Murder of Lana Clarkson
On February 3, 2003, actress Lana Clarkson was found dead, killed by a firearm, in Spector's mansion (Dupuy's Pyrenees Castle) in Alhambra, California. Spector stated that Clarkson's death was an "accidental suicide" and that she "kissed the gun". The emergency call from Spector's home, made by Spector's driver Adriano de Souza, quotes Spector as saying, "I think I've killed someone." According to some women who were said to have met Spector, there would come a point when they wanted to leave Spector's home, whereupon he would hold them at gunpoint. The prosecution argued that the testimony of the other women was important in order to demonstrate a "common plan or scheme". The defense sought to prevent the women from providing such testimony. Though the law in California and other states generally forbids the introduction of evidence showing a defendant's previous transgressions, the judge sided with the prosecutors and ruled that the testimony of the other women "can be used to show lack of accident or mistake".
Read more about this topic: Phil Spector
Famous quotes containing the words murder of and/or murder:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“One can endure everything except hunger. If I were a man, maybe I would have committed murder to fill my stomach. But as a woman, I became a prostitute.”
—“Manju” (b. c. 1973)