The Life and Trials of Phil Spector
The famous music producer was an abuser of many.
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On the 3rd of February 2003, Phil Spector emerged from his house in the early hours of the morning. Inside lay 40-year-old model and actress Lana Clarkson, her teeth scattered across the carpet of the Pyrenees Castle in Alhambra, California.
Clarkson had been killed by a gunshot to the mouth, which Spector and his high-paid defence lawyers would later claim occurred by suicide. The call to the police was made by Adriano de Souza, Spector’s chauffer that was standing in for his usual driver that night. Spector later said that Lana had “kissed the gun” and killed herself.
“I think I killed someone.”
The sound of helicopters soon filled the sky as the media caught wind of what was going down at the famed music producer’s home. Police also arrived at the scene quickly and were met with a dreadful scene.
Lana Clarkson was sat in a chair, fully clothed and unresponsive, with a gun near her feet. Her top row of teeth had been blown out by the shot and they now littered the carpet around her. Spector was stood nearby with his hands firmly in his pockets and when asked to remove them he refused and was shot with a taser gun.
The producer quickly hired celebrity defence attorney Robert Shapiro to represent him at the early pretrial hearings and Shapiro got Spector out on bail for $1million. But his stardom couldn’t protect him from what was about to come.
Early life and career
Born Harvey Phillip Spector on the 26th of December 1939, he began his music career in the Teddy Bears, a pop group with the hit single To Know Him Is to Love Him. The song title was taken from the words etched on his father’s gravestone.
