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Throughout much of Phil Spector's six-month-long second trial, the prosecution portrayed the 69-year-old music industry genius as a sadistic misogynist and produced extensive testimony from women who said that the famed music producer had terrorized them at gunpoint during bouts of heavy drinking. Some of the women's testimony described events that occurred as far back as 30 years ago. The 1989 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is well- known for his volatile temper, and prosecutors contended that Spector, at one point during the early morning hours of February 3, 2003, had pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver and blew off the lower portion of actress/model Lana Clarkson's mouth in the foyer of his 33 room castle replica home located in Alhambra, California, near Los Angeles. Clarkson was 40-years-old at the time of her death. When the police arrived at Spector's mansion, they found Clarkson slumped in a faux Louis XIV chair, with the revolver lying beneath her left leg.
The story, as many readers know, was not particularly complicated. Spector, driven by a chauffeur in Spector's Mercedes S430 limousine, had gone out for the evening and had visited a number of Hollywood drinking establishments that included Dan Tana's and Trader Vic's, where he had purportedly drank a good deal of navy grog, typically a strong, heavy-duty drink comprised of various types of rum and other liqueurs, including Grand Marnier. He ended his evening out at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, located near Beverly Hills, where he met Clarkson, who worked there as a hostess.
Clarkson at first had reportedly thought that Spector was a woman because of his freak hair style, but management quickly corrected her and told her to treat him "like gold," which she did. He eventually persuaded Clarkson to go home with him for a nightcap, and along the way they watched Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in the back of the limo, a rather chilling title considering the circumstances of how things turned out. Nonetheless, during the wee hours of the morning Spector exited his residence and said, "I think I killed someone," which the chauffeur, waiting outside in the limousine, reportedly heard. Spector, however, before the first trial, had said that Clarkson was the victim of an accidental suicide, and purportedly told one interviewer that "she kissed the gun." His defense attorneys during his first trial had also attempted to explain away her death as a suicide.
However, the prosecution had gone to great lengths to show that Clarkson was not suicidal. They cross-examined defense expert witnesses who said that suicidal people seldom kill themselves impulsively or on a whim, and almost certainly would not kill themselves at a stranger's home. Prosecutors also said that Clarkson had purchased several pairs of new shoes just before her death, and argued that a suicidal person rarely purchases new things if they have plans to do away with themselves.
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