'Don't go, Lana'... Spector jury urged to relive fateful night

Published on Thursday 6 September 2007 00:54

A NINE-MAN, three-woman jury began hearing closing arguments yesterday in legendary record producer Phil Spector's murder trial.

Spector, 67, is accused of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson, who was killed on February 3, 2003, by a bullet from a revolver fired inside her mouth.

A prosecutor told jurors to imagine what they would have said if they had been outside LA's House of Blues four years ago as Spector coaxed Lana Clarkson, 40, to come to his home. "You'd lean over and you'd whisper, 'Don't go. Don't go.' You'd simply say, 'Lana, don't go'," said Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson.

"The reason you would say that is because you know something she did not know. You know the real Phil Spector. You know in your heart he is responsible for her death. He killed her."

The jury is expected to hear two days of closing arguments by both sides. Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler has ruled that the jury will only decide whether Spector is guilty or innocent of second-degree murder, and will not have the option of considering lesser included offences.

Clarkson had met Spector just hours earlier at her job as a House of Blues hostess and had gone home with him. For Spector, their meeting came at the end of a night of eating and drinking on the town.

Clarkson's body, with a purse slung over a shoulder, was found in a chair in a foyer of Spector's home in suburban Alhambra. The gun was on the floor below her legs.

Prosecutors called five women who said they were threatened by a gun-wielding, drunken Spector in long-ago incidents when they tried to leave his home or presence.

A key prosecution witness was Spector's chauffeur, who said he heard a "pow" as he waited outside the home, and that Spector then emerged with a gun saying: "I think I killed somebody." The defence called experts who concluded that Clarkson, struggling with her acting career, was depressed and shot herself.