Prosecutor said the fatal shooting of an actress was the inevitable result of the legendary music producer’s “history of playing Russian roulette with the lives of women.”
Referring to a string of women who testified, Deputy Dist. Atty. Truc Do said Spector had terrorized them with guns in the three decades leading up to the 2003 death of Lana Clarkson. “By the grace of God," she said, “five other women got the empty chamber and lived to tell.”
But Clarkson, she told jurors, “just happened to be the sixth woman who got the bullet.” As jurors listened intently, the prosecutor said Spector was used to tormenting women and getting away with it because he lived “in a world where money and fame buys you the VIP treatment.”
She brushed off defense experts who testified that the shooting was consistent with suicide as “pay-to-say” witnesses who received more than $400,000 for their work.
Spector stared down at the defense table as the prosecutor spoke. His wife and adopted son were among about 60 people who packed the spectators' gallery to watch closing arguments.
Clarkson, an actress who starred in the 1985 cult classic “Barbarian Queen,” was found slumped in a chair in Spector’s Alhambra mansion six years ago.
Prosecutors contend that the producer shot her when she tried to curtail what he hoped would be a romantic encounter. The defense maintains Clarkson was depressed over career and financial setbacks and took her own life.
Jurors, who have heard five months of testimony in the case, are to decide whether Spector, 69, acted criminally in the shooting. He faces a minimum of 18 years in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. They have the option of convicting him of a lesser charge, involuntary manslaughter, which carries two to four years in prison.
