Gun in Phil Spector’s Hand After Shooting -Police
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Record producer Phil Spector emerged from his California mansion with a gun in his hand and said “I think I just shot her,” his driver told police shortly after a B-movie actress was found dead in the foyer.
According to police reports unsealed late Tuesday, actress Lana Clarkson was sprawled on a chair, her teeth and blood spattered about the room from a gunshot wound to her mouth when police arrived at the faux castle outside Los Angeles at about 5 a.m. on Feb. 3.
The documents — police affidavits, a catalog of evidence seized from the crime scene and search warrants — provide the first public glimpse of the killing that last month led to a murder charge against the legendary music producer.
The police reports suggest an intimate evening of drinks by candlelight that ended tragically.
Clarkson, 40, was wearing a “black nylon slip/dress, black nylons and black shoes,” according to an affidavit by Los Angeles County sheriff’s Detective Mark Lillienfeld that was made public at the request of crime author Carlson Smith.
“A leopard print purse, with a black strap, was slung over her right shoulder, with the purse hanging down on her right side by her right arm,” Lillienfeld said. “Broken teeth from the victim were scattered about the foyer and an adjacent stairway.”
Sheriff’s Detective Danny Smith, in an affidavit, said Spector’s driver, Adriano Desouza, told police that shortly after he heard a single gunshot at about 5.0 a.m., the record producer emerged from his Alhambra, California mansion with a gun in his hand and said, “I think I just shot her.”
Lillienfeld’s affidavit said, “Spector came out the back door holding a handgun, stating words to the effect of, ‘I think I just killed someone.”‘
Spector, who created the lush, layered recording technique known as “The Wall of Sound,” suggested in a magazine interview earlier this year that the statuesque blonde actress killed herself. Spector, 63, pleaded innocent to the charge and remains free on $1 million bail.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In his affidavit, Lillienfeld said that on the floor beneath Clarkson’s left leg was a blue steel, .38-caliber Colt revolver with five live rounds and a spent cartridge under the hammer. The weapon was blood-spattered, the detective noted.
Investigators also found blood smears on the back door handle and on a wooden stairway railing near the death scene, he said. A blood-spattered man’s jacket was recovered from an upstairs dressing room, and a blood-soaked cloth was found on the floor of a bathroom next to the foyer, Lillienfeld said.
In the adjacent living room, candles had been lit atop a fireplace mantel and a partially filled brandy glass and bottles of tequila and soda stood on the coffee table between two sofas, the report said. Desouza told police Spector and Clarkson had spent about an hour and a half in the mansion before the shooting, having arrived there at 3.30 a.m.
Police took nine guns, a bloody holster, fragments of Clarkson’s teeth and fingernails, and false eyelashes from Spector’s 12,000-square-foot home, according to court records.
Interviews with Desouza revealed that Spector had dined with a woman named Rommie Davis on the night of the shooting, and had drinks at two other Los Angeles night spots before meeting Clarkson at the House of Blues, where she worked as a hostess.
Police believed that the pair met for the first time on the night she died, Lillienfeld said. Clarkson starred in such films as “Amazon Women in the Moon” and “The Barbarian Queen.”
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