Original subtitles

Stop the camera rolling for one second.

- [Vikram Jayanti] Okay. - Just for one...

[Vikram] Or we could do it another time, Phil.

Okay, yeah, we'll do it...

[Vikram] The BBC asked me if I was interested

in making a film about Phil Spector

as his murder trial was approaching.

I said only if I can go and talk to him.

I knew that he'd historically always said no

to filmmakers coming into his house.

Until Mick Brown, he'd avoided interviews

for about 30 years.

You okay for water?

But I sent him a note, just half a page letter.

And that night, amazingly, I got back an email from him

saying, "You sound like an honest person.

Come over to the castle."

Okay, are you ready?

And I had a very friendly conversation with Phil.

He certainly believed anything he said

as he said it was true.

I can go through the jury trial

without any problem whatsoever.

The only thing that concerns me about the jury trial

and getting through it is the verdict.

Everything about the jury trial doesn't concern me at all.

I could get through it like a breeze.

It's the verdict that concerns me.

We have a jury questionnaire that they filled out,

and 45% of 'em wrote down they believed I was guilty.

And 20% of 'em wrote down I was insane.

I just hope we have a bunch of jurors

that listen to the ev--

we haven't told our story in four years.

We have a very interesting, abrupt,

honest, accurate story to tell

that proves beyond any question reasonable,

possibility of a doubt, that it is impossible

for me to have been near the deceased when she died.

[gunshot]

[music]

Daydreaming 'bout you

So glad I found you

I was lost without you

I'll sing a little louder

So glad I found you

I was lost without you

I'll sing a little louder

[Alan Jackson] When you walk into a courtroom,

you never know what you're gonna get in terms of a jury.

You don't know the person who's going to be with you

for the next several months, or in some cases,

next several years.

When we prosecuted Phil Spector,

we were hamstrung with the idea that Phil Spector

had written the soundtrack

to many of the jurors' young lives.

There were very few people of age to be on a jury

who didn't know who he was or didn't know his music well.

You can forget a person.

You never forget a song if it speaks to you,

if it touches you.

His music and his genius had a way

of infecting and infiltrating sort of every fabric

of a lot of those jurors' lives.

And that was one of the real challenges.

We were looking for jurors

who were unaffected by his celebrity

who would literally sit in judgment of the facts.

MAN: And mark.

My name's Ricardo Enriquez.

I was a juror.

I was actually juror number nine.

I had never heard of Phil Spector.

Matter of fact, I never understood the deal with music.

So, when I heard that he was a music producer,

I said, oh, well, never heard of him.

But he was obviously the big deal,

and there was all these news people all over the place,

like a parade of cameras.

Joining us now outside the Los Angeles courthouse live

is Court TV's Beth Karas, who's covering this case.

[Beth Harris] I covered Phil Spector's trial

in 2007 as a reporter for Court TV.

What happens when a celebrity has to trade a seat like this

for one in the courtroom?

There's no question that a celebrity defendant

increases the pressure on the prosecution.

And in Los Angeles, with the acquittals

of OJ and Robert Blake for murder,

they had to prove that celebrities

were not gonna get away with murder.

It was a big story in Los Angeles.

It was televised daily.

- Phil Spector murder trial... - Phil Spector murder trial...

Suspicion of murder.

There's an air of danger around Phil Spector.

[man] A man with a violent history.

[Nicole Spector] The way that the media was portraying him

was someone who had this,

you know, reputation.

Phil Spector could never

have done this.

He could never stand up

and shoot a girl

in the mouth with a gun.

Where's my history of this?

How come for the last 40 years you've never heard stories

about me pointing a gun in women's mouths,

blowing their heads open, and shooting women?

He seemed more internally distraught

knowing that there was this public perception of him

that wasn't true.

That wasn't really who he was,

especially not when I was growing up.

My parents met in, I think it was the end of '64.

My father was seeing Ronnie Spector at the time.

My mom was still in high school and was a shopgirl

on the Sunset Strip.

My dad was shopping there,

and he was sort of dancing around, being funny,

and my mom thought like, "Who is this little man?"

He was asking her what her favorite records were,

and she cited "Da Doo Ron Ron," and she had no idea who he was.

They were just sort of a couple of kids

who found each other and formed a great friendship,

and later a romantic relationship.

With the record career now over,

he sold the house in Beverly Hills

and he cut himself off from a lot of his old friends,

from a lot of his old rock and roll life,

and relocated to Pasadena and had children with Janis.

Growing up, it was just me, my mother and my dad,

and my twin brother Phillip.

My dad was super funny,

incredibly generous.

He was super, super smart.

The greatest mind I've ever known.

He always challenged me intellectually,

always spoke to me as an equal.

We were very much a family unit who lived together

and were really cohesive.

I think he was devoted to these children,

loved these children.

I think Janis was a fantastic

stabilizing influence on his life.

He was somebody who was really coming to terms

with his mental illness, which is what I think it was,

and it had been for many, many years.

He was definitely sort of trying to divorce himself

from that chaotic past,

and to try and find some stability,

and to find some sort of sanctuary

and some semblance of normal family life.

And then, tragedy intervenes.

[Phil] Nicole is a twin, and her brother died

at 10 years old.

And... and it's been hard. It's been really hard.

[Mick] Phillip, his son, dies from leukemia,

and that just pushes Phil completely over the edge.

He just couldn't handle it,

and he really alienated himself and sort of shut down.

[Phil] Nicole and I went through a lot.

She lost a twin and I lost a son.

You know, when you're a twin,

you're kind of like, you know, always looked at as a unit.

You're not really looked at as individuals.

To have one half and not the other half,

everything really fell apart.

He moved back to New York briefly,

we stayed in Los Angeles, and my parents

just couldn't make their relationship work anymore.

[Phil] All my close friends throughout my life--

Lenny Bruce, John Lennon, passed on, and I lost them.

And so, I-- all the people I could talk to were gone.

So, I just sort of struggled along alone.

I don't know where I would have been

if little Phillip had lived.

My life might have been completely different,

although so-- I don't know,

I might have been a different person.

Phillip dying...

finally persuaded him that life--

living is being in hell.

I'm not sure that anything

threw him off the course he was on

quite like his son dying.

[Mick] All the old patterns begin to reassert themselves--

you know, the drinking, the craziness,

the instability.

[cheers and applause]

[male reporter] In 1989, Spector was inducted

into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He staggered onto the stage.

I don't get it, man. I don't get it.

He's gotta make a mess of everything.

He just can't help it.

...walked away at the inauguration.

Can't help it.

[cheers and applause]

Let's call it the negative/dark side of Phil.

It was almost inevitable.

I think anybody who created with him

or socialized with him was exposed

to that side of his brain function.

Personally, I didn't know anything

about Phil Spector's rather prolific reputation

in Los Angeles and in Hollywood.

I think you had to be a little bit of an insider

in Hollywood to really know about that.

Phil Spector had a pattern of behavior,

and there was really nobody that was sort of immune to it.

Especially not Lana Clarkson.

[announcer] Are your windows wasting your money?

Oh, now that's nice.

[Nili Hudson] Lana was a working actress

for the 20 years that I knew her.

And in those 20 years there were lean times

and there were abundant times.

I do a little bit of everything around here.

In Hollywood there is a limited shelf life for actresses.

Lana knew that roles were going to diminish over time.

[Donna Clarkson] And in the '80s she did a lot of sitcoms.

No, no, no, easy, easy.

[Donna] But during the '90s,

she was preparing to go in a different direction.

You know, she started doing a lot of commercials.

- We're the Jeffreys. - In from the coast.

- How are you guys doing? - Never better.

Pâté? It's from France.

[Donna] She did a beer commercial,

Playtex commercial, the car commercial.

She was starting to develop all these different characters.

Incredible.

She was trying to do a standup comedy thing,

and she had written this show.

I really thought that I would have been great

during the studio system era,

you know, like grooming you for stardom.

I had the good fortune of working

with the lovely Miss Esther Williams recently.

She's amazing, and she told me

all about those days at MGM, how incredible they were.

Course, I probably would have ended up starring

in Ed Wood films. [laughter]

She had been trying to really do good work,

write, write, write, just trying to figure out

what to do with her career.

And that happened to be where she was at in her life.

Lana decided that she's not the ingenue anymore,

and she's gonna produce

her own showcase that she had put together.

[Donna] She came up with "Lana Unleashed,"

her one-woman show.

Roy is here this morning to make a very important announcement.

Good morning, Roy, and welcome to the show.

Yah, yah, Kathy, thank you.

The whole idea around producing this show

was that you put this on tape,

you send it to producers, you send it to directors,

you send it to agents,

and you hopefully get jobs out of it,

and people start looking at you in a different light

and start thinking about you for different types of roles.

I think it was really one way to stave off

the forced retirement that could happen

to a lot of young actresses in Hollywood.

She got the old tin movie cans,

and she ended up lining it with red velvet inside

and cutting out where the video was,

and a picture of her on the cover.

We all sent them out to all these casting directors

and producers over the holidays.

[Nili] It was a huge investment--

an investment of money, time, heart.

And then the accident happened.

She was at some very dear friend's house.

They were having a wonderful Christmas Eve party.

All the adults were out partying,

and she was in the other room with the children Irish dancing.

She was wearing six-inch stilettos.

And the carpet slipped out from under her.

She put her hands back to brace her fall,

and in the process crushed both her wrists.

It was catastrophic.

When Lana broke her wrists,

I think it took about a year to recover.

[Nili] She couldn't do anything.

She couldn't go on an interview.

She couldn't even hold a phone.

All of her efforts went down the drain.

Lana was in a period of introspection

and a period of survival.

Not just, "How do I make a living to pay the rent,"

but, "How do I reestablish my career?

"How do I keep my name out there?

What's next for me?"

She wasn't loving the idea of getting a 9-to-5 job,

but she wanted to work at a place to be seen,

and to see, and to run into people she knew

and let them know she was back.

And that was the year that led up

to her getting the job at the House of Blues.

[Kim Gregory] My first association with Lana

was through the House of Blues,

which was owned by Dan Aykroyd.

The Foundation Room was the original

of the Los Angeles

high-end VIP rooms.

I remember her coming in,

and I remember Lana says, "I want that job."

I'm like, what do you mean? What job?

"I want that door job,

'cause I'm gonna meet everybody."

The whole thing was a career move, essentially,

to just see where she could get another in

to maybe a different job in entertainment.

Lana always looked for opportunities to meet people.

She just loved people, meeting anybody.

And so, she knew that another opportunity

was gonna be around the corner.

Opening statements were April 25th, 2007.

[cameras snapping]

That's more than four years

after Lana Clarkson was murdered.

Phil Spector's defense team, they had unlimited resources.

Robert Shapiro was the lead defense attorney

all the way through the indictment.

But then at some point,

Bruce Cutler became the lead counsel

along with Linda Kenney Baden

and several other very talented lawyers.

- [man] Excuse us, excuse us. - [woman] Excuse us, folks.

- [man] Excuse us, please. - [woman] Get back.

[man] Excuse us.

It became really clear really fast

that the person who wanted the trial

to become a theater was Phil Spector.

Never has there ever been a defendant on trial for murder

where everyone's attention was not so much on the crime,

but on his hair.

[woman] Phil Spector appearing in an array of hairdos.

[Vinnie] Spector's hairstyles were the talk of his trial.

Take a look at this. This was the big one, folks.

[Linda Kenney Baden] Being in Hollywood,

everything is entertainment.

But Phillip has a sense of humor.

And he felt that they were gonna be out to get him,

no matter what.

[Alan] I think it was all an effort to utilize

this newfound celebrity and the trial

as his own personal theater.

In my view, that was a vital error

on the part of the defense to allow Phil Spector

to conduct himself this way,

because to me, it showed a lack of respect.

The jurors were judging him at every level,

from the time he walks into the courtroom,

how he sits in his chair, how he dresses.

Every single moment in front of a jury

is a moment of judgment.

I am not one, nor will I ever be,

to have a client change their dress.

This is Phillip Spector.

This is what he looked like, this is how he dressed.

I want the jury to see who he is.

[Vikram] I talked with him about his hair,

and in fact, I thought I'd shoot a shot about it.

I said, "What I'd like to do, Phil,

"is you pile all your wig boxes on that side and on that side,

"and the camera will be locked down,

"and you will, in your frock coat,

"keep crossing the frame in a different wig.

That'll be a funny scene."

And the room went completely cold and scary.

And Phil said, "What wigs?"

And I said, "You've got a lot of wigs, right?"

And he said, "Who's been-- who have you been talking to?"

And the bodyguards stopped playing,

and they just all went alert like a dog ready to jump.

And I said, "Everyone knows you've got wigs.

It's all over the internet."

He said, "This isn't a wig, this is my own hair.

It's always my own hair."

And Phil came out with his arm full of photographs,

and he came running up to me,

and pictures were dropping off.

He started pulling 'em out and showing me them

and saying, "Look, see, that's my own hair.

See, look, that's my own hair. That's my own..."

He was adamant that it was his own hair.

[Piny] I saw him on TV with that afro look.

I didn't think it was the right look for him.

I got the call probably a week later

or something like that.

And he said to me--

he came over and he said to me, "I don't want that look."

He asked me, "Can you help me?"

I said, "Sure, no problem."

And when he came over, we tried to mellow down the look.

The more classy looking, you know, and less poofy,

more Phil Spector.

And so, I made-- this is one of his pieces.

And I kept it because he used to come every week for service,

because he didn't know how to style his own hair,

so he always would switch it.

So, I made about-- probably about eight

or nine wigs for him.

I mean, with the whole mess, the whole thing,

and he's still worried about how his hair looked?

But listen, that was my business.

I can't tell him, "Just go home,

I don't want to do anything for you."

It was hard to get a smile out of his face.

'Cause as I said before-- as I said before,

he was-- he knew what's coming up.

You could see the fear in his eyes all the time.

All the time.

[Linda] He did tone down his look.

And of course, it was all over the news media.

I thought, gosh darn, we're trying a murder case.

Really, I mean, this is the dignity

we're gonna give our court system?

I just don't like the idea that anybody doesn't think

I'm taking this not seriously.

Because the judge, every time I go into court,

doesn't like me.

He's already said, "Someone died."

And he keeps saying that every time I go into court.

To the jurors, the first thing out of his mouth was,

"Remember today, we're here because someone died."

Now, why does he gotta say that for?

He's just a mean son of a bitch who doesn't like me.

[cameras snapping]

- Excuse us. - Excuse us, please.

- Excuse us, please. - Excuse us.

- Excuse us. - Excuse us.

[woman] Excuse us, folks, get back!

Get back!

[Beth] This was an involved case,

it was a little bit complicated.

The manner of death was what this case was all about.

What do we call this?

Did she do this to herself, or was it a homicide--

death at the hands of another?

The prosecution's position

based on the entire investigation

was that Phil Spector did this.

This was a homicide.

By February 2003, Phil Spector was pretty reclusive.

He was living in a 33-room mansion

in Alhambra, the Pyrenees Castle.

It's up on a hill, and he had 88 steps

like the 88 keys on a piano going up the front door.

For whatever reason,

on the night of February 2nd, 2003,

he decided to come out.

He had broken his silence by talking to Mick Brown

before Lana Clarkson died.

When that article came out,

it called him "the lost genius of pop music."

I can't help but think that Mick's article...

would have struck Phil as a true mirror

of who Phil had become.

Phil had been pretty much on the wagon

for about 10 years, I think.

But the day after the article came out

is when he started hitting the bars.

That night he decided to go out with Rommie Davis.

Rommie Davis was a friend

of Phil Spector's from high school.

Picked her up about 7:30

and took her over to The Grill to have dinner,

and he employed the services of Adriano De Souza,

a private driver who he had hired for the night.

[Mick] They go for dinner, and the records show--

the evidence brought forward in the trial

shows that he was drinking pretty heavily.

He was not his usual self.

Phillip did not usually drink when I went out with him.

I said, "Phillip, please don't drink.

You take medication, you shouldn't be mixing this."

And he just didn't agree, he did what he wanted to do.

Phil Spector took Rommie Davis home,

he returned to The Grill, and he took the waitress

who was working there, Kathy Sullivan,

with him now to Trader Vic's.

[Alan] And what happened?

- We ordered drinks. - What'd you order?

I ordered an amaretto sour.

And do you know what Mr. Spector ordered?

He ordered a Navy Grog.

[Alan] One Navy Grog is the equivalent of six drinks.

It was an enormous amount of alcohol.

He was getting more and more drunk

as the night went on.

And then, from Trader Vic's they went to Dan Tana's.

[Alan] At Dan Tana's Phillip Spector

ordered another Navy Grog.

During the course of the dinner

there was yet a second round of drinks ordered.

It's getting close to midnight now.

Did Mr. Spector have any ideas about going someplace else?

- Yes. - Tell me about that.

He wanted to go to the House of Blues.

[Donna] I remember then the last time I saw Lana.

She needed some flat shoes.

Most of her shoes were heels.

We're rushing around and went a couple of different places,

and I think I must have bought her seven pairs of shoes.

So, she left with all these shoes in her car,

and she just, "Oh, Mom, I love you,

thank you for all my shoes."

And then she left and went to the House of Blues.

[Kim] That Sunday night, I remember Lana at the door.

I remember them calling me over on the radio,

and they said, "Kim, go to the door

'cause Phil's here."

And I remember going to the door.

Phil was pissed 'cause he couldn't get in the room,

and Lana had stopped him and didn't know who he was.

She says, "I'm sorry, who are you?"

And of course, he utters the phrase

that is so well used and overused in Hollywood,

"Don't you know who I am?"

And she said, "No, ma'am, I'm sorry.

I don't know who you are."

[Beth] She thought he was a woman.

He had his long wig,

and he was wearing a long jacket.

And I said, "No, no, no, no. That's Phil Spector.

"That's Dan's friend.

Treat him as if that's Dan Akroyd."

It's 1:30, quarter to 2:00 in the morning.

Now, at this point, Kathy Sullivan wants to go home.

Well, Phil Spector wanted to keep drinking.

He was on a bender that night.

Kathy Sullivan simply didn't want to drink like that.

The server asked him what he wanted to drink,

and he said, "I'll have rum."

- And did you order anything? - I ordered water.

That infuriated Phil, and Phil ordered her

out of the House of Blues, "Go home."

Shortly before closing time,

Lana Clarkson comes to his table.

"Is there anything I can get you, Mr. Spector?

"I'm sorry for the confusion.

"If you need anything, please come to me.

My name is Lana."

Phil Spector actually said, "You know what,

just sit down and have a drink."

And she said, "Oh, I can't have a drink with you, I'm working."

And he said, "Sit down and have a drink."

Of course, the evidence will show that she thought

at this point she needed to treat him like an owner.

If an owner says, "Sit down and have a drink,"

she needs to check on that.

So, she calls on the radio and says,

"Phillip Spector is asking me to sit down and have a drink.

Am I allowed to do that?" She calls the manager.

The manager says, "No, you're on duty."

She said, "Mr. Spector, I'm sorry,

I can't drink with you."

The evidence will show that he said,

"Well, maybe later then."

[Kim] It was about 2:30 and we were winding down.

I was in the middle of the bar.

I remember seeing Phil walking down

like he wanted to leave, and I remember them saying,

"Hey, Phil wants to talk to you."

Phil and myself are talking at the elevator doors,

and I remember all of a sudden

Lana came into that space.

And I remember him looking up to her

and going, "You didn't let me in tonight."

So, she was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Spector.

I'll remember you next time, I'll remember--"

you know, being the typical great host.

I remember them getting on the elevator,

the elevator door was open.

I remember her giving me a hug and a kiss,

and saying, "Hey, I'll see you tomorrow."

I remember that.

Elevator door closed, that was the last I saw her.

[Alan] That is Lana Clarkson

escorting Phil Spector

down to his car.

You can see she is the taller of the two individuals,

Phil Spector is the shorter of the two.

When they got down to the car, ladies and gentlemen,

Phillip Spector began insisting

that Lana Clarkson come home with him.

"Come back to my castle, I wanna show you the castle.

"I have a castle in Alhambra.

"You gotta see the castle, come back to the castle.

Have one drink with me back at the castle."

She didn't wanna go home with him,

she did not want to have a drink with him.

It was late, she had worked.

She's got her purse over her shoulder,

she's ready to go home.

He pressured her, and she finally thought,

"Okay, what the heck?"

[Alan] She gets into the Mercedes

and just before Adriano De Souza shuts the door for her,

she looks at him and says in a low voice,

"It's okay, I'm just gonna stay for one drink.

Just one drink."

And he got mad with her, like you know,

"Don't talk to the driver.

"Don't talk to the driver,

you have to talk to me."

Looked like both inside the car, I close the door

and I drove right to Spector's house.

Spector has a video player, a little video player,

and he slots a video in to watch a movie

as they're driving back, and it's a James Cagney film.

"Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye."

They arrive at the castle.

And the electronic gates are open.

Spector instructs the driver to stop

at the bottom of the steps,

and asked Lana Clarkson to walk up the steps with him.

[Beth] Eighty-eight steps, and he's so drunk.

So, she helps him up the stairs.

De Souza goes around the back,

and he figures it won't be too long.

[Adriano] It was a dark night, no cars around.

It's in the top of the mountain.

There's no noise around.

Like 5:00 in the morning, around 5:00...

I heard a noise.

[distant gunshot]

I tried to, you know, to investigate what happened.

You know, I opened the door.

[car door opens]

I checked to see if it was outside.

The fountain was on.

Everything pretty normal.

I went inside the car, I closed the door.

[car door closes]

And he opened the door.

[door opens]

As soon as he opened the door,

I jumped and went, like, to the back door,

and he was, like, standing in the door

with the gun in a hand.

Do you recognize what's depicted in that photograph?

- [Adriano] Yes. - [Alan] Does that look

like the gun that was in Mr. Spector's hand?

- Yes. - Could you stand

and show the jurors exactly how Mr. Spector

- was holding that gun? - Yes.

Like that.

Mr. De Souza, when you saw Mr. Spector step outside

with this gun in his hand,

approximately how far were you from him?

Over here.

That's it.

- Right here? - Yes.

- [man] Four to five feet. - Thank you, Your Honor.

[Adriano] He said, "I think I killed someone."

I ask him like what happened?

And I step inside to see what's going on.

And I saw Lana's body on the chair.

I start running for a little while,

I did not remember that I had the car.

I returned, I grabbed the car, and I start like, you know,

driving, like, down.

Tried to just escape from that place, you know.

Adriano De Souza panicked, did not know what to do.

Once he got to a point where he believed he was safe,

he called 911.

[Mick] I covered the trial for "The Daily Telegraph."

And I sat in the courtroom watching De Souza's testimony,

and like everybody in the courtroom,

I came away just thinking this was just extraordinary.

I mean, you could feel this palpable shift in energy.

And when I looked at Spector, something had happened to him.

His face was different.

He looked bewildered, he looked lost,

he looked frightened, as if he couldn't believe

this had happened to him.

Adriano De Souza was obviously a central witness to the case.

He's the only eyewitness, the only earwitness,

and the first person to see the aftermath

of Lana Clarkson's murder.

His testimony was consistent in every hearing

that he ever testified in, in every report he ever gave

down to the letter and the grammar.

His testimony was devastating to the defense,

and something that they had to spin their way out of.

[Bradley Brunon] Had you received any kind

of certification or evaluation that would measure

- your English competency skills? - No.

Adriano De Souza's first language is Portuguese.

He's from Brazil.

He was a Brazilian military officer,

highly educated, highly competent.

The defense wanted to exploit the fact

that he was not from this country,

that English was his second language,

and style him as a backward,

foreign-sounding guy with an accent.

[Bradley] You said you thought you heard Mr. Spector

- say something, is that right? - Yeah, I heard, yeah.

Okay, what do you recall him saying now?

He said, "I think I killed somebody."

Okay. Now...

are you completely sure that's what he said?

- Yes. - Positive?

- Yes. - No doubt?

Yes.

You think you might have gotten those words wrong?

No.

The words that I heard, like, were clear.

Okay. Let me ask you this.

Do you think you might have heard,

"I think somebody's been killed?"

No.

They claimed that, "I think I killed somebody"

was actually, "I think somebody got killed,"

meaning, "Oh, no, she just killed herself.

"And look, I happened to grab the gun

and I'm standing here holding it."

It could be like my accent is strong anyway,

but I understand everything.

I could read anything, you know?

It actually is a simple,

you know, like, sentence, you know?

'Cause he didn't speak English correctly

or without an accent, a heavy accent,

that maybe he doesn't hear without an accent.

Maybe he hears with an-- I said that's bullshit.

I took offense to that. I mean, I did.

Because in other words, if I have an accent,

that means that I hear you in an accent?

No. No, not true.

That was never gonna fly.

I don't think a juror believed it,

I don't think an alternate juror believed it,

I don't think an audience member believed it.

I didn't believe it.

So, when the defense is faced with a situation

where their client is basically caught red-handed,

with gun in hand, having confessed

to just killing somebody, they gotta do something.

So, in this case, what they did

is try to just conflate as many issues as possible.

[Bradley] There's some ambient noise in that area

of the doorway, isn't there?

- Yes. - And that's the fountain, right?

Yes.

The fountain's actually quite loud, isn't it?

- Yes. - You did a recreation

of the event the next day, right?

Yes, I did.

[muffled conversation]

[Bradley] The fountain, you could clearly hear the noise

- in the background, right? - Yes.

The thing is, when they showed that in the court,

if you put the microphones close to the fountain,

they get the fountain more than any other sound around it.

They tried, like, to make that, you know,

"You didn't hear anything," you know?

Because the defense was taking the position

that De Souza didn't have any credibility--

and obviously Lana Clarkson walked into his house,

rummaged around his foyer,

and found a gun, and shot herself,

we had to rebut that.

To understand more fully, more globally,

why Phillip Spector would have done what he did,

how Lana Clarkson fell victim to this man...

you're gonna be introduced to evidence

of the defendant's very rich history of violence.

A history of violence against women,

a history of violence involving guns.

[woman] Please state and spell your first and last name

- for the record. - Stephanie Jennings.

[Stephanie] I met Phil Spector in 1994

at the Philadelphia Music Alliance Gala.

I was photographing the event.

It was a month or so later,

and I was at Elaine's

having dinner with a friend,

and I saw Phil Spector there.

And so, I just said, "Hi.

I just photographed you in Philadelphia."

So, he invited me to come to his table

with him and a few of his friends.

He was very charming and very funny.

We immediately started a relationship.

[Alan] There's a little bit of difference

in you today as opposed to back then.

Can you explain that for the court?

I was in a bad car accident, I totaled my car.

I'm very sorry about that.

I wanna draw your attention to January of 1995.

Did you receive any kind of an invitation

from Phillip Spector to attend

the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies...

- That event, no. - At that event? All right.

And what hotel did Mr. Spector get you a room to stay at?

At the Carlisle.

What happened toward the end of the evening?

Almost everyone was gone, and I was tired,

I was ready to go.

Did you just go back to your room by yourself?

- Yes. - And what did you do

- once you were back at the room? - I went to sleep.

What happened next?

There was a knock at the door, and it was his bodyguard.

Phil wanted to see her, and he sent his bodyguard

to get her, but it was late, and she's like,

"No, I'll see him in the morning at breakfast."

He came back a second time

and said that he insisted that I came over.

And I said, "Absolutely not,"

and shut the door and went back to bed.

But there was a third knock.

I opened the door, and it was Phil.

He was definitely drunk,

and he was loud and demanding.

He said he was paying for the room,

and if he wanted me to come over to his room,

then I was gonna come over to his room.

I said absolutely not,

and things escalated extremely quickly.

He started yelling that I was gonna pay for the room

if I didn't wanna come over to his room.

I said "No problem, and I'm gonna leave right now."

So, I started packing my things.

I went into the bathroom and I was packing my bag,

and Phil came in after me.

He grabbed me.

I pushed him, and he fell into the bathtub

with the shower curtain down on top of him,

and then got up and walked silently out of the room.

[Alan] What happened when Mr. Spector

came back into the room?

He had his gun with him, and he pulled a chair

and put it in front of the door

and said that I wasn't going anywhere.

I thought, I'm going to die, shot by Phil Spector.

I was just sitting on the bed with all my bags

and he was sitting at the door.

And I just reached the phone and dialed 911.

He thought I called my mom, I don't know why.

And he said, "You can call your mom,

but she can't help you now."

[Alan] Female threatened, assault.

Weapon involved.

She's afraid to talk. Please help.

The man is standing by the phone.

He's a big celebrity. His name is Phil Spector.

That's the information that Stephanie Jennings

was literally relaying to the police

while she was being held at gunpoint.

At some point did the police arrive in your room?

Yes. They were treating me

as if I was a call girl.

They weren't taking what was going on seriously.

Did you tell them that the incident

- involved Phillip Spector? - Yes.

Did they appear to know who Phillip Spector was?

Yes. And they brought the--

I guess the hotel manager up,

and he gave me money to take the train

back to Philadelphia.

I thought I had put that part of my life behind me,

but in late December, he called and asked me

to join him at a party for his birthday.

I didn't, and he did not take that well at all.

[Alan] He left messages on your answering machine?

- Yes. - [beep]

I wanted to lead by disabusing the jurors

of this notion that Phil Spector

was this sweet little old man

who couldn't hurt a fly,

and just went into studios and created magic.

I needed to establish who he really is,

what he really does, and what he's capable of.

[man] Good afternoon.

I'd like to invite your attention

back to 1982.

To May of 1991.

July of 1993.

During that year, did there come a time

when you met a man named Phil Spector?

Yes, sir.

[Melissa Grosvenor] His assistant called me

and said, "Mr. Spector was wondering if you would like

to join him for dinner tonight."

Phillip would have Donna, his secretary, call...

"Mr. Spector would like to see you tonight

at the Ritz Towers."

We went out to dinner and had a great time.

He was very charming.

- He was funny. - It really was a nice evening.

Phil Spector, he could be charming.

He was very rich, he was very powerful,

he was very generous with his money.

That was the kind of guy he was, so there are people out there

who would say, "Oh yeah, no, he's a charming guy."

These women fell prey to that.

And then after dinner, we went back to his house.

His house was full of all kinds of interesting things.

And we just chatted, talked. He played the piano.

[Melissa] And we were dancing and having a good time.

He definitely was a little drunk.

The bottle was going down.

[man] Did there come a time when you decided

- that you should leave? - Yes.

I said, "Phillip, I do need to go home.

I have to work tomorrow, and it's late."

And he-- he didn't want me to go home.

And as soon as I said, "I'm tired, I wanna go,"

he turned and looked at me, and he pointed his finger,

and he said, "What? You want to go?"

And then, right then, I knew his whole demeanor had changed.

And he turned and started walking at me,

screaming at me to get the eff back in the house.

There was nothing that was out of bounds for him,

nothing that was too violent for him,

for no other reason that it gave him

the power and the control.

And that's what this was all about.

He walked right up to me and held the gun

right to my face with just inches between my eyes,

and said, "If you try to leave, I'm gonna kill you."

He had a gun to my face, a pistol of some sort.

He was pointing the gun at me.

I kept screaming at him,

"What the eff do you think you're doing?"

And at that point, he took his right hand

that was holding the revolver,

and smacked me in the side of the head

and said, "I told you to get the eff back in the house."

He wanted me to go upstairs, okay?

To his bedroom.

[Dorothy] He told me to take my clothes off

and to go up to the third floor.

Was he pointing the gun at you when he said this?

- Yes, he was. - He had the gun.

I was in front of him and he was walking behind me.

And we went up the stairway to his bedroom.

I was crying, I said, "Phil, don't make me do this.

I don't want to do this. Why are you doing this?"

There was no doubt in my mind that he was gonna kill me

if I tried to leave.

He was not my Phil. It was like he was demonic.

The sun came up the next morning,

- and what happened? - I could see the door open

into the bathroom, he was, like,

singing in the shower like nothing happened.

He said, "Would you like to go get some breakfast?"

And I ran out the door.

I drove a few blocks away and called 911.

What, if anything, did the police officer

suggest to your station?

They said Phil told them that we had these lover spats

all the time, and that I always called the police,

and this was my M.O.

And then they proceeded to tell me about the house

and John Lennon's guitar and such.

Chilling. Bloodcurdling.

How could you do this to someone that you say you love?

These are the stories that each one of these women told,

and just about every single one of these instances,

the recipe was the same.

Drinking, sex, rejection, leave, gun.

I can't speak to their experience.

I really can't.

I wasn't there, I don't know these people,

and you know, I stand with survivors.

But I don't think that those things have to connect.

We just thought that it was unfair to him,

and these acts were-- they were over a period

of, like, 30 years.

I mean, they were-- many things happen to people

in the meantime.

If you have a defendant and there's prior acts--

the prosecution alleged they were similar--

that the jury's gonna hear that, and they're gonna say,

"Well, this is one bad person, of course he did this!"

Let's talk about the grand jury indictment

and these women who have come forth.

Not one of them, not one of all the ones

who have come forth that you read about

in the newspaper, ever, ever, E-V-E-R,

ever filed a police report against me.

We couldn't even investigate, because records weren't there.

But they came in, and we just had to deal with 'em.

I definitely considered, could this have happened?

Could he just be so scared that he's not telling the truth?

Maybe he doesn't remember what happened.

But as soon as I started looking at evidence,

it was so immediately clear

that he couldn't have pulled the trigger.

The defense position was that this all came down to forensics,

and Lana Clarkson killed herself.

[Linda] We have one unimpeachable witness

who the evidence will show you

has no motive for or against anybody.

The witness has no motive to lie for or against any person.

The witness has no memory problems.

The witness has no language problems.

And that witness is called science.

And they had an interpretation on the forensic evidence

saying it's not inconsistent with a self-inflicted wound.

So, the scene was misinterpreted by the prosecution.

[Linda] There was simply no physical evidence

that proved that Phillip pulled the trigger.

There were no fingerprints that were found,

there was no DNA of Phillip on the gun.

He had no gunshot residue on him.

When you fire a gun, you have a lot of combustion.

See, it goes backwards, it goes upwards,

it goes downwards, it goes forward,

two and a half feet.

Lana Clarkson had a lot of gunshot residue on her hands,

which would indicate that she was holding the gun.

And if he had shot this gun

or he was in the vicinity of this gun shooting,

he also would have gunshot residue on him

just like she did. He had none.

And then there's what's called blood spatter.

If you shoot a gun in an intraoral-type situation,

the spatter would go backwards,

and it could go way back, 10 feet.

When a gun goes off, the gases are huge and enormous.

But if there is an intraoral wound

without an exit, without an exit,

the gases have-- get trapped in the head cavity.

They have no place to go.

And so, what happens is, a person becomes

almost like a chipmunk.

They expel back out.

There's all this spatter on her.

She had massive amount of spatter

on the top of her jacket.

She had the blood spatter on her wrists and hands.

We felt that the blood spatter which was on Lana Clarkson

would have to be equally on Phillip Spector.

Phil Spector is wearing a white jacket.

If he's two feet from her,

which is what the criminalist for the state said,

he would have been covered.

If he was there, he should have had spatter

and blood all over him, like was on her.

And it wasn't.

At that point, the prosecution is saying,

"Houston, we have a problem."

The beginning and end of this case

should be that white jacket.

I'm sorry that I met you

Now I only just regret you

I remember the night

When you first held me tight

Ohh

Now I'm sorry that I met you

I was lost in the hurricane

La-la-la-la, la-la