permission.
Phil never sued him or anything.
I like Spanish harlem too but the gun waving is pretty fucked up.
And he also pissed off Ike Turner.

Good. He should have been in jail for that murder a long time ago.