Good thing Phil Spector liked guns and booze. Otherwise, this woman
might still be looking for work.


Spector, 69, who had long lived in seclusion at his suburban Alhambra
"castle," was out on the town in Hollywood when he met Clarkson on
Feb. 3, 2003, at the House of Blues. The tall, blond actress, recently
turned 40 and unable to find acting work, had taken a job as a
hostess. When the club closed in the wee hours, she accepted a
chauffeured ride to Spector's home for a drink. Three hours later, she
was dead.

Spector's chauffeur, the key witness, said he heard a gunshot, then
saw Spector emerge holding a gun and heard him say: "I think I killed
somebody."

Defense attorney Doron Weinberg disputed whether the chauffeur
remembered the words accurately. In closing arguments, Weinberg listed
14 points of forensic evidence including blood spatter, gunshot
residue and DNA, which he said were proof of a self-inflicted wound.

"It's very difficult to put a gun in somebody's mouth," he said.

"Every single fact says this is a self-inflicted gunshot wound,"
Weinberg argued. "How do you ignore it? How do you say this could have
been a homicide?"

But prosecutors portrayed Spector as a dangerous man who became a
"demonic maniac" when he drank and had a history of threatening women
with guns. They also contended blood spatter evidence proved that
Clarkson could not have shot herself.

As in the first trial, they presented testimony from five women who
told of being threatened by a drunken Spector, even held hostage in
his home, with a gun pointed at them and threats of death if they
tried to leave. The parallels with the night Clarkson died were
chilling even if the stories were very old — 31 years in one instance.