May 18, 2007 at 10:11:00 AM | more stories by this author
In 2005 home video, famed rock producer claims he physically wouldn't have been able to shoot B-movie actress in the mouth.
Let's call it the vertically challenged defense.
In a 2005 home video that surfaced this week, famed rock producer Phil Spector proffered the theory that he could not have shot and killed B-movie actress Lana Clarkson--a 2003 murder for which he is currently on trial--because he is too short.
Clarkson died of a shot fired from a gun inside her mouth at Spector's Southern California mansion. Spector has claimed that Clarkson killed herself. Inside Edition obtained a copy of the video, in which Spector is sitting in a chair at his home and wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shell necklace.
"I am 5 feet 5 inches. It would have been physically impossible for me to have administered the death wound to her in any shape, way, or form," said Spector in the video. "The deceased, who was standing when she took her own life and was 5 feet 11 inches, would have been 6 feet 2 inches tall with heels on, which she was wearing at the time of her death, and the gun was in a downward position."
Since it began two weeks ago, the trial has featured a litany of women who have testified that Spector threatened them and pulled a gun on them. In the video, Spector offers up $100,000 to unnamed women to take a lie detector test to prove their claims that Spector threatened them with guns.
Inside Edition said the home video interview was done and provided to the show by Spector's then-assistant Michelle Blaine, who told the program Spector recorded it to tell his side of the story. Spector also taped a version wearing a suit and tie.
Spector, 67, is accused of murdering Clarkson around 5 a.m. on February 3, 2003, after she went home with him from the House of Blues, where the actress was working as a hostess in a VIP room. In the video, Spector recounts his theory that Clarkson killed herself.
"She may have accidentally taken own life," he said. "She may have purposefully taken her own life. She may have been eating the gun with her dancing. I don't know why, when, how, or where in what circumstance she may have taken her own life--whether she planned to or not."
Earlier this week, Spector's former chauffeur Adriano De Souza testified, saying that he was outside at the time of the incident and that Spector came out of his home, saying, "I think I killed somebody."
The chauffeur said he had driven Spector and Clarkson to the home about two hours earlier. He said he first heard a "pow," got out of Spector's car to see what the noise was and then got back into the car. A short time later Spector emerged, De Souza testified.
De Souza said he looked past Spector into the foyer of his castlelike home. "I saw the legs of the lady," he said. "I stepped inside, and I saw the blood on her face."
Spector is famed for his creation of the "Wall of Sound" style of production and has worked with the likes of The Beatles, Ramones, Leonard Cohen, and the Ronettes, among others.






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