RedHanded - Episode 38 - Phil Spector & Lana Clarkson: Murder & Music Production

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

The Los Angeles celebrity justice system comes under scrutiny this week. Convicted murderer and one time music producer Phil Spector sits in a Californian prison medical centre, actor Lana Clarkson is dead and River Deep Mountain High is regrettably still a banger.  Audio mastered and Hannah's editing tantrum patiently endured by Conrad Hughes.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And this is Red Handed, and this week we've got a murder that you probably will have heard of, so we're going to bring you the details you may have forgotten.

And as always with such a famous case, there are a lot of myths and rumours surrounding this one, and we've done our best to comb through them as usual to bring you the truth. And usually at this point we'd issue a graphic content or no eating warning but this week I'm issuing you an anger warning because if you're anything like me this case will have your blood absolutely boiling. I am under strict instructions to not get too angry when we're recording this. So I'm doing my best to keep my voice at like a level. So let's kick off. 40 year old actor Lana Clarkson was working as a hostess in the House of Blues in Los Angeles in 2003. Lana's showbiz career had been consistent for years. People often paint her as this depressed, washed-up actress, which I actually

think is wildly unfair. She had loads of TV and film roles and had a sizeable cult following due to her B-movie career. And there is a difference between being famous and being successful. She was a working, jobbing actor and she had consistently worked for years. My day job is showbiz, so I think I'm probably hypersensitive to this. But not being a household name doesn't mean you're washed up. Lana had been involved in an accident around Christmas 2001 in which she broke both her wrists. This meant that Clarkson had to undergo a series of surgeries, and as she usually played very physical roles that involved horse riding or stunt work, this injury kept Lana away from acting for over a year. This was understandably a bit of a blow, so Lana wrote a few emails to her friends and family wondering whether she should just jack it all in. And this is how Lana ended up working as a hostess at the House of Blues, which,

until its demolition in 2017, was an iconic venue on the Sunset Strip. According to her PR manager, Ed Losey, two broken wrists had not totally knocked Lana out for the count. She was working on a stand-up show and she was working with Losey on a publicity plan. This, to me, doesn't sound like someone who was just about to give up. It sounds like someone who has dealt a shitty hand but was making it work. No, she wasn't a superstar and she hadn't worked for a while but

i i do think that people hammer home a little bit too hard that she was a failed actress done yeah and on the 3rd of february 2003 lana was working at the house of blues when a person came through the door of the venue lana quickly intervened and said i'm sorry ma'am you can't come in here but it wasn't a mom at all it was world It was world-famous music producer Phil Spector in one of his trademark, very large, very ridiculous wigs. If you don't know who Phil Spector is, we'll give you a brief summary. He moved to LA from the Bronx when he was 13. His father had killed himself four years before. Young Spector was in a band called the Teddy Bears and they had their very first hit single with To Know Him Is To Love Him when Spector was just 18. But crippling stage fright kept Spector off the stage and after that he started to turn his attention more towards

music production. Spector was hailed as a music production genius and he made his first million at just 21 years old and that's in olden days money. None of our like post-recession bullshit money. That's so much money. It's so much money. No one should give a 21-year-old that much money. Nothing good is going to happen. And back then that was so much money.

Now that would be so much money. That was one of the best things about living in Korea is that their currency is in millions. So you get paid every month and be like, yeah, I'm just a casual millionaire. Don't even worry about it. That's how money works. That is how money works. You're right. Saruti's got a master's in economics, guys. You were technically a millionaire though. Good for you, man. Was your dissertation called That's How Money Works? I wish it was now. That much money, someone that young,

bad things were bound to happen and happen they did at the same time as creating his signature wall of sound production style and working with the likes of the ronettes the beatles the ramones he's producing hit records like to do rom-rom and be my baby and he produced the beatles album let it be but he was also earning himself a reputation as just being a bit of a weirdo. He didn't have any friends. People would work with him because he was a genius and no one was doing what he was doing. But no one liked being around him. He'd often wave guns around at the recording studio and threaten bands he worked with if they weren't doing what he wanted. Actually, I saw an

interview with one of the Ramones and he was like, yeah, he was a bit of a cowboy. He'd wave guns around, but that's just Phil. No, that's not how a person should be conducting themselves. But it's kind of classic, isn't it? Look back at all of these entertainers, BBC or Jimmy Savile, all of those like, oh yeah, everybody knew he was like molesting all these kids. It was just Jimmy, whatever. Everything back then was just a big fat open secret and nobody thought they needed to say anything about anything. It's so weird. When this case broke in the press, everyone in LA was like, I can't believe it hasn't happened before. That hasn't happened sooner. So this is alleged. I don't know if this is true, but I heard that Phil Spector once held a gun to John Lennon's head this is just a rumor but unlike a

lot of showbiz rumors i think this one might have a grain of truth to it phil specter actually married one of the renettes ronnie ronnie bennett and his work dominated the charts through the 60s fellow renette nedra talley claimed in an interview that she always knew something was a bit off about Spectre. You don't really need to have like some sort of deep level of intuition or sixth sense to be like, I always knew something was wrong with him. The guy's like waving fucking guns around. Yes, something is wrong with him. And he wears giant wigs.

But this lady, she knows. She's onto him. He also was in a really serious car accident and he had 300 stitches in his face. Oh. And if you watch him in interviews, even when he's young, his face doesn't really move that much. But Nedra said that he came with the Ronettes to Britain and as soon as he touched down on British soil, he changed his voice to this weird, high-pitched thing that was really quite far away from how he usually spoke. So he changes his voice at will and he throws guns around all the time. Something's

definitely not right. But I do think that this comes with power and crucially it comes with isolation. Like I think if you give a 21 year old all the money in the world, everyone's telling him how amazing he is all the time. He doesn't have people around him really apart from people that do things for him people are very expendable to him he doesn't value them so it's bound to happen i think nedra also said when people would make fun of specter for his height or he's only five five so when people would make fun of him in a bar or a restaurant, whatever, he'd be like, okay, meet me outside. And he'd be waiting outside with a gun and two massive bodyguards.

Session musician Hal Blaine worked with Phil Spector for many years, and he couldn't recall Spector ever having any real friends. He had work associates, but no true friends. He had no confidants. This struck me as weird because thinking that Phil Spector was weird and had no friends didn't stop Hal letting his daughter, Michelle, work as Spector's assistant for many years. That is so Hollywood. I think the first kid who accused Michael Jackson of abuse, that case was dropped because his dad wrote the screenplay for Men in

Tights, Robin Hood Men in Tights. So he was like, okay, I'll drop this case if you get my screenplay to a studio. And in the 70s, Spector became more reclusive and even stranger. His marriage to Ronnie broke down and became abusive. He would allegedly keep her under lock and key in their mansion. And the pair divorced eventually in 1974. Some the trigger for phil's retreat from the scene was the failure of tina turner's song river deep mountain high and its failure to crack the top 40 specter saw the song as his best work and if people didn't like it then well they didn't deserve him he's so juvenile it is isn't it it's classic i'm not surprised by that behaviour at all. But Riverdeep, that is a banger though.

It is such a banger. I feel bad even saying it, but it's a fucking banger. But he's a piece of shit. But Tina Turner sang it, man. Let her have the credit. Yeah, Tina can have it. We'll give that one to you, Tina. The coming decades would see Phil retreat into his shell even more.

He barely worked. But to be honest, he didn't really need to. that one to you, Tina. The coming decades would see Phil retreat into his shell even more. He barely worked, but to be honest, he didn't really need to. He had all the money in the world and he seemed quite content living in his 35-room Alhambra mansion, going on dates with women much younger than him and being surrounded by priceless articles of musical memorabilia. And if you spend any amount of time watching interviews with Spector later in his life, in the 2000s, when he's in his 60s. He spent a lot of time on his own, and it's pretty obvious he completely detached from reality. He's rambly, and he's really manic. And his appearance, I mean, seriously, just first page of Google images will tell you enough. And we can't talk about Phil Spector without talking about his wigs. They are really something and they only serve to make him look even more deranged than his actions.

As Hannah said, Spector stands at five foot five. That's so short. I'm five foot three and I'm tiny. He's a pocket person, like he's tiny. Hey, we don't appreciate that. Petite. So the big hair could be a possible attempt to make himself look taller. And he also wore platform shoes. So it was obviously something he was conscious of. His attitude to women can be made very clear with the following story. Spector worked extensively with both Ike and Tina Turner. When Ike died, Spector spoke at his funeral and he said that Ike had made Tina into the jewel that she was. When he first met Ike and went down to the clubs they were playing,

there were five girls on stage who could have been Tina Turner. It was the fact that Ike had picked her that made her special. Fuck you. Honestly. So it's like nothing to do with Tina's own talent and the fact that she's a fucking powerhouse performer. She was just lucky enough to be picked by a man like Ike Turner. Women are so expendable to him. He places absolutely no value on them, even if they're Tina Turner. Before I give myself an aneurysm, let's get back to the story

at hand. On the evening, Spector crossed paths with Lana Clarkson. He had already had quite a night of it. He'd left his mansion in Alhambra, which, by the way, he called a castle. Almost nobody else calls it a castle apart from him. So he leaves his castle at about seven o'clock in the evening and he's headed to a high-end restaurant called The Grill on the Alley where he met his date for the evening. Well, at least for the first part of the evening. Because after dinner, Spector... Well, not Spector, Spector's driver drives his date home

and then returns to The Grill on the Alley for Spector's second date of the evening. And I read that this was a server at the restaurant that he had just eaten dinner at. Whether it was the server who served him on his first date, I don't know. But that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You've just been like, I'm going to go on a date with this woman, get rid of her and come back and go on a date with our waitress. Spector and his second date. Also, is he doing double dinners?

Has he just done double dinner? They head to another bar called Trader Vic's and then to another one of Phil Spector's favourite hangouts, Dan Tanner's. Please bear in mind that Spector's not a big guy and he's been drinking high-proof straight rum since half past seven in the evening and we're now at about midnight,

so he's fucking hammered despite this he's not ready to end his night and just a little bit after midnight he heads to the house of blues where he is mistaken by lana clarkson for a woman lana was obviously so terribly embarrassed by this incident that she took incredibly good care of specter i mean you would wouldn't you you just insulted an incredibly rich and powerful man. And House of Blues shut at 2am. At about 1.45, Spector asked Clarkson to come back to his castle for a drink. Lana initially declines, but the CCTV footage at the House of Blues parking lot

shows Lana Clarkson getting into Phil Spector's car at about 2.30am. These are the last images of Lana Clarkson alive. The pair were driven by a member of Spector's staff, Adriano D'Souza, back to the Alhambra house around 30 minutes from the House of Blues. They get to the house and under instruction from Spector, D'Souza waits at the end of the driveway while Clarkson and Spector go inside. What happened inside Phil Spector's house over the next two hours, we'll never know. But in my humble opinion, what happened is pretty fucking obvious when you look at the evidence. Because just before 5am, Adriano D'Souza hears a loud noise from inside the house and sees Phil Spector come out of the door. He has a gun in his hand and says,

according to D'Souza, I think I killed somebody. I think I killed somebody. The next thing D'Souza does is just nuts because he doesn't call the police. He calls Michelle Blaine, Phil Spector's assistant, but she doesn't answer the phone. So he leaves a message saying words to the effect of, Mr. Spector, I think he killed someone. Please call me. I'm going to call the police right now. Then he calls the police who arrive at the house at about 10 past 5am. The police pull up at the

house and they see a furtive Spector moving around upstairs and then coming out of the back door. The police ask him to take his hands out of his pockets. Spector becomes belligerent and flat out refuses. All the police know at this point is that there is a potential homicide and the suspected perpetrator is still armed and now he is not cooperating. So the police restrain Phil Spector. Spector had not used any one of the 15 phones in his massive house to call the police and at no point had he attempted to explain to the police that there was a woman in his house with a gunshot wound to her head. Once they entered the mansion, the police find the body of Lana Clarkson slumped in a Louis XIV style chair. She had been shot in the mouth.

The bullet had severed her spine and exited her body at the base of her skull. And her death had been almost instant. The recoil of the gun had taken out two of her teeth. Lana was fully dressed, with her jacket and shoes on. She also had her handbag slung over her shoulder. There was a snub-nosed revolver by Lana's feet. The police arrested Spector on the suspicion of Lana's murder, and he was locked up.

And during this time where they have him locked up, they recorded interviews with him, which are readily available on the interwebs. And you can tell from his slurred words that he's absolutely smashed. He's barely making any sense. And in these interviews, Phil Spector is recorded saying she's a piece of shit. I don't know what her fucking problem is, but she certainly had no right to come to my fucking castle and blow her fucking head open. At no point does he use her name. I don't think he knew what it was.

Unsurprisingly, because he's a kajillionaire, Spector made the one million dollar bail bond with ease, and he checked into the five-star Bel Air hotel with his assistant, Michelle Blaine, for just over a week while the police investigated his so-called castle. I can't believe the entitlement. How dare you? Even if she did kill herself, how dare you do it in my house? The police found one drawer open in this entire house. This house has 33 to 35 rooms. It's massive. And one drawer was open. And inside that drawer was a holster that would have fit the Colt revolver that killed Lana. Lana's blood was found on the banister, on a doorknob, and on a blood-soaked cloth in one of the many bathrooms. Some people, like Nancy Grace, say that there was also a nappy covered in Lana's blood and I would say diaper but it just feels wrong in my mouth. I couldn't find a reputable source reporting this which I'm honestly

I'm pretty glad about because I have absolutely no interest in having to rationalise why 64 year old Phil Spector might have a nappy in his house. The police find nine more firearms in the house and a white jacket in an upstairs wardrobe that was splattered with 18 drops of Lana Clarkson's blood. Remember this jacket because it becomes key in the trial. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983,

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You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime,

and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. During his time at the Bel Air Hotel, his assistant, Michelle Blaine, alleges that she tried to glean from her boss what had actually happened. I am not sure how much I trust Michelle Blaine. I think I'm just going to say that now. I think that's a fair statement. I think she's distanced herself from him in later years, but through the trials, she was right there.

And Blaine claimed that whatever she asked him about that night, that he would just say it was an accident, but he would never clarify what he meant. Did he mean that the gun going off was an accident? Blaine recalls feeling it was like caring for a child who was in very big trouble. Once Phil Spector was allowed to move back into his home, he began taunting Lana Clarkson in interviews at every opportunity. He told anyone who would listen, including Esquire, that Lana had killed herself and that she'd kissed the gun before shooting herself. What an unnecessary flourish. I think it just shows how detached he is.

Yeah, definitely. From any sense of normality or reality. He's just completely in a different world where whatever he says goes. He just makes it up and people believe him and tell him that he's one. Definitely. But he's obviously chatting shit. The evidence is so overwhelming. The death of Lana Clarkson was officially ruled a homicide by the Sheriff's Department seven months after her death on September 22nd, 2003. Phil Spector was charged with murder and his trial began on March 19th, 2007. In the meantime, Spector had made his assistant, Michelle Blaine,

film him explaining how he couldn't possibly have killed Clarkson and that she had killed herself and he didn't know or care why. And in this video, he just looks totally deranged. He's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a shell shell necklace and of course you guessed it an enormous wig michelle blaine recounts that he had reached out to so many people for support whilst awaiting trial but no one returned his calls no one wanted to get involved i just think it's so odd you've convinced yourself that you're i'm gonna get my story out there and people need to hear my side of this and i'm innocent. Why are you wearing a Hawaiian shirt? Like that doesn't scream serious person. Who knows what was going through his head but you know the fact that no one was getting involved as well like he had no friends he just

had acquaintances and who was gonna get their hands dirty getting involved in a case like this. Especially famous people. Michelle also claimed that Spector asked her to marry him claiming that she knew too much and if they were married, she wouldn't be able to testify against him. That is true. A spouse can't be made to testify against their partner in a court of law. But they could if they wanted to,

they just can't. They can't be subpoenaed and forced to testify against their partner. Surprisingly, she declined the marriage proposal. As romantic as I'm sure it would have been. Spector is accused of Lana Clarkson's murder and he's put on trial. Spector would go through five wigs and four different lawyers during this trial. One of whom was Robert Shapiro, who famously was part of the team of lawyers that got OJ Simpson off a disturbingly similar charge.

But with the evidence that we have, surely this is a slam dunk. At the crime scene, he said he did it, he was holding the gun, and Lana Clarkson was dead in his house. But this trial was so far from a slam dunk. And obviously, the giant elephant in the room here is that no celebrity is found guilty in LA. Look at OJ, look at Michael Jackson. If there's anywhere where you can walk into a courtroom with irrefutable evidence and come out with a not guilty, it's in LA. The prosecution was led by Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson, and he's hyper aware of this. Jackson stated that famous people have a key to the back door of the justice system in Hollywood, and they were not going to let it happen this time.

There's actually a film about this case where Phil is played by Al Pacino. Helen Mirren plays one of his lawyers, and there's a line in it that's like, they let OJ go, they let Michael Jackson go, they are not going to let him go. And I haven't watched it because from the trailer, it seemed quite sympathetic towards Phil Spector, And I was just not, not on board with that. Jackson and his team had a clear argument. Lana had rejected Phil Spector's advances. She had tried to leave. This had made him angry and he shot her in the mouth. Because remember, Lana had her shoes and jacket on and her bag was over her shoulder. When do you put your bag over your shoulder? When

you're leaving, when you're ready to leave. And the prosecution argued that Lana's blood was on the banister and on the bloody cloth in the bathroom and on the bathroom doorknob because Phil Spector had panicked and tried to clean up the mess. Remember, after all, the police had seen him moving about upstairs when they arrived in his home on the night of Lana's murder and the jacket was in a wardrobe. He'd taken off the jacket and put it away. Jackson also brought in Dr Lewis Penner who testified that Lana's tongue was bruised which made it more likely that the gun had been forced in her mouth not placed there by Lana herself. The 18 drops of blood on Spector's jacket were proof that he could not have been standing

more than three foot away from Lana and his arms must have been pointing towards her. The prosecution brought in five women who all testified under oath that they had been in situations with Spector where he had been drinking, where they had tried to leave and he had threatened them with a gun.

With all of this evidence and the clear attempt to clear up by Spector himself, the defense had one hell of a job. So they do the classic, blame the victim. Phil Spector's defense attorneys besmirched Lana Clarkson's character. They painted her as a depressed, washed up actress without a hope in the world. The defense ran with Spector's story that Lana had killed herself, which, even without the rest of the evidence, is so bizarre. Why would you kill yourself in someone else's house? And if you were going to shoot yourself in the mouth in a total stranger's house, why would you do it with your handbag over your shoulder? She had never been to Spector's house before. She didn't even know who he was a few hours ago. She called him a woman. How would she know where the gun was? The defense also had an explanation for Phil Spector's jacket having blood

on it. They claim that contrary to popular opinion, blood can spatter over six feet and leave a pattern similar to the one on the jacket. So it was possible Spector was not standing right by Lana when the gun went off. But just in case the jury didn't buy that one, they had a backup argument that Spector had not been in the room when Lana had shot herself and that he had rushed in to help her while she was still breathing and she had exhaled blood onto his jacket. The defence can't even decide what their story is. They don't need to. They just need to introduce reasonable doubt. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. It's not on the defence. And the defence team also argued that if Spector had shot Lana, then why wasn't he covered in blood?

But surely most of the spray is going to come out of the back of her head and not out of her mouth, so it would have protected him from that. If he was standing in front of someone and you shot them in the face, the blood is surely going to spray out of the back of their head where the exit wound is not spray onto you yeah and you see like the oh lana was covered in blood therefore phil specter should have been covered in blood well no she got shot in the mouth of course she was covered in blood exactly and then also she sits in it for however long for the police to to, which is just under an hour, from the shot being heard by Adriana D'Souza to the police finding her body,

I'm going to say it's about 45 minutes. So she's been sitting in her blood all that. Of course she's covered in blood. This is such a bullshit defense as well. They also tried to discredit Adriana D'Souza's testimony. So remember, he says that he hears a noise from the house, Phil Spector comes out, he has a gun in his hand, and he says, I think I killed somebody. But the defence try and discredit this by saying English isn't D'Souza's first language. So it's possible that he misheard

or misunderstood Phil Spector. D'Souza's English is completely fine. That's such a horrible thing to do. Oh, well, he is foreign though, so you can't really trust it. Basically, the case hinges on whether the jury think that Lana Clarkson put that gun in her mouth and shot herself. And on the 26th of December 2007, the judge had to declare a mistrial because the jury were hung at 10 guilty and 2 not guilty. Who the hell were those two people who thought he was not guilty? Alan Jackson, the lead prosecution attorney, announced that there would be a second trial as soon as possible. He was not going to let Phil Spector get away with this. So Jackson reckons the two jurors. He thinks what happened is there was the lead juror and then the like hanger on that was like, oh, I'll just vote the way he votes.

This juror had a very unrealistic interpretation of the principle of reasonable doubt. He thought that because he didn't have video evidence of Lana Clarkson being shot by Phil Spector, she could have killed herself. So this person thinks that any crime that isn't caught on video may or may not have occurred and therefore everything else is irrelevant. You fucking idiot.

Exactly that. How are these people who are this stupid not being weeded out of a jury pool? Well, apparently this guy's an engineer. Personally, I don't think you can ever prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whether someone did something or not. But that's not the standard, is it? It's just beyond a reasonable doubt. So he would just keep saying, well, we can't know for sure what happened because we have no video evidence.

So it's a mistrial. He's fucked it. And Jackson thinks like he couldn't have convinced that particular juror of anything with the evidence that he had. Do you think he was being paid off? There is speculation about this. I don't know if this is true, but apparently in the second trial, there were FBI agents in the courtroom because they thought the jury may have been tampered with first time round.

And if you are as wealthy as Phil Spector, he clearly thinks the world is his oyster and he can do absolutely everything. Phil Spector would try to do that. I could be convinced that the jury of this trial were bribed, at least this one guy. But that's all they need. So all Jackson could do was hope for a better draw the second time round.

And before we get on to the second trial, I want to discuss the speculation around whether Clarkson and Spector had sex that night. I've come across two people who think that sexual contact occurred. And the first one is true crime TV personality Nancy Grace and a gossip columnist who I'm just not going to name. The autopsy report presented in court had no notations of any semen being present, and Lana's body showed no signs of sexual interference. If there were signs of sexual interference, don't you think that the defense would have led with that? Wouldn't that have been

a key part of their argument if it was there? But on the Nancy Grace episode that deals with Lana Clarkson's murder, Nancy Grace says that Lana Clarkson's DNA was on Phil Spector's genitals and vice versa. She even says, this we know. But how do we know that? What does that mean? Oh, her DNA was on his genitals. What? What? That doesn't mean anything. So I don't know how you could say that we know. Because as far as as i can tell that evidence was not presented in court and i just feel like if it actually existed it absolutely would have been the nameless gossip columnist claims that he has spoken to a nurse who swabbed clarkson's vagina after she was killed and that there was semen present the columnist then goes on to use this as proof that lana did actually

kill herself because she was so disgusted with herself after sleeping with phil specter and please correct me if i'm wrong but would a nurse be doing a vaginal swab on a dead body or would that be a coroner that would be a coroner unless he's just using the wrong word like he uses it as an argument as and you do see this argument as well that like lana was so depressed about her career not going the way that she wanted to and she oh she's having to work as a hostess and blah blah blah and it was sleeping with phil specter was the thing that pushed her over the edge so she shot herself i just don't buy it i don't buy it i think it's bullshit during phil specter's second trial that began on the 29th of october my birthday 2008 specter was represented by Doran Weinberg, who openly admits, everyone knows Spector waves a gun around, but he never shot anyone. He also admits to having

to ask Spector to please choose one wig and stick to it during the trial. It's so important how you present yourself in trial. But it's like a child. You can see in the courtroom footage, Phil Spector is just totally glazed. When he has to talk, his attorney is like whispering in his ear and coaching him through every step. And to have to explain to a man in his 60s, listen Phil, I know you like the wigs, but please just pick one. And on the 13th of April 2009, the second jury finally found Phil Spector guilty of murder in the second degree. And he was sentenced to 19 years to life. Second degree murder means that it wasn't premeditated, and I can totally buy that. I

could even be persuaded that the gun went off by accident, but I think Spector definitely put that gun in Lana's mouth, and he tried to cover it up. He was so used to everyone just doing whatever he said, that he assumed the justice system would be the same thing. His murder charge, however, didn't stop him from getting married. His wife, Rochelle, who was, ugh, 26 when they got married, now lives in his mansion alone, surrounded by all of his showbiz trophies. In interviews, Rochelle Spector professes her husband's innocence. How could he be guilty when there was so little blood on him? Thank God he was wearing white.

She's a fucking moron. She's like, oh, he's just been put on trial of popular opinion. No, he's been put on trial with mountains of evidence for a thing he definitely did. She's another one that's like, oh, why wasn't he covered in blood then, if he actually did it? Why was one drawer open that was the gun drawer? And she's also very distressed apparently about the amount of debt that the trials have put specter in i'll bet she is and that she has no choice but to take out more loans to meet ends meet why doesn't she just sell the stuff in the murder castle she like there's a guitar in there that belonged to john lennon she could just sell it but then maybe specter would

totally lose her shit and divorce her well he's gonna in prison. It doesn't matter what he thinks. Do you really think she married him at 26 because she wants to spend the rest of her life with him? Maybe they just met just so late in the game. It's just so sad and they were meant to be. I don't know if she'd have the right to sell any of that stuff if it belongs to him. Because I doubt she gives a shit about it.

I think if she could sell it, she would sell it. Yeah, I just have a hard time with wealthy people sitting in their giant houses talking about how much debt they're in but they probably are yeah i know but i hate it so michelle blaine has distanced herself from specter she says fearing for the safety of her children and herself so she quits and according to blaine when she quit Spector threw a tantrum and shouted you're fucking fired I should have killed you good good choice of sentence I don't know whether I think that's true or not like I believe he's a maniac but I'm not sure how much I trust Michelle Blaine I've been doing some surveys before we recorded this episode because so I told I told people that

we were going to do an episode on phil specter everyone i spoke to either didn't know that he'd murdered someone or they said i know he's a murderer but his music is really good and i was thinking is it to do with the severity of the crime or is it to do with how talented he is whatever people think of michael jackson people still listen to michael jackson i don't think it would Jackson, people still listen to Michael Jackson. I don't think it would be even awkward to listen to Michael Jackson. No, that's true, actually. But then I don't know if he really did it. I'm very conflicted. I think he just had a very inappropriate sense of himself.

Yeah, I agree with you there, I think. But anyway, that is the case of Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson. We have some thank yous this week for our new Patreon subscribers. So a big thank you to Jessica Laporte, to Dan Robinson, and also to Ben. Just Ben. Just Ben. And please follow us on Instagram and on Twitter at RedHandedThePod. And we will see you next week. See you next week. Bye. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life.

You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've

had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows,

uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.