Tearing Down the Wall of Sound (58 page)

The following day, she alleged, Spector left threatening messages on her answering machine, complaining that she had called the police on him. “He had Marvin Mitchelson ready to sue me.”

( Joan Rivers recalls another incident at a Christmas party she threw where both Melvin and Spector were present. “He got angry,” says Rivers, “and pulled a gun on Walter Cronkite's daughter. We had a security guard who got him out very quickly. That was the last time I saw him, going down the elevator in his little shoes with lifts. He was escorted out of my building. I have a very nice neighbor on the ground floor, an elderly lady who was dressed in Chanel. On his way out, she said to him ‘Merry Christmas.' He said to her ‘Fuck you.' Later I said, ‘Cindy, you could have been shot. You could have been in a Chanel suit that was black, white
and
red.'”)

Stephanie Jennings, a photographer, testified that she had first met Spector in April 1994 at a music awards show in Philadelphia and then a few months later in New York, when she had spent the night with him in his suite at the Carlyle Hotel. In September 1994 he invited her to come to Pasadena. She stayed the night, but in the morning when she wanted to leave, she alleged, Spector locked the doors and refused to let her go. He then left. Jennings contacted Spector's assistant Paulette Brandt, who advised her to wait Spector out. Jennings said she remained in Spector's bedroom for most of the day, until he finally returned and let her go.

Jennings next met Spector at the induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Spector, she said, paid for her room at the Carlyle Hotel, but at the party that night he drank heavily, becoming increasingly obnoxious. She eventually went to her room alone. At about 4:00 a.m., Spector's bodyguard appeared at her door and told her Spector wanted her to join him. When she refused, Spector himself came to her room, and when she again refused his request to join him, sat in a chair in front of the door with a gun in his hand, refusing to let her leave. Jennings used the hotel phone to dial 911, Spector apparently thinking she was calling her mother. “He said, ‘You can call your mom. She can't do anything,'” Jennings testified. After the call, Spector left the room. When the police arrived, Jennings told them she did not want to press charges and left.

The testimony also provided compelling forensic evidence that would prove highly significant in building the case against Spector.

Looking at the question of the gunshot residue found on Spector and Lana Clarkson, Christine Pinto, a Los Angeles Sheriff's Office (LASO) criminalist, and an expert in GSR, said that it was possible for a person to fire a gun and not have residue on their hands—a crucial point pertaining to the relatively small amount found on Spector, one particle on each hand. Pulling one's hands in and out of one's pockets several times would easily dislodge particles, she said; and about 90 percent would fall off within the first hour just by normal use of the hands. The amount isn't important, she said, only the fact that it's there.

Steven Dowell, a criminalist for the coroner's office, testified that the GSR on Clarkson could have come from her putting up her hands in a defensive gesture, from her wrapping her hands around the cylinder of the gun in an attempt to push it away, or even if her hands had been in her lap. The pattern of GSR makes a cloud of about three feet anywhere from three to fifteen feet in distance, he said, and most of the particles fall downward.

Most critical was the testimony of Lynne Herold, an LASO forensic scientist, since it seemed to establish that Spector was standing in front of Lana Clarkson when the gun was fired. Herrold determined that the gun had been fired from the normal, upright position, rather than turned to the side (as might be expected in suicide), and that the “mist-like spray” of blood found on Spector's white jacket could only have come from the backflow of bullet gases from the mouth, and put Spector “within two or three feet” of the discharging weapon.

Herrold had examined the gun and found evidence that someone had wiped blood off it, but leaving some inside the cylinder and on the remaining bullets. She said it was possible that the cloth, or diaper, as she described it, found in the bathroom had been used to wipe the gun after it had been fired. This diaper was identical to others found with Spector's guns upstairs: such diapers were ordinarily used to clean guns. Herrold thought it was possible that someone had tried to wipe the blood from Lana Clarkson's face, because there were obvious smears on it. Someone had moved Clarkson's head in trying to wipe the blood, she believed, and it was possible that some of this blood had been transferred to the diaper found in the bathroom—in fact, that the diaper had been used to wipe Clarkson's face.

Louis Pena, the pathologist at the L.A. County Coroner's Office who had performed the autopsy on Lana Clarkson, said the amount of Vicodin in Clarkson's system was at “the lower end of the therapeutic level,” and stated that the combination of alcohol and Vicodin “can make you sleepy in general.” Pena also stated that he had found bruising on Clarkson's body—on the right hand, right forearm, right lower leg and upper right thigh. A bruise on the back of her left hand was “acute.” The bruising, Pena thought, had occurred anywhere “from zero to four or five hours” before her death, not a day or so earlier. Asked to explain how the bruising might have occurred, Pena replied, “I will decline.”

Spector made no comment on the grand jury testimony. But Bruce Cutler described it to this reporter as “very deceptive, one-sided and biased. Putting this poison in the public domain is for one purpose and one purpose only: to try and paint Phil in a negative light and to influence a potential jury pool. It's inherently unfair.”

Everything the defense's own forensic experts had found, Cutler went on, was consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “I don't want to get into the drugs and the liquor in the lady's system. I don't want to get into the gunplay. I don't want to get into the fact that Phil's fingerprints are not on that gun, and that gun was not registered to him and that's not his gun. Where is the motive for this crime? There is none.”

Spector's “so-called confession,” Cutler told me, was “not true.” De Souza was “not facile” in the English language, and there had been no confession to the police officer Beatrice Rodriguez.

“It's another lie, Mick. How would you like it if somebody died in your house and you were famous and twelve to fifteen policemen came in and beat the shit out of you and then made up stories about what you did and didn't say?”

Was he saying the police had made it up?

“I'm saying there is no memorialized evidence of this. It's unfounded and untrue.” Spector, he said, maintained his innocence. “He didn't kill the woman.” And the case would go to trial “unless [the judge] dismisses it for prosecutorial misconduct and some of the shenanigans they've pulled. And we're going to win.”

Later that same month, on January 31, 2005, Donna Clarkson, Lana's mother, filed a civil lawsuit against Spector, alleging wrongful death, negligence and battery against her daughter, and seeking “punitive and exemplary damages according to proof.” It was necessary to file the suit, the Clarkson family's lawyer Roderick Lindblom explained, before February 3, 2005, based on California's two-year statute of limitations for wrongful-death actions. The suit would not be heard until after the criminal trial.

         

In the midst of his legal tribulations, Spector had acquired the most improbable of new companions—a girlfriend forty years his junior. According to her website, Rachelle Short—or Chelle as she liked to be known—was a “lead singer/songwriter/trombone player” who had worked with various artists, including Savage Garden and Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats, as well as performing at televised NASCAR and NHRA events. Not mentioned on her website was an uncredited part in a Joel Schumacher film,
Tigerland,
and a spell working as the downtown L.A. sales representative for the ABB label company (“Ordering labels…as easy as applying one!”). Photographs of Short showed a pert, pretty blonde—some bore a distinct resemblance to Lana Clarkson. According to a lawsuit later launched by Michelle Blaine, his personal assistant, Short had originally been employed by Spector as Blaine's assistant; however, it seems that Spector and Short quickly formed a relationship. The mood between Blaine and Short grew progressively strained.

In March 2005 Spector threw a party at the Dolce Vita restaurant in Beverly Hills to announce his engagement to Rachelle. Among the forty or so guests were old friends including Nino Tempo, Don Randi and Dan and David Kessel, as well as a healthy sprinkling of new friends—Spector's numerous lawyers and their wives.

Within a few months of the engagement, Michelle Blaine had left Spector's employ. It would be another piece in what was already an increasingly complicated jigsaw.

At the same time, Spector again went on the offensive, giving an interview to BBC TV, as part of a tabloid documentary series entitled
Secret Hollywood.
In the interview, conducted in a Los Angeles hotel, Spector spent almost an hour talking about his music and his career, all clearly designed to boost his pedigree in advance of the case. The BBC, however, chose to broadcast only the three or four minutes during which he spoke of the killing.

Describing his arrest, Spector was at his most self-righteously indignant. “They behaved like cowboys,” he said. “I had no weapon. I'm five foot five. They came in with weapons drawn. There wasn't one of them under six foot tall. There was not a medic to be seen…

“They Tasered me with 50,000 volts of electricity…the police manual says you never do that to a subject unless he is violent or uncontrollable…

“A tragedy happened, but it could have happened in anybody's house. It's not for me to explain why. She. Took. Her. Life. It's only for me to explain that I had nothing to do with it. And I didn't.

“This prosecution is bogus. I mean, it has to be because of who I am. It has to be because I live in a castle. It has to be a frame-up, because it's not based on real evidence. I had nothing to do with her death, and three coroners have stated that. Case closed. Move on. You know, forget Phil Spector. Forget the castle. Forget rock and roll. Forget all that.”

Even some of Spector's friends were shocked at his attitude toward Clarkson's death, his apparent absence of sympathy for Clarkson or her bereaved family. The death of Lana Clarkson had become first and foremost another example of the ongoing persecution of Phil Spector, further confirmation of his own martyrdom. It was Phil's Lenny Bruce moment.

         

On May 23, 2005, Spector was back in court again for a hearing on a prosecution motion to admit into the trial evidence from women claiming he had pulled guns on them in the past. Again Spector was having to deal with the allegations made by the prosecution witnesses without the opportunity at that stage of cross-examining them or giving his account of the incidents. This included the testimony from Dorothy Melvin and Stephanie Jennings that had already been part of the grand jury proceedings, as well as additional testimony from two women, Dianne Ogden and Melissa Grosvenor.

Spector walked into the courtroom to a ripple of disbelieving laughter. For previous hearings, Spector had erred on the side of conservatism, invariably appearing in a suit and forsaking the shoulder-length Louis Quinze wig for less ostentatious models. But for this most crucial of appearances, he had chosen to wear a new concoction—a permed, blond Afro, which towered nine inches above his head, and which, with his tinted glasses, lent him the appearance of a surrealist comedy turn. Taking his seat in the court, Spector seemed indifferent to the amusement his appearance had caused.

In the new evidence, Dianne Ogden stated that she had first met Spector in 1982 and dated him sporadically over the years until 1987, when she became one of his paid assistants. The following year, she claimed, she returned to his Pasadena home after a dinner date. Spector had been drinking. At 2:00 a.m. Ogden said she wanted to leave. Spector, she alleged, began to scream profanities at her, locked the door and then pointed a handgun at her face, touching the muzzle to her skin. “Afraid for her life,” Ogden agreed to spend the night with Spector. When he woke up next morning, she claimed, he acted as if nothing had happened, and she said nothing about the incident to him.

Two weeks later, she claimed, she organized a dinner party at Spector's house for Allen Klein and a number of other guests. Afterward, as she prepared to leave, Spector became angry and came after her with what she described as an Uzi-type assault rifle, chasing her to her car, before she was able to make good her escape. She never returned to Spector's home again.

Melissa Grosvenor stated that she had met Spector in New York in 1991 at a party and subsequently flown to see him in Los Angeles, booking in to a hotel. After dinner they returned to Spector's home, but when Grosvenor tried to leave, Spector pointed a gun at her head and began to yell and swear at her. Terrified, Grosvenor remained sitting in her chair as Spector hovered over her with the gun. She eventually cried herself to sleep. She was woken next morning by Spector tapping her leg and asking if she wanted to go for breakfast. Grosvenor agreed, believing it was her chance to get out of the house. He later dropped her back at her hotel. She returned to New York and never saw him again.

American law usually prohibits prosecutors from introducing evidence of “prior bad acts” to show that a defendant had a propensity for committing a crime. But such evidence can be allowed to demonstrate a pattern of conduct. In court, Douglas Sortino argued that Spector had used guns to intimidate people “again and again and again,” and that the evidence would demonstrate “the absence of accident or mistake” in the killing of Clarkson.