Facing the music: Phil Spector on trial

There was once a magic moment in America.

When the music was new, and Supermen rose to undreamt fame and power.

And no one, not a soul, was blessed -- or cursed -- with knowing the future.

(Music: The Ronettes)
"The night we met I knew I needed you so... Be my -- be my baby..."

It's slightly surreal, this murder trial of the silent little man, 67 years old. The blank stare. The quaking fingers.

And the wild reputation.

Hardly the sort of "This is Your Life" that Phil Spector must have dreamed about back in 50s, when he was a high school dweeb -- with a little band whose hopelessly innocent name was: the Teddy Bears.

A teenage Carol Connors was picked by a 18-year-old Phil Spector to sing that famous song "To Know Him is to Love Him."

Carol Connors: He knew that he was brilliant, even then. I mean and I think when you have your first thing out of the box and it's a number one record, boom-- and all of a sudden you are smarter than everyone. And you become invincible.

Invincible. Legendary. Huge.

His creations were so exciting back then. They changed everything.

Mick Brown has written about Phil Spector.

It was called the wall of sound.

But it wasn't easy getting there.

Idolized the man, did that little boy.  And so the event that came next was, perhaps, the ultimate definition of the young Phil Spector.

Carbon monoxide. In his car.

In 1953, four years later, the surviving Spectors -- overbearing mother Bertha, Phil and his sister -- left the Bronx for Los Angeles.

And that's how Phil Spector became the high school outcast.

Rommie Davis remembers him. Though at the time, as one of the in-girls, she deliberately ignored awkward Phil.

Until, suddenly, 1958, that song.

That's Phil on the right playing guitar.

The yearning little anthem of female teen-hood.

No matter that he wrote the song about his dead father-- now all of America wanted to know Phil Spector.

There was never control in life. Married four times. Five kids -- three estranged now. One died very young. And he admitted to Mick Brown in an interview that his life had been horribly unhappy.

Manic-depression which he'd only addressed late in life, not back when he was the hit-maker in the '60s and '70s ruling the music world -- letting his dark side run wild.

The stories? They start in the early '70s. He's said to have fired a gun in the studio while recording with John Lennon. In the studio with Leonard Cohen, he held a gun to Cohen's head. He held the Mama's and the Papa's Michelle Phillips at gun point.

Phil Spector was the inspiration for that character in 70s camp classic "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" holding the weapon in the woman's mouth, the fictional portrayal of a famous music producer with a penchant for guns.

But what was on the screen wasn't a movie anymore. Now the giant at the revolution of music had become the shrunken center of the very strange case of the People vs. Phil Spector.

February 3, 2003. Pre-dawn. A 911 operator was first to hear the news.

The lady on the floor, really partially slumped in a chair, was Lana Clarkson.

She was 40 years old. She too had a back story full of its own pathos and joy.

She grew up in northern California, tall and pretty and hungry for fame. She was 17 when she took on Hollywood, auditioning with her friend Pam Krause to be an extra.

Lana was nearly 6-feet-tall, a knockout. She was statuesque, blonde, gorgeous.

Which is why she was plucked from the crowd of extras for her first line of dialogue.

A single word actually, one syllable.

That got her in the actor's union.

And then, her talent persuaded Roger Corman, the king of B movies, to make her the Barbarian Queen.

But Hollywood, as every child should be taught early on, is often a cruel town.

As Lana aged, even small parts played hard to get.

And so she adjusted and developed a standup comedy act.

And, said pal Nathanson, she didn't take herself too seriously.

Adjustments. Two days before she died she told Pam Krause's mother, a matchmaker, that she was ready for a mate.

But first, Lana clocked in to work at her new job as hostess in the VIP room at the House of Blues, Sunset Strip, Feb. 2, 2003. 6 p.m.

It was about an hour after that when Phil Spector and his driver headed out to pick up his old classmate, Rommie Davis.

They'd recently become re-acquainted after a high school reunion.

So, Rommie was taken aback when she dined with him, several times, on that fateful weekend.

At dinner on Friday...

Rommie knew Spector shouldn't drink while on medication for manic depression. Then, on Saturday night…

Still, she agreed to see him again on Sunday, Feb. 2.

He dropped off Rommie and picked up another female friend, took her to Trader Vic's, an old Beverly Hills watering hole.

And then they went to Dan Tanas for more drinks.

They got there at 1:44 a.m. and then, very late now, nearly 2 a.m., they went to the House of Blues.

They met the new hostess -- Lana Clarkson.

And so, according to people who work at the House of Blues, she did. And when Spector sent his date home, she and he struck up a conversation that lasted until it was time to go.

Here in this grainy security video you can see Lana Clarkson after the bar had closed blowing out a candle, then walking Phil Spector to his car. The time stamp says 2:23 a.m.

But Lana acquiesces, gets in the back of Spector's chauffeur-driven Mercedes.

They watch a movie in the backseat – "Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye," a noir starring James Cagney.

They head east to the city of Alhambra, where Phil Spector lives in a massive gated hilltop mansion he called The Castle.

And then everything changed.

The bullet, just one, broke her neck and severed her spine. She was dead in an instant according to law enforcement.

And thus began the slow trip down the long and winding road of the law...

… along which the eccentric music producer was arrested, and booked for murder. He hired some very expensive lawyers -- and fired a few too.

Occasionally he got on a soap box.

More than four years after the death of Lana Clarkson, the case against Phil Spector -- charged with second-degree murder, facing 15 to life -- began in downtown Los Angeles. It's not exactly Hollywood, but Hollywood and music insiders would take the stand on both sides of the case.

Prosecutor Alan Jackson set the scene, took the jury through the events on the eve of that deadly Monday morning.

The jury saw the surveillance video with Lana Clarkson walking Phil Spector to his car a little after 2 a.m. Spector's driver picked up the story.

Adriano DeSouza was a substitute driver. From now on, DeSouza would be the only person alive to see Lana Clarkson with Phil Spector.

DeSouza says he dropped them off at the house. And fell asleep in the car.

And then…

"I think I killed somebody."

But did he?

When police arrived at Spector's castle, said the lead homicide detective, they found Lana Clarkson, dead, a purse on her arm, sitting by the back door.

They also found the gun.

The detective found the holster for that gun in a nearby, slightly open drawer.

And upstairs, he said, he found a cup full of bullets which matched the bullets in the gun.

They found 14 phones but only one 911 call -- from the driver.

Lana's blood was on the door latch, on a rag in the bathroom, in Phil Spector's pants' left pocket. Inside.  And it was smeared on her face.

A forensic scientist gave an explanation.

Did Phil Spector pick up that rag, wipe her face, clean the gun, and plant it under Lana's left leg to imply suicide?

Did Spector fire the gun? He was wearing a white jacket that night on which investigators found tiny bits of blood -- a misty splatter. Meaning, said the forensic scientist, Spector was close enough to have held the gun in Lana's mouth.

Forensic testimony droned on for 16 days. The defendant himself was hard-pressed to stay awake.

But it was Spector's own notorious past that underscored the prosecution.

And so now came a parade of women who testified that their stories could well have ended just as Lana Clarkson's did.

It was 1989. Dianne Ogden, a music industry insider who had been close to Spector, remembered a visit to one of his homes.

Her purse on her arm. Like Lana.  Spector, she said, refused to let her leave.

It was 1992. Melissa Grovsnor.

1993. Dorothy Melvin.

At his house on a date.

1995. Rock and roll photographer Stephanie Jennings at a New York hotel.

Devra Robitaille, as far back as 1976.

But, powerful though the women's testimony was, could anyone show evidence that Spector's drunken antics actually intended harm to women?

Actually, claimed the prosecutor, someone could.

An ex-New York cop was about to tell a story from the early '90s about the night he was working security and had to throw a drunken Phil Spector -- who had brandished a gun -- out of a celebrity party.

And why did the prosecutor want Tannazzo to testify? Because of what the ex-cop claims Spector said on the way out of that party: that women -- he used a different term…

The case against Spector looked very dire.

By the time attorney Bruce Cutler -- famous for representing the likes of John Gotti and associates -- presented himself to the Spector jury, the icon of rock had fired a few lawyers and hired some more, all to argue his central claim: the state could not prove he killed Lana Clarkson because she did it herself.

But to persuade the jury of that, Cutler and the rest of the defense team would have to surmount some rather inconvenient evidence, such as this:

That's the driver, Adriano DeSouza, telling the cops he heard Spector say "I think I killed somebody." The defense strategy? Question DeSouza's reliability as an accurate reporter. English wasn't his first language and he admitted he had fallen asleep.

And, said the defense, there was noise from that fountain by Spector's house that might have drowned out Spector anyway.

The strategy wasn't working terribly well. So, was what you're about to hear a legal Hail Mary pass? If it was, it bombed.

If that were the entire defense, Phil Spector would have a big problem.

But that was just a sideshow compared to the rest of the defense.

The prosecution had claimed the fine blood spatter on Spector's white jacket proved he was so close to Lana when the gun went off that he must have pulled the trigger.

But that, said a small army of defense forensic experts, was not necessarily true at all.

The spots on the jacket proved nothing, they said, because blood could travel quite a distance.

Famed pathologist Michael Baden came to say the blood on Spector's jacket would have landed on the right side not on the left where it was found if he shot her.

And in an eleventh hour epiphany, after he'd been on the case over four years, since the day Lana died, Baden suddenly realized that she did not die instantly but was alive and was breathing for perhaps four minutes.

Could Phil Spector have been coming to Lana's aid, when that blood came out of her mouth, and sprayed his jacket?

But how could the gun have wound up under Lana's leg if Spector didn't plant it there himself? After all, the driver had seen him holding the gun after the shooting.

Well, there was a simple answer to that, too, said the defense.

A take down? That's right. When police arrived, and Spector put his hands in his pockets instead of over his head, they tackled and Tasered him.

The defense even brought the jury on a tour of The Castle.

The idea was that they would see for themselves the small entry way -- that they'd see how easy it would be for a gun to go flying during a police take down. But the key to Spector's defense was Lana Clarkson herself.

The defense never explained how Phil Spector's gun ended up in Lana Clarkson's hand. But it was there they insisted. And suddenly the thing on trial seemed to be Lana's frame of mind.

Her history?

Well, there was her moribund career. Going nowhere.

And, she'd taken a bad fall in 2001, broke both of her wrists, couldn't work for nearly a year, and was still on a strong pain killer Vicadin.

She had to be depressed, suggested the defense. They had her emails that said so and she'd been fired from a play. She was also dumped by a man, said this friend…

That was just a month before her death.

Depressed about men and work.

And drinking, claimed the woman whose name is Punkin Pie. And though she was taking the stand for the defense, she insisted...

Ms. Pie gave her profession as club promoter. She came with pictures which the defense showed as evidence of parties with Lana.

She smiled for the cameras, but Hollywood was simply not being kind to Lana Clarkson. Like the night, a few weeks before she died, said Pie, when she approached a big time movie director who she'd once worked with.

Then, less than a week before she died…

Then, in a risky move, the defense put Lana Clarkson's mother on the stand.

Lana, desperate for work, claimed the defense, had forged supportive letters from industry executives. They wanted Lana's mother to confirm she'd found the letters.

Would the jury think the defense had been cruel to a grieving mother?

It was, said the defense, a depressed and suicidal Lana Clarkson whose unhappy life ended in the entryway of Phil Spector's castle full of drinks and Vicodin. And with the solution, a gun, finally in her hand.

Not Phil's doing. Not at all.

Depression. Suicidal despair.

It was the cornerstone of Phil Spector's defense: his claim that Lana Clarkson, rejected by Hollywood, had the poor manners to choose his house and his gun to bring her own sorry life to an end. But now, the prosecution would get to respond and show a different Lana -- and a different side of Hollywood.

Director Michael Bay came to court to say that it was quite impossible that he would have "dissed" Lana, as Punkin Pie had described.

In fact, that suicide defense brought out a strong reaction from Lana's friends.

Lana's agent brought in pictures of her at her last audition just 11 days before she died. Told the jury how she landed the part -- but didn't live to do it.

So where did Punkin Pie, the self-proclaimed best friend, get this idea?

Back in 2003, the day Lana died, Pie told the cops just the opposite.

So was she telling the truth now or back in 2003?

The prosecution tried to answer that question with this letter Pie wrote to a friend almost a year after Lana died:

But if the jury had to guess at the truthfulness of some of the witnesses, surely this would help them get to know the real Lana Clarkson:

Her showcase reel. Now the jury saw her in commercials for K-Mart:

For Budweiser:

For Nike:

There she was, the pretty, ambitious actress.

It was during the cross-examination of Lana's agent that for some reason not entirely clear, the defense seemed to feel the tape would be helpful to its side by showing the jury that Lana wasn't very good, not marketable.

And then, some of the people in the courtroom began to cry.

In this tape, for the long suffering jury, Lana Clarkson had finally come alive.

It was hardly what the defense strategy intended.

But was there even agreement on the defense team? On the last day of testimony another one of Spector's high powered attorneys, Bruce Cutler, announced he was out. Done.

A fact the jury was not permitted to hear as it finally prepared to consider the case of the untimely death of Lana Clarkson in the home of Phil Spector.

Somewhere in Los Angeles tonight are nine men and three women whose sleep may well be troubled.

Are they struggling with the fate of Phil Spector?

They've been watched, all these 57 days of the trial, by Court TV's Beth Karas.

They were sent away late Monday morning to the small, plain jury room up on the ninth floor of the criminal court house. It's the same floor and the same hallway where the O.J. Simpson jury pronounced its quick not guilty.

And with them, in a twist that is surely stranger than fiction, is a senior producer with Dateline NBC, selected as juror number two.

So-- special access, you ask? Well, no. In fact, the arrangement has been a royal pain, since by court directive the case, the trial, even the name of the defendant, may not be mentioned by the producer to staff, or staff to producer.

So we can only suspect they are aware that no Hollywood jury has ever found a major celebrity guilty of murder.

Nor do we know if this is the argument they are considering.

In its closing, the defense asked the jury to accept its experts' version of the science of the case.

The prosecution focused on the driver's account of death at The Castle and on those women with their stories about Phil Spector and his guns.

As was prosecutor Jackson's closing, which was as powerful, some court watchers said, as they've seen in years.

But was Lana Clarkson suicidally depressed, as the defense contended? Only the jury can decide that now.

And Punkin Pie? What of the woman who claimed to be Lana's best friend, and proposed the depression story?

But then there were those others to counter Ms. Pie and that letter she sent soon after Lana's death, contending her friend died at the hands of Phil Spector.

The jury, of course, is not with us tonight -- they've been ordered to avoid news about the trial. Instead they'll be stewing in private about arguments like this:

Or they could let their minds wander back before the scene at The Castle, before the movie in the back seat of the Mercedes -- the parking lot, House of Blues, closing time.

Fantasy, of course.

Instead, in the next hours, or days, 12 ordinary humans will announce the fate of the aging prince of rock and roll.