![]() ![]() Stripped of his flamboyance and tassel of dark hair, he appeared to be just another senior citizen in prison photos - a balding man with a pair of hearing aids.īut in his prime, Spector was brash, driven and as much a star as the artists he produced. He was ultimately sentenced to 19 years to life in prison. Spector’s subsequent second-degree murder trials laid bare the producer’s erratic mood swings, darkening depression and isolation from an industry he once seemed to rule. ![]() “Her energy, brightness and love of life have sustained her family since her murder 18 years ago.” “Lana Clarkson was a warm, compassionate, kind, loving woman who would be 58 years old now,” her family said Sunday in a statement. They described her murder as the culmination of “a very rich history of violence” toward women, with at least five women alleging Spector had menaced them with guns in the decades leading up to the shooting. Prosecutors said Clarkson had her purse slung over her shoulder and “was ready to leave” Spector’s hilltop home, known as Pyrenees Castle, when he shot her. 3, 2003, just three hours after meeting Spector at the House of Blues, the Sunset Strip music club where she worked as a hostess. The medical examiner in the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office will investigate Spector’s death, the corrections department said.ĭecades removed from his days of glory, Spector was twice tried for Clarkson’s death, the first trial ending with a hung jury and the second with a conviction.Ĭlarkson died of a single gunshot wound to the mouth on Feb. 25, including one of America’s most prolific serial killers, Samuel Little.Īt the California Heath Care Facility, where Spector was housed, 582 prisoners have tested positive, and at least 10 have died. At least 60 inmates have died of the disease since Dec. Though Spector’s exact cause of death was not announced, California prisons have been hard hit by COVID-19 and are in the midst of another surge. I loved him madly and gave my heart and soul to him.”īut Ronnie Spector added: “Unfortunately Phil was not able to live and function outside of the recording studio. ![]() ![]() “The magical music we were able to make together was inspired by our love. “It’s a sad day for music and a sad day for me,” said Ronnie Spector, the producer’s former wife and muse. Before he was transferred to a hospital, Spector had been an inmate at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, which specializes in housing medically vulnerable people with existing health conditions, the corrections department said. Spector was hospitalized after becoming ill with COVID-19, said a source familiar with his medical condition who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter. For all the hit songs he drove up the charts, for all the power and wealth he amassed, for all the admiration he drew as he rearranged the pop music landscape, there was a darkness deep in Phil Spector’s soul that would forever shadow his genius.Įven as anthems such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin‘” erupted from radios across America, the acclaimed record producer was a brooding, manic man with a white-hot temper and a fondness for gunplay, all of which would manifest itself on a winter morning in 2003 when he fatally shot actress and nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson in the foyer of his castle-like mansion in Alhambra.ĭispatched to prison after being convicted of second-degree murder, Spector died Saturday while in custody in a Northern California hospital where he was being treated, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. ![]()
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