Tearing Down the Wall of Sound

by Mick Brown

  Bennett replied, “I have the perfect man for you,” and told Clarkson about a good-looking, successful forty-year-old entrepreneur who lived in Malibu. Bennett promised that she would get in touch the following week. “Be sure and give me a call,” Clarkson said as she waved goodbye.

  That evening she reported for work as usual at the HOB. At around 1:30 a.m., just as her night was winding down, Phil Spector walked through the door.

  The details of what occurred on the evening of February 2, and the early hours of February 3, would emerge over the next two years, from a combination of police evidence, the coroner’s report and testimony to the grand jury that would ultimately decide that Spector should stand trial, accused of the murder of Lana Clarkson.

  At a few minutes before 7:00 p.m. on February 2, Adriano De Souza drove into the grounds of the Alhambra castle, parked his car in the courtyard at the back of the house, and pulled Phil Spector’s new black Mercedes limousine up to the back door.

  Spector’s regular driver, Dylan, had been given the evening off. De Souza, a Brazilian, was the “relief driver,” a position he had held for the past two months. (In fact, his first job had been collecting me from my hotel on the Sunset Strip in Spector’s Rolls. We were delayed outside when the car stalled, necessitating a taxi jump-starting us with a pair of leads. I remember De Souza anxiously calling on his cell phone to explain that we would be late. He told me it was his first day working for Spector, and he was keen to make a good impression.)

  At 7:00 p.m. Spector walked out of the back door. He was wearing a black shirt and trousers and a white jacket, and carrying a briefcase, which he threw onto the backseat of the car before climbing in himself. Spector had a dinner date with a woman friend, Romy Davis. Romy had been a prom queen at Fairfax—the sort of girl Spector could only gaze on wistfully from afar as a schoolboy. But in recent years they had become friends. De Souza and Spector set off to collect Davis and they drove to the Grill on the Alley, a Beverly Hills restaurant, where Spector and Davis had dinner. Two hours later, Spector dropped off Davis at her home and instructed De Souza to return to the Grill. He had made another assignation: a waitress, Kathy Sullivan, was waiting for him outside. De Souza drove them first to Trader Vic’s bar, and then to Dan Tana’s restaurant, one of Spector’s regular haunts. By now, Kathy was complaining that she was tired and wanted to go home. But Spector evidently did not want the evening to end and insisted they should go on to the House of Blues, where they arrived at 1:30 a.m. According to the police Spector had been drinking alcohol at each stop along the way, consuming three, possibly four daiquiri cocktails, as well as two Navy Grog cocktails, each containing three shots of different kinds of rum. De Souza said he was “slurring his words.”

  Spector and Kathy went inside. Lana Clarkson was waiting at her post at the entrance of the Foundation Room to greet new arrivals. There was a moment’s confusion; Clarkson did not know or recognize Spector, and initially refused to let him in to the members-only area. Spector began to complain loudly, and another House of Blues employee, Euphrates Lalondriz, came to smooth things over, telling Clarkson who Spector was and that he was to be treated “like Dan Aykroyd—like gold.” (Aykroyd has a share in the club.) Clarkson apologized to Spector, introduced herself, and then led him and Kathy to a seating area within the Foundation Room known as the Buddha Room.

  Spector ordered a shot of Bacardi 151 rum “straight up” from waitress Sophia Holguin. When Kathy ordered only water, Spector grew angry, telling her to “get a fucking drink.” Kathy refused, and while Holguin was fetching the order, Spector told Kathy, “That’s it—you’re going home.”

  Spector called for Lana Clarkson and told her to walk Kathy to his car and tell De Souza to take her home, then return to collect Spector. Meanwhile, Holguin returned with the order. Spector told her he didn’t want “the fucking water” and called for his tab. He had purchased an $8.50 alcoholic drink and a $5.00 water and left a tip of $450. After settling the bill, Spector tried to order another drink, but Holguin told him the bar was closed.

  At around 2:00 a.m., Euphrates Lalondriz overheard Clarkson over his headset asking if she could accept an invitation from Spector to have a drink. Lalondriz heard the club manager tell her that she could not drink, but could sit down with Spector. Holguin saw Clarkson walk into the Buddha Room and talk to Spector for a few minutes. She then saw them walk out of the room together. House of Blues employee records show that Clarkson clocked out at 2:21 a.m.

  Two minutes later De Souza, who was waiting outside, saw Spector emerge from the club. He seemed to be having difficulty walking, and was being helped by Clarkson. As De Souza opened the car door for him, Spector invited Clarkson to go home with him. She declined. Spector then offered her a lift to her car, which Clarkson accepted. During the drive, Spector continued to press his invitation, “More than once. Two, three times,” according to De Souza. Finally, Clarkson relented.

  At the House of Blues employee parking lot, Clarkson got into her car. Spector got out of the Mercedes, stumbled over to a stairwell to relieve himself, and then stumbled back to his car. De Souza could smell the strong odor of alcohol coming from the backseat. De Souza and Spector now followed Clarkson to a side street off La Cienega Boulevard where she parked her car.

  As Clarkson got into the Mercedes, she leaned forward to De Souza and told him, “This will be quick. Only one drink.” Spector turned to her. “You don’t need to talk to the driver.”

  At around 3:00 a.m., the Mercedes drove through the gates of the castle, and pulled to a halt. Spector and Clarkson got out and set off up the eighty-eight steps toward the house. According to De Souza, Spector had some difficulty walking, and Clarkson was “like, grabbing his arm and shoulder and helping him up the stairs.” De Souza continued up the drive, parked at the rear of the house, and settled down to wait. Around fifteen minutes later, Spector came out of the back door. According to De Souza “he looks mad” and disoriented. De Souza asked him whether he wanted to collect his briefcase and a portable DVD player that he had left in the car. “No, no, no,” said Spector—but then changed his mind and took the DVD player. De Souza followed him into the house and placed the briefcase inside the hall. There was no sign of Lana Clarkson.

  For the next ninety minutes or so De Souza waited in the car. Then, shortly before 5:00 a.m., he heard what he would later describe as a soft popping sound. De Souza, who had served in the Brazilian military, thought he recognized it as a gunshot. He got out of the car, but could see nothing amiss and returned to the Mercedes. It was then that Spector emerged from the back door. De Souza again got out of the car. Spector was still dressed in the clothes he had worn that evening—white jacket, black trousers and shirt; in his right hand was a revolver, which he was holding across his body. De Souza could see blood on the back of Spector’s hand. It was at that point, according to De Souza, that Spector said, “I think I killed somebody.” Looking past him into the hallway, De Souza could see Lana Clarkson, slumped in a chair with blood on her face.

  He asked, “What happened, sir?” Spector shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” He then turned back toward the house. De Souza tried to call 911 on his cell phone, but was so shaken he was unable to make the call. He climbed back into the car and set off back down the drive. Part-way down, he stopped and telephoned Spector’s assistant Michelle Blaine, leaving a message on her voice mail: “You have to come here. I think Mr. Spector killed somebody.” He then continued down the driveway to the entrance and dialed 911.

  Spector would later assert that it was he who had called the police—“I called the police”—but according to police evidence the emergency services logged only one 911 call relating to the incident, De Souza’s.

  De Souza’s call, logged at 5:00 a.m. at the California Highway Patrol, Los Angeles Communications Center, quickly became a black comedy of misunderstandings.

  ALHAMBRA POLICE: Okay. And your name, sir?

  DE SOUZA: Adriano.

&n
bsp; ALHAMBRA: Okay. And your boss’s name?

  DE SOUZA: It’s, uh, Phil Spector.

  ALHAMBRA: I’m sorry?

  DE SOUZA: Phil Spector.

  ALHAMBRA: Seal?

  DE SOUZA: Spector.

  ALHAMBRA: Seal Inspector?

  DE SOUZA: Yeah. Phil Spector.

  ALHAMBRA: That’s his name?

  DE SOUZA: Yes.

  ALHAMBRA: S-e-a-l?

  DE SOUZA: P-h-i-l.

  ALHAMBRA: C-h—

  DE SOUZA: Spector.

  ALHAMBRA:—i-l. Is he Asian or white or—

  DE SOUZA: Sorry?

  ALHAMBRA: Is he male white or Asian. Is he an Asian person, a Hispanic person, or a white person?

  DE SOUZA: No, it’s a white person.

  ALHAMBRA: And his name is Chil—C-h-i-l?

  DE SOUZA: Yeah, P-h-i-l.

  ALHAMBRA: Oh, Phil.

  DE SOUZA: Phil, yeah.

  ALHAMBRA: Phil Spector? Okay…

  The first police car arrived at the gate of Spector’s house, where Adriano De Souza was waiting, shortly after 5:00 a.m., but it would be a further twenty or so minutes before a group of five officers had made a careful approach up the drive and assembled outside the back door of the house. Spector could be seen on the first floor but made his way down the stairs and appeared at the back door. He was no longer wearing the white jacket and his hands were in his pockets. According to Officer Michael Page, he appeared “mildly agitated.” An officer told him to raise his hands above his head. Spector did so, then put his hands back into his pockets again and turned to go into the house saying, “You got to come see this.” He was again warned to take his hands out of his pockets, and when he refused, Officer Page deployed a Taser dart at him. “It had no effect,” said Page. Spector now backed further into the house, pursued by another officer, Brandon Cardella, who knocked Spector against the stairwell. Page, who had followed Cardella into the house, fired another Taser dart, again with no effect, and then wrestled Spector to the ground. (Page would later testify that he had used a Taser four times in his career, and “I am yet to have one work.”) After a brief struggle, Page and Officer Jim Hammond managed to handcuff Spector as he lay facedown on the floor.

  Then Page looked up and saw the body of Lana Clarkson slumped in a chair. “She was bloody around the face,” Page testified before the grand jury, answering questions from the deputy DA Douglas Sortino. “Exact trauma I couldn’t tell at the time.”

  SORTINO: Was she reacting at all to anything that happened in front of her?

  PAGE: Nothing.

  SORTINO: What did she appear to be?

  PAGE: Dead.

  “She had what appeared to be a single-entry gunshot wound to the mouth,” the police report would state.

  Broken teeth from the victim were scattered about the foyer and an adjacent stairway. Lying on the floor under the victim’s left leg was a Colt, 2-inch, blue-steel, .38-caliber, six-shot revolver. This weapon had five live cartridges in the cylinder, and under the hammer, a spent cartridge. A check of the weapon serial number via the automated firearms system was negative. There was blood splatter on the weapon.

  It was at this point that a fourth officer, Beatrice Rodriguez, came into the house. As she covered the hallway, Officer Rodriguez would subsequently state, she heard Spector say, “What’s wrong with you guys? What are you doing? I didn’t mean to shoot her. It was an accident. I have an explanation.”

  That statement was not captured on tape. But immediately afterward Officer Page activated his microcassette recorder and captured the subsequent exchanges between Spector and the police.

  “Just ask me and I’ll tell you,” Spector said as officers held him down. “I’m not Robert Blake…I can tell you what happened.”

  “Only if you want to…” Page said.

  Spector continued: “If you’re gonna arrest me, just tell me what happened…Jesus. You know you’re acting stupid. Get the fuck off of me! This is stupid. I’m sorry there’s a dead woman here. But I’m sorry but this happened. I can explain it, but if you’d just give me a chance…You don’t have to handcuff me. I can tell you what happened. What’s wrong with you people? Jack Maple worked for me. Jesus Christ, the chief of police worked for me…I’m sorry this happened. I don’t know how it happened, but it happened and I’m sorry this happened. But, excuse me…The gun went off accidentally. She works at the House of Blues. It was a mistake. I don’t understand what the fuck, you people, is wrong with you. Jack Maple worked for me. He worked for the chief of police. Oh, God. I’m just gonna go to sleep. Would you like me to go to sleep…?

  “If Jack Maple were alive, he wouldn’t allow this shit to be done…excuse me. When I see the damage that’s been done—this is the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  As Spector was being held down, other officers continued with their search of the property. The coroner’s report would later note that the weapon found under Clarkson’s leg was “apparently taken” from a holster, which the police found, also stained with blood, in a drawer in the hall.

  Although Clarkson’s blood remained in the engraving and in other recessed areas of the weapon, the gun had been wiped off after the shooting. In a powder room off the hall police found a cloth diaper soaked in both water and Clarkson’s blood lying on the floor, and a wet hand towel on the sink top. Smears of Clarkson’s blood were also found on the back door handle and on the wooden banister leading upstairs “about seven feet west of the victim’s remains.”

  In an upstairs dressing room, thrown on the floor, police found the white jacket that Spector had been wearing that evening; the left sleeve and front of the jacket were covered in a mist-like spray of Clarkson’s blood. A search of the house uncovered thirteen other firearms. Ammunition found in a plastic sack upstairs was the same as the bullets in the gun that had killed Clarkson.

  In the living room—where I had sat with Spector some six weeks earlier—police noted that “candles had been lit atop a fireplace mantel. The coffee table between two couches had a brandy glass partially filled with alcohol, and atop the table was a Jose Cuervo tequila bottle and a partially empty Canada Dry soft drink.”

  Two cocktail glasses, one containing trace amounts of alcohol, were found; one on the table in the living room and one on the sink of the powder room adjacent to the rear hallway.

  Toxicology tests by the coroner’s office would show Clarkson’s blood alcohol level to be .12 percent, and she also had “therapeutic levels” of Vicodin—an opiate-based painkiller—in her system.

  Paramedics had been waiting at the front gate for almost an hour, and at 6:09 a.m. they were given clearance and proceeded up the long stone steps to the property. At 6:24 a.m. Lana Clarkson was pronounced dead.

  Spector was taken to the Alhambra police station for booking, where he arrived at 6:28 a.m. According to the police, he was belligerent and verbally abusive, calling the jailer “a fat ass.” He smelled of alcohol and appeared to be intoxicated. But he twice refused to take an alcohol breath test. (A urine sample eventually obtained from Spector thirteen and a half hours after the shooting, during a sexual-assault examination, showed a .08 percent blood alcohol level.)

  Spector asked if he could call his lawyer Robert Shapiro and was told he could do so after he had calmed down and cooperated with the jailers and provided booking information. Spector was placed in the interview room, without handcuffs, and an officer, Derek Gilliam, was told to sit with him, but not to ask questions.

  Spector, said Gilliam, began to talk about songwriting and some of the big names he had worked with, including George Harrison. By an odd coincidence, Gilliam is the nephew of Terry Gilliam, the film director and Monty Python veteran. He mentioned that his uncle knew Harrison and had been a member of the Monty Python team. “He called me a liar,” Gilliam stated, then said, “I basically have the rights to Monty Python.”

  Spector then began to talk about the events of that night, telling Gillia
m there was a dead girl at his house and demanding to know what Gilliam was going to do about it. He then asked Gilliam what had happened at the house. Gilliam responded, “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  Spector repeated the question twice, then told Gilliam that Lana Clarkson worked at the House of Blues and that she was a friend of his.

  Spector then began telling Gilliam about music groups that he had worked with “such as Bush, Bono, the Beatles,” and said he needed to go in order to catch a plane for New York for an upcoming performance with Bono.

  It was at this point that Spector suddenly changed the subject and said, “I don’t know where she got the gun from but she started waving it around.” Spector claimed that he had told her to put the gun down, but she refused. “He said that the young lady began singing his songs, two of them, one being ‘Da Doo Run Run’ and the other…‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,’” [sic] Gilliam stated.

  “He said that she took the gun into her hand and basically put it to her head…And basically said, ‘It went like this, bang,’ and he basically fell back into his chair, throwing his head back. And he sat there for about five seconds in that position. He said that she was singing the song and continued with the process. He was real animated about it.”

  According to Gilliam, Spector re-enacted the scene two or three times, demonstrating the shooting by forming his right hand in the shape of a gun, placing his index finger against the right side of his head and letting his thumb fall as if the hammer of a handgun. The last time, he threw his head back and for a long time didn’t move. Gilliam said he was afraid “that maybe he had gone into some form of an attack.” Then with an expression that Gilliam described as “a half-slanted smile,” “Spector said, ‘You don’t pull a gun out on me.’