[ambient traffic sounds]
[helicopter blades whirring]
[vehicle accelerating]
[mysterious music playing]
[Spector] You have me locked up like some goddamn fucking turd.
You have me jerking around when somebody comes over to my house
and then blows her fucking head open.
Then you people come around,
and arrest me, bang the shit out of my fucking ass,
and beat the shit out of me.
I'm gonna make you fucking people pay for this. This is bullshit.
[cryptic music playing]
Waiting at the Alhambra Police Department in custody was Phil Spector.
[man 1] I knew from the phone call from my lieutenant
that he was a very wealthy music producer.
Me, personally, I'd never heard of him.
[reporter] Spector's style is often credited
with changing how we hear pop music.
This case was going to be what I call "red ball,"
a case that's gonna draw a lot of attention.
And you have to recognize that going in.
And I think we all did.
[suspenseful music playing]
[man 2] The LA County Sheriff's Department is the best of the best.
[man 3] Some of the highest-profile cases are tried in Los Angeles.
[woman 1] You have to be dedicated 110%.
[man 4] This is murder. There's no more serious crime.
[man 5] It boils down to a passion and a sense of duty.
Justice comes from finding the truth.
[suspenseful music trailing off]
[tense, quizzical music playing]
[man] There's something special and different about celebrity cases.
And it's always been Los Angeles
that seems to be the epicenter of those cases.
Everybody thinks of Los Angeles and they think of Hollywood.
Hollywood and actors and directors and producers.
There's so much more to it than that.
However, that is sort of the… the heartbeat of this city.
LA is a funny place,
and the LA County sheriffs serve the entire county,
from the worst poverty imaginable in America
to the greatest wealth in America,
to $100 million oceanfront estates.
We police all of that.
So it's quite a variety.
[man 2] My ultimate goal was Homicide.
And I was fortunate enough in 1999 to make it.
At the time, my children were seven and nine.
People were saying they're too young,
because it's a lot of hours and there's always something to do,
but we worked around our family life.
If that meant we're going in the office at ten o'clock at night to get it done,
that's what we were gonna do.
[tense, cryptic music playing]
My partner Paul Fornier and I were about to get off call
when we received a message from the desk
that we were being assigned a case in a mansion in Alhambra.
[tense, dramatic music playing]
And the only information we had… That a woman was found dead,
and a music producer was involved.
I was a bit surprised that there was this large palatial property there
in this kind of small town
that's really just a suburb of downtown Los Angeles.
[Tomlin] Alhambra is a sleepy hollow.
It's middle-class, single-family residence.
And now you have this monstrosity, if you will, in the middle of nowhere.
[taut, suspenseful music playing]
So as we got closer, we saw a large crowd behind yellow crime scene tape.
And I remember Paul said, "Put on your big-boy pants."
A female had been shot inside of the residence.
The victim has been pronounced dead at the location.
[siren wailing]
When I got there, it was an absolute zoo.
The news copters were up above and news vans up and down the street.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Tomlin] When we arrived on scene,
we first talked to Alhambra police officers.
Let me explain how it works.
The sheriff's department covers a large area of LA County.
And in that county, you have smaller municipalities.
They have their own police department.
However, they don't have the resources that the sheriff's department has.
There are 100 homicide detectives in the LA County Sheriff's Department,
so they will reach out to us,
and we will assume responsibility for the case.
Alhambra police officers told me
that they had received a 911 phone call from Phil Spector's chauffeur.
When they arrived, they could see Phil Spector
walking back and forth in the upstairs window.
They're trying to get his attention, to come downstairs.
And the guy's not complying. He's not coming out.
They entered the home where they confronted Phil Spector.
He's not cooperative.
They see a woman slumped over in a chair, obviously dead.
Phil is ranting, "This is the most devastating thing I've ever seen."
One of the officers had the whole thing recorded.
[Spector] This is absolute fucking nonsense.
I don't know what that fucking lady… what her problem is.
But she was with security at the House of Blues.
And I don't know what her fucking problem was,
but she certainly had no right to come to my fucking castle,
blow her fucking head open.
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
[Tomlin] They have to tase him.
I believe they even used a ballistic shield to knock him down.
The Alhambra officers conducted a very preliminary investigation.
Based on that investigation, they took Mr. Phil Spector into custody.
I've been around long enough to know
that people take death in a myriad of ways.
You have to take into account everything. You have to keep an open mind.
And based on what Spector is saying, suicide is a possibility.
[dark, enigmatic music playing]
Back door was open.
As we enter in, I see a young lady.
She's sprawled out in a chair in the foyer.
There's a .38 caliber handgun by her foot.
You could see she was suffering from a gunshot wound inside of her mouth.
We didn't know who she was. We didn't know if they had a relationship.
Maybe something went sideways.
Is this a crime? Is this a suicide? Could this be a horrible accident?
A three-pronged investigation.
We treat all death investigations on the surface, at first glance,
as if they're a murder.
We send homicide cops to every suicide
that occurs in the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff.
Every accidental death, with the exception of a traffic collision,
we send a homicide cop.
I'm starting to look at the paraphernalia in Mr. Spector's home,
and I am starting to grasp the importance of this person in that industry.
[reporter] Phil Spector's fame as a producer
at times eclipsed the artists he worked with.
[Tomlin] You see Tina Turner. You see pictures of the Righteous Brothers.
You see the Beatles, the Grammy nominations,
and all the awards that he had gotten over the years.
[Tomlin] As the lead investigator,
if this thing works out well, kudos to you.
But if it goes sideways, you are held responsible.
We assigned Mark Lillienfeld,
one of the most seasoned detectives at Homicide,
to do the scene
because we knew that was going to be a critical part
in this whole investigation.
Big cases and Mark Lillienfeld kind of go hand-in-hand.
High-profile cases can stress cops out, and I couldn't care less.
We put the same amount of effort
and resources and diligence into every murder scene.
[cryptic music playing]
The house was in horrible shape.
It was poorly lit.
It was filthy.
And there were mice and rats and roaches.
For somebody of such extreme wealth, it was like, well, a bit out of character.
You'd think he would live this extravagant lifestyle.
[Smith] There was everything in that house. I mean, literally.
Like he was a multi-millionaire pack rat.
You're like, "I know I need to make sure that I don't miss something."
But you're also like,
"Spector probably hasn't been in this room for six years."
It was the most unique crime scene investigation
I'd ever been involved in,
and truthfully, one I'd never wanna have to do again.
It was awful, it was terrible,
because it was so convoluted.
[Lillienfeld] So we knew we had the decedent remains right there.
We had physical evidence of blood, the gunshot wound that was visible.
She'd been shot in the mouth.
So there were teeth and fragments of teeth that were spread out amongst her remains.
They were on the carpeting. They were across the room on a stairway.
We collected it, we photographed it, we diagrammed it, we held it for DNA.
You gotta get past the ick factor and the emotional part of that.
You gotta get past that. "What do these things tell me?"
[Smith] We're there to speak for the dead,
and they leave us clues with physical evidence.
[dark, moody music playing]
All of us knew that when you're standing over a dead person,
that's an awesome responsibility, and you have to take it seriously.
[Tomlin] You have to take a somewhat spiritual ideology.
I could look at a dead body, have no effect.
That's just a shell, and the person's spirit is already gone.
I do think it has an accumulation, being in the presence of death.
The job can take its toll.
Now you focus on solving it.
[suspenseful music pulsing]
And so we just methodically took our time before releasing the scene.
Usually, you hold a scene, maybe… if there's a lot of evidence,
maybe seven, eight hours.
On this one, we held it over a day.
[cryptic music playing]
[Lillienfeld] On the floor was a loaded .38 caliber revolver
manufactured by the Colt firearms company,
and there was one spent cartridge in the cylinder of that weapon.
There was, mixed in with that, a thumb-lock device
off of the back door to the home.
Most people have a deadbolt and it goes from the door into the frame,
and it provides that extra security.
In order to throw that deadbolt,
you twist this thumb device,
and that was off of the lock itself and was lying on the floor.
It was very unusual. Like, "How did that happen?"
Some people would say, "It looks like the gun was placed by her foot."
The problem is you could never reenact where a gun would land.
You know, gun drops,
and it just flops around.
[Lillienfeld] A leather snap holster was in a drawer of the bureau,
and it was clear that that leather holster
fit the two-inch Colt blue-steel .38 caliber revolver.
So, uh, that… that weapon came from that holster.
[erratic, cryptic music pulsing]
It was about 5:00 p.m., almost 12 hours later.
The coroner's office finally had confirmation
of the identity of the victim.
This was Lana Clarkson.
At that point, we were able to obtain the mother's information.
We're heading over to see Donna.
[woman] I got a phone call from Lana's sister, Fawn.
She said, "Something could have happened to Lana."
"I don't know. Something's wrong." I said, "What do you mean? What's wrong?"
Fawn got a phone call from somebody,
but she didn't really know too much.
She said it could've had something to do with the news on the television
about a possible murder in Alhambra.
Lana was supposed to call me, but I hadn't heard from her.
I thought perhaps there'd been a party,
and she was being held along with other people for investigations.
I ended up calling the sheriff's office.
[Tomlin] While we're going to see Donna,
she actually connected with my partner Paul on the phone.
I thought he was calling me back. He said, "Where can I meet with you?"
I was, like, taken aback. "Meet with me?"
And, um…
Excuse me.
He told me Lana's address on the canal.
He says, "Well, can we meet you there?"
Then I was really concerned.
I didn't know what was happening. That wasn't a good sign.
[somber, sorrowful music playing]
I pulled into the parking garage, and I'm trying to keep my wits about me,
and not be, you know, too upset, not… without knowing anything.
So I'm kind of cleaning the car up,
and I pulled up a pair of shoes,
and I remember holding the shoes, saying…
"This can't be Lana. Here's her shoes."
[sobbing] Sorry.
And then all of a sudden, the detectives pulled in.
Her sister pulled in and brother.
We all quietly walked around to the front of the cottage
and we went inside,
and Detective Fornier looked at the floor, and said it was Lana.
[tearfully] Sorry.
[Smith] It doesn't matter if that child is an adult or a little kid.
I mean, it's just… There's nothing worse and more unnatural
than your children dying before you.
And it's a tough, tough thing.
[Lillienfeld] Making the notification of a death of a loved one…
Unequivocally, absolutely the singular worst part of being a cop,
and there's a lot of crappy parts to being a cop.
You need to find out everything that's critically important
as quickly as you can
because it may affect how we collect physical evidence.
Me, my partner, and the other eight detectives
were still processing the scene.
[Smith] The more you know about a victim,
the more likely you are to understand how they died.
These people have to process what you're telling them,
and now I'm gonna ask them too,
"By the way, she was over at Phil Spector's house."
"Do you know who Phil Spector is? Does she know who Phil Spector is?"
"Do you know why she would be there?"
And Donna says, "No, she didn't know this man."
[mysterious music playing]
[Donna] In the entertainment industry, everybody socializes after hours.
I'm not surprised. Lana was always networking.
She had a lot going on. Lana was a working actor.
Well, I got a bus to catch.
You know where to?
Yeah, wherever it's going.
[Donna] Lana did a lot of TV shows in the '80s.
She was in the Barbarian Queen movies.
Lana fractured both her wrists,
and it was really a big setback for her.
She accidentally fell.
And to brace her fall, she ended up breaking both her wrists.
She had to have pins placed in them.
[Donna] That was the beginning of a whole year of recovery for her.
We didn't stay long.
Let them grieve privately.
[music trailing off]
[mysterious music playing]
[Tomlin] Right after the incident happened,
Phil Spector was arrested,
and he told the Alhambra officers that he wants an attorney.
Soon as he said… uttered those words,
it's hands off,
and he immediately posted a million-dollar bail.
[man] The DA's office attitude was, "We're not gonna file this case."
"We're going to wait until everything gets investigated."
[Tomlin] During the initial debriefing by the Alhambra police officers,
they said they did have one witness, the chauffeur.
The person who made the initial 911 call, Adriano De Souza.
So we need to get to that chauffeur.
-Detective Paul Fornier. -Detective Richard Tomlin.
And we're here with…
Adriano De Souza.
[Tomlin] When we spoke to Adriano De Souza,
he said he'd probably worked for Phil ten to 15 times in the past.
[distressing music playing]
Adriano said Phil Spector came out seven o'clock sharp,
like he normally does.
[tense music playing]
Then went to dinner and drinks in West Hollywood.
About 1:15, 1:20 in the morning,
he was now directed to go to the House of Blues.
Later on, the House of Blues is closing.
It's a little bit after 2:00, and Lana is helping a drunk Phil Spector.
He said, "I believe he was drunk."
She takes him and puts him in the back seat of the car.
She gets in, and they drive to Phil Spector's home.
[music trails off]
Adriano said he was parked around the back of the residence.
He was playing a bit of music. He was dozing off.
At about 5:00 in the morning,
Adriano said he heard a loud popping noise.
[distant popping]
It was enough to startle him, for him to get out of his car.
Suddenly, the back door opened up.
He saw Phil Spector wearing a white jacket.
I saw his face.
And when I saw him, he had a gun in the front.
Adriano could see blood on his hand.
I did like this movement,
and I saw the legs.
-I saw the lady in the chair… -Okay.
…with blood all over the face.
Spector looked at Adriano and said…
He told me, like, "I think I… I killed somebody."
Adriano felt that his life was in danger, just started running.
[foreboding music playing]
He called Phil's manager. It immediately went to voicemail.
[De Souza] Michelle.
Michelle, you have to come to Mr. Phillip's house.
I think he killed a lady.
I'm gonna call the police right now.
Adriano said, "I think Mr. Phil just killed somebody."
He hung up the phone, and then he dialed 911,
and he told the dispatcher the same thing.
[sirens wailing]
[tense music playing]
In Los Angeles County,
it can go as long as a week and a half before an autopsy is performed.
We're supposed to treat 'em all the same,
but the reality is it ain't always that way.
This has gone all the way to the sheriff himself.
They wanna know what's going on.
This autopsy was done, I wanna say, the next day, which was unheard of.
The major findings from the autopsy was
there was one gunshot wound inside of her mouth.
Where the gunshot was and how it was lodged,
Lana died instantly.
The bullet was on a downward angle.
If you committed suicide,
are you going to point the gun downward?
It'd be more like it'd be level or maybe even an upward angle.
[Lillienfeld] Mode of death is
a legal determination left to a medical doctor.
He only has five choices.
Homicide, suicide, accident, natural, unknown.
It's the coroner that determines that.
Not a judge, not a jury.
It's the coroner, the medical examiner, makes that lawful determination.
Dr. Pena was very, very thorough to draw those conclusions.
Part of it is experience,
part of it is common sense,
part of it is science.
[Tomlin] In this case, Dr. Pena deferred the findings,
and wanted to wait for all the reports to come back
before making a final determination.
I am leaning more towards
it's a murder or accident.
We still have to develop, though, could it be suicide?
Was she depressed? Was she in financial distress?
[delicate, somber music playing]
We talked to her landlords. Said she was a model tenant.
That threw out that she's "struggling" and doesn't have money to make ends meet.
Anybody and everybody that we thought had some relationship with her,
whether business or personal, we spoke to them.
[Donna] Everybody has their down-in-the-dumps moments.
But she always pulled herself up, and she got out of it,
and if she really needed something, she could call me.
[Tomlin] No one said she ever tried to hurt herself.
No one ever said that she even talked about suicide.
She's a positive person who'd never think about hurting herself.
[woman] In a perfect world, Lana'd go straight back to acting,
but as she had been out of the scene for a year,
and she wasn't top of mind for all the casting directors,
she had to figure out a way to survive,
and this opportunity came at the House of Blues.
[vibrant, upbeat club music playing]
Clarkson was working as a hostess at the House of Blues.
[Hudson] She was excited to be working.
She was excited that she had healed and was healthy.
It was a privilege to be asked to be the hostess of the Foundation Room.
The Foundation Room at the House of Blues was a very prestigious place.
It was the who's who of Hollywood.
As a guest of Lana's, I met George Clooney there one night.
If you were famous and in Hollywood, you were visiting the Foundation Room.
[vibrant music continuing]
[music trailing off]
[Tomlin] Paul and I went to the House of Blues.
We spoke to the manager, the head of security,
and then the waitress that actually served Spector.
Spector had come in,
and Lana was working as a hostess that evening.
He said, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Phil Spector."
She, not realizing, stated, "Well, Ms. Spector, you can't come in."
She thought he was a female.
That didn't go over too well.
The head of security ran over to her and said, "Hey, no."
Pulled her to the side and said, "Treat this guy like gold."
So at that point, Lana escorted him over to a special table,
apologizing profusely.
During the early morning hours, the place is now closed.
They were seen leaving together.
We asked, "Was there video footage?"
We watch the video.
It appears that Lana was actually helping Spector into the car.
According to Adriano, Spector was drunk.
He kept repeatedly inviting her,
"Come to my castle. You have to see the castle."
And she said, "Okay."
And that's how, uh, the journey began.
[foreboding music playing]
It's eerie,
watching and knowing that this young lady is gonna lose her life within two hours.
A lot of our questioning was along the lines of, "Attractive woman…"
You know, men are pigs.
She's in Hollywood, home of the term "casting couch."
How did she react when somebody made an inappropriate remark
or did something inappropriate to her?
[Hudson] Lana, she knew how to rebuff attention,
and very delicately.
It's easy for people to make big leaps and make assumptions
about a woman going to a man's home in the middle of the night.
But I knew Lana,
and I knew exactly why she went to his house.
She didn't go because she was interested in him romantically.
There wouldn't be anything intimidating
about going to have a drink with Phil Spector.
He was 5'6" to her 6' tall.
She took care of herself.
I can absolutely see
where Lana would be intrigued with somebody like Phil Spector.
This is Hollywood.
Let me tell you, networking is highly valuable.
[cryptic music playing]
I'm the one person that knew both Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson.
What an unusual, dubious distinction.
It was around 1966 when I first met Phil Spector
and witnessed him work.
When I was 15,
Gold Star Studios was the big deal.
I'd sneak in and sit on the couch.
This engineer, he invited me into the studio.
Eventually, I was in Phil Spector's sessions.
Phil Spector had the Wall of Sound.
The Wall of Sound was about having four guitar players at once
and three piano…
But nobody did stuff like that.
Two drummers, it's completely crazy.
I never witnessed anybody like him,
just the way he was in the sessions, the way he behaved.
He was like a little dictator in a way,
but he sure knew what he wanted, and he got it.
Lana was one of my closest friends,
but we had never had any occasion to discuss Phil Spector.
The last time I saw him was 1978, I think.
And I met Lana Clarkson in 1984 before I moved to New York.
So Lana had no idea of Phil's reputation.
Phil Spector was a very dangerous character,
unstable and very unpredictable.
Had I been there when the House of Blues closed that night,
this would have never happened.
I would've never let her leave there with Phil, but…
[music trails off]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Tomlin] Everybody had a heightened sense of,
"This is going to be a very scrutinized case."
"And we're gonna need as much information as we can."
Our lab got the results of the DNA swabs
that were obtained during the crime scene investigation.
[Lillienfeld] In the master bedroom,
we found a white dinner jacket that Mr. Spector had been wearing
during his evening out at the House of Blues.
There was blood spatter on the sleeve of the jacket.
Also in a guest bathroom, there was a cotton diaper.
[Tomlin] Something I learned.
When people have guns,
they will wrap them in diapers.
[Lillienfeld] That diaper had blood on it and it was moist.
We learned that Lana Clarkson's blood was on that diaper and in that bathroom,
that her blood was on Phil Spector's jacket.
When the projectile struck Ms. Clarkson and blood came out,
it got on Mr. Spector's weapon, it got on his sleeve, it got on his hand.
And during her exam of the diaper and exam of the weapon,
Dr. Lynne Herold was able to conclude
that the diaper had been used to wipe the gun down.
And that's where the moisture and the blood evidence
was transferred from the weapon to the diaper.
Bloodstain pattern evidence is circumstantial evidence of the crime.
How did the gun go off? Where was the gun when it went off?
What effect did the gun going off have?
It was difficult because we're dealing with
bloodstain pattern evidence on dark red carpet.
When all these findings came back, suicide is out of the window.
Did we believe it's a murder?
Could there be an inkling that it's an accident? Yeah.
But the problem with that is
he's not saying that.
[Spector] I dunno what that fucking lady…
what her problem is.
Just blows her fucking head open in my fucking house.
The coroner's office finally did come back and say, "No, this was a homicide."
[dramatic music playing]
The medical examiners determined that Lana Clarkson was murdered,
but the LA County DA's office declined to file homicide charges.
The LA coroner's office made this announcement.
Not only did they say it was a homicide, they fingered Phil Spector.
When are we gonna we hear from the LA district attorney?
[interviewee] Spector's big.
And it's big for this DA's office, who's lost so many high-profile cases.
I remember, when the Spector case came along,
I knew who Phil Spector was.
"Who's Lost That Loving Feeling."
My granddaughter loves that music from Top Gun.
There was a… I don't want to say paranoia.
But the office got burned very badly in the OJ Simpson case.
We wanted more time to file criminal charges against Simpson.
But there was a lot of pressure from the media,
and we had to file the case.
What happened in the OJ Simpson case?
We weren't ready.
We want to make sure justice is served and they're going to do their time.
Now you're focusing on,
"How can we strengthen proof that it is a murder
without a reasonable doubt?"
And, "What could be any hiccups to stop us from getting that conviction?"
Everybody wanted a piece of the media attention.
[Smith] It's sad, but it's the nature of our media.
They're gonna follow cases that have a lot of flair and interest.
Phil Spector liked to talk. He was giving interviews left and right.
[reporter] In a magazine interview, he claimed Clarkson "kissed the gun."
He fabricated information, and he was fairly hostile about Lana,
and was maligning her all the time.
Phil Spector's PR machine, they were out to make Lana look like a bimbo.
People put her down because she's a B-movie actress,
but she held that proudly.
She knew that she was a big barbarian queen, and she owned it.
The family requested that none of us,
the intimate circle, speak to anybody.
People would say something, and they'd twist it,
and it would be published in a magazine or newspaper.
So I said the best thing is not to speak out.
[Hudson] And so we were just in the background,
quietly fuming over the information that was being spewed forth
by Phil Spector and his team.
It was horrible.
It showed what he was about.
You can't but help say,
"No, you're trying to hide something, and you have committed murder."
[Tomlin] Without a doubt, this was the most media-driven case.
My friends and relatives, that's all they talk about.
"Are you on that case?" And everybody's got their theory.
But you have to have balance.
And one of the things that I do,
I rarely talk about what I do for a living.
I don't feel special.
This is just what I choose to do, and I enjoy doing it.
And on this case, I was low-keying it.
Like, "Oh, yeah, working on this. Yeah, it's gonna be on TV."
And at the time, my kids were 13 and 11.
And so my kids knew what was going on, but I think they took a cue from me,
and they never…
I always laugh. They were never too impressed with me.
[reporter] I heard Spector described…
read him described in the newspaper this morning
as being 90% charming, 10% trouble.
[man] Yeah.
Did you have any experience with that 10% of him?
I never did, certainly, but there were many stories.
[Tomlin] We're focusing on, "Why did we believe it's a murder?"
We have to get into the life of Phil Spector.
We see there was at least one time where he was arrested with a gun.
[Lillienfeld] He possessed guns, owned guns.
I learned from other people that he had this long, sordid history
of waving guns around.
There was story after story of him actually waving a gun
during the recording of a song by the Ramones.
He's pissed off at John Lennon and he fires a gun into the ceiling.
We had to go track that down.
Phil Spector pulling a gun on people has more to do with who's in control.
If you have real power, you don't need a gun.
He was a chickenshit.
He carried loaded guns for a reason, because he could bully people with them,
from John Lennon to Leonard Cohen.
[Fraboni] They're getting ready to wrap a music recording session.
Phil Spector says to Leonard Cohen,
"Go out and put a vocal on this."
And Leonard says to Phil, "Well, you know what? Man, I'm tired."
He said, "I could do it tomorrow."
And then Phil gets the gun out.
Points it at Leonard and says, "You're gonna go sing this now."
[cryptic music playing]
It didn't deter Leonard Cohen.
This is the first day.
Leonard told me this story, right?
He was still so intrigued
by the possibilities of what would happen by working with Phil,
but Leonard knew that that gun was there at all times.
[Tomlin] He was very powerful,
so people were very hesitant.
Especially people in that music world.
They felt he had enough power to derail their career.
During this, there was a lot of people we spoke to
that would not go on the record,
but they spoke of how he would keep people in his house.
It was men and women.
You had a good time with Phil, and wanted to leave,
he would say, "Okay, just wait here,"
and it was always in that foyer area.
And he literally would disappear at times for hours
until he was ready for you to go.
How he would keep them in…
Remember the deadbolt lock that was found on the floor?
He would remove the lock, and now they're stuck.
It was another opportunity for him to control others.
And that was what set him apart.
He was manic, if you will, about control.
[Lillienfeld] Ms. Clarkson was basically imprisoned.
She wasn't free to leave on her own will because she couldn't open the door,
because Mr. Spector had taken that lever device,
that thumb device off of the deadbolt on the door.
[eerie, haunting music playing]
We'd heard rumors, but rumors don't float in a courtroom.
So we had to have hard evidence.
Rich Tomlin and his team tracked down every single lead,
and they turned these rumors into fact.
We found actual witnesses, a bunch of them.
[Lillienfeld] Sometimes it'd be a one-date relationship,
sometimes it'd be women he knew for years,
but all of these women had the signature in common
of having been held hostage,
having been deprived of their liberty by Mr. Spector.
[Tomlin] You have these women saying how he was very charming,
conscious to their needs, very appealing,
a great conversationalist,
then the switch would go off.
Phil Spector had a habit of bringing women over to his house,
wanting sexual favors from them,
and when they didn't comply or satisfy him,
he would pull out a gun.
[Smith] That's an MO,
and it means this is a thing that he does,
that he has done,
and the reason that's important is because
if you never… didn't find anyone that ever said this happened before,
that would probably be a pretty big defense point.
"That's absurd to think my client would do that!"
These women were willing to testify that they were in fear of their lives,
that they thought he was gonna kill them.
It's a critical piece of the evidence,
and it's a big part in showing that there was intent.
It certainly wasn't a suicide, but it wasn't an accident either.
He had these aggressive tendencies,
and sooner or later, this was gonna be the outcome.
[suspenseful music playing]
If you base it on talking to people who had historically gone through this,
I think he didn't want her to leave.
He left her in that foyer area for an hour or more.
She was dozing off, and for what reason we'll never know,
he grabbed that gun, and he decided to shove it in her mouth,
and she panicked, and he kills her.
Realizing what he'd done,
Phil Spector has more than enough time
to now try to stage the crime scene.
We were in continual contact with the district attorney's office.
It was a collaborative effort.
November of 2003,
the decision was made, and murder charges were actually filed against Phil Spector.
[tense music playing]
[reporter] In early court appearances,
he had famed OJ attorney Robert Shapiro at his side.
Now, he's on his third set of high-profile lawyers.
[Bowers] One thing with Phil Spector,
he didn't want to spend one day in prison.
Every time there was a new defense attorney, there was a continuance,
and the judge would have to give them time to get up to speed.
Phil Spector is on bail, meaning he is out.
He had gotten married.
As long as he can stretch this case out, he's a free man.
[woman] Mr. Spector?
[suspenseful music playing]
It was kind of a circus atmosphere you had.
[Tomlin] Phil Spector would wear different wigs to the trial.
He had his huge bodyguards.
[Lillienfeld] The defense in this case,
some of their conduct was incredibly egregious.
One of the defense attorneys,
who's a complete and total unethical scumbag,
New York Mafia attorney.
He hit me up in the hallway and in the restroom, followed me in there.
"I can't wait to get you on the stand."
"I'm really gonna F you up."
Like, really? I'm a little guy.
You think I haven't had my ass kicked before? Are you blind?
Look at this face. Look at me. I've built a career getting my ass kicked.
I'm not the greatest testifier,
but I can tell the truth, which is pretty goddamn easy to do.
Maybe I appeared "intimidateable," if that's even a goddamn word.
I'd like to think that I wasn't.
[tense music playing]
At stake in this trial was justice for Lana Clarkson and her family.
There was a subtext to this trial as well, however.
The LA DA's office had not won a high-profile case in 40 years,
even though there was significant evidence
that celebrities were involved in criminal activity.
My first year in the district attorney's office
was the trial of OJ Simpson.
I was a young, brand-spanking-new DA.
There were enormous lessons that were learned from that trial.
Jurors look at celebrities different.
They consider some identity with them.
There's a certain amount of sympathy that's built up,
and there's a lot of pressure on jurors.
They know afterwards they're gonna be criticized by their friends
if they find some celebrity guilty of something.
[Jackson] We didn't want to try Phil Spector the music producer.
We wanted to try Phil Spector the man.
The fact that he was this massive music producer
who had produced fantastic music, by anybody's standards,
phenomenal music,
and changed the course of music and rock and roll as we know it…
It didn't matter.
What mattered was what happened inside that mansion
on that particular day.
My strategy was to reveal the real Phil Spector.
Period, full stop.
We had close to 20 incidents that we wanted to use.
The judge relegated us to five, which was fine.
There was a gun pointed at my temple.
He took the revolver and smacked me in the side of the head.
-"You try to leave, I'm gonna kill you." -"Leave, I'll blow your ******* head off."
It came out of nowhere.
I think he was wearing a plaid jacket.
I remember thinking he looked like Elmer Fudd.
The gun was bigger than he was.
We went up a stairway to his bedroom. He didn't have to do that.
He could have been romantic, but he did it by gunpoint.
He wanted to rape me.
[Spector on recording] Be very careful what you say to me.
Because nothing you say to me… is worth your life.
Goodbye, Dorothy.
[Donna] It was difficult to hear.
There were women baring their souls,
and I really thank them for being able to do that,
'cause that wasn't easy to get up in front of all the cameras of Court TV,
and all the people, and tell their gut-wrenching stories.
The media said, "We want gavel-to-gavel coverage."
We knew the OJ Simpson case was disastrous.
[Jackson] People start acting differently.
It becomes a show trial.
Instead of evidence, you're presenting performances.
So one of the things we tried to do
was make the witnesses, on our side at least, understand
you were there to simply tell the truth.
Everything else is a distraction.
Just ignore it.
[Lillienfeld] I get nervous when I speak in public.
I don't like testifying. It's breaking my balls to talk to you.
I knew Mr. Spector had unlimited resources.
So he had very expensive, very proficient, very aggressive attorneys.
So I was at a disadvantage.
There's a couple of very simple rules in testifying that I live by.
Listen to the question, answer the question, shut the hell up.
So I go to testify. I'm nervous anyway.
Mark Lillienfeld, bless his heart, was on the witness stand.
During direct examination,
he's asked to describe something about Lana,
and he slips and says "her paw" instead of "her hand."
Soon as I said it, I realized I called this woman's hand a paw, like a dog paw.
Partly 'cause I was nervous, partly 'cause I'm a fool.
I look in the audience and I see her mom looking at me.
Her mom's got this look of shock and disbelief.
"You just called my deceased daughter's hand a paw."
I sat there and cringed.
Um, yeah. It was not his finest moment.
[Tomlin] He quickly corrected himself.
Mark felt devastated.
That's the first time I can honestly say… I had to talk him off the ledge.
He felt so bad.
[Jackson] He's just a canine lover, has had dogs his whole life.
I was nicknamed after a dog. I dream about dogs.
I have some dog issues.
And Lana Clarkson's mom, the only one that mattered to me…
I apologized to her.
I remember him coming up to me and how sweet he was.
I was very grateful.
I just spoke to her about
it's really an honor to be a part of a homicide investigation
where the victim was of such a… a great character.
It was really a pleasure to know about her life
and how she touched all these other people's lives.
[clears throat]
[tense music playing]
[Bowers] It took a long time, the trial itself, several months.
There was a lot of witnesses.
The defense brought in a lot of experts from all over the United States.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent.
[Lillienfeld] They were people that were world-renowned in their field,
and they were proof that, "If you pay me enough,
I will tell you I am Donald Duck and that the sky is not blue, it's brown."
When you stick to the objective, scientific evidence,
it's a suicide.
[Jackson] We weren't just prosecuting a case.
We were defending the truth.
[Hudson] The only defense that they could possibly present
for how a gun went off in her mouth
was to say she did it.
[Jackson] We knew the defense was going to come after Lana. They had to.
They had to create this persona of a person who was deeply depressed,
had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel,
and she had nothing to live for.
They had played and introduced a video.
I'll be no man's slave and no man's whore.
Phil Spector's wife at the time sat behind the defense team,
and she started giggling out loud and laughing at Lana.
You officers can be so resourceful.
Not with Lana, at Lana.
The defense did that on purpose to mock her
and to suggest that she was a lesser person,
a lesser actor who didn't have anything to live for,
and had no career aspirations or opportunities.
I knew that it hurt Donna and the family.
Well, when your good friend gets murdered,
and gets smeared in the process and all the rest of it,
I mean, and you're listening to this stuff go on in court
where they're presenting these stories about her,
it's… that's painful, 'cause you know it's not true.
[Jackson] I was so frustrated because I felt like I couldn't protect her
and protect her reputation in a way that she deserved to be protected.
In California, defense lawyers for Phil Spector have rested their case.
[Jackson] You meet 12 people you've never met,
and they've never met each other…
It's hard to get people to agree on what color the sky is, right?
So I never take for granted that anything's a slam dunk.
But I knew we had marshaled the right evidence.
I knew we had the right blueprint for the trial.
I knew that the witnesses, all of the women who testified,
Adriano De Souza,
everybody did what they were supposed to do,
and I thought, "This shouldn't be that difficult."
The jurors have all of the tools they need.
That was on day one. Um…
My confidence started getting shaken… shaky on day two,
and that went into day three.
Initially, it's gonna take a few days
just because they have to go through every piece of evidence.
But then after that…
[Jackson] Day five, day seven, day eight, day nine.
By that time, I'm a wreck.
Thinking, "What did I do wrong? How could this be taking this long?"
[man] When the jury foreman took an initial poll,
it was disheartening.
We're so far apart.
It was four guilty, five not guilty, four undecided.
It's almost like a second trial that happened during deliberations.
Some of us in the jury room had to, like, re-litigate
for the jurors that either didn't get it
or actually fell for the misinformation
that the experts on the defense side were giving.
I guess if they repeat a lie in different ways and often,
it almost becomes fact.
It was the longest, most… Ugh… painful experience I've ever been in.
We all had to do our job on the evidence presented to us.
This is the come-to-Jesus moment for all of us.
I knew how serious it was.
I was being honest in why I had to convict.
It'd been so contentious toward the end that we needed to get out of there.
We deliberated 14 days. This has been going way too long.
I went and hit the buzzer. That was it.
This time, I will find that the jury is unable to arrive at a verdict
and declare a mistrial in this matter.
I thought it'd be a quick, done deal. In and out.
And it wasn't.
I was insulted by the defense and… and the stuff that they threw.
Um, and… and I think… I think I've said enough.
[gavel banging]
As the gavel hit the bench,
my stomach dropped,
and I thought, "I failed."
Everybody did what they were supposed to do,
and I felt like I was the one that didn't,
that wasn't able to see it through.
It was a very defeating moment in my career.
I went upstairs. I started packing up my briefcase for the evening.
I wanted the press, quite frankly, to clear out a bit.
There was a lone reporter who stayed back with a microphone and a camera.
And as I walked out to my car, she said,
"Mr. Jackson, do you intend to retry this case?"
I stopped in my tracks and looked at her, and I said,
"I will try this case as many times as it takes to get justice,"
and kept walking.
[bold, dynamic music playing]
We weren't gonna stop because of a hung jury.
It was never gonna happen.
So we gather our thoughts, put the case back together,
and about a year and a half later, we tried it again.
[tense, exciting music playing]
In the first trial, out of 12 jurors, ten of them voted for guilt.
So, ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we had not done anything wrong.
Let's just pick a new jury and put this case on,
basically blueprinted the same way, the second time. That's what we did.
[Donna] I didn't know what to expect in the second trial.
It wasn't as much of a spectacle,
but both trials were just as emotional for me.
The jury was in deliberation.
And I remember I was at my son's high school baseball game.
When this case came out, he was 11.
My son's 16 now.
My phone is blowing up.
"Hey, they've come to a verdict."
And I just sat there.
And I thought about it.
I'm always gonna have other trials, other verdicts.
And on a selfish side, I won't always have the opportunity
to see my son play baseball.
And so I said, "No, I'll… I'll watch it on TV."
[Donna] I had my son on one side, my daughter on the other.
We were holding our breath.
[foreperson] We the jury in the above entitled action
find the defendant, Phillip Spector,
guilty of the crime of second-degree murder of Lana Clarkson.
[somber music playing]
When they said guilty, it was like I could breathe, you know?
I just couldn't believe… Finally, we have a verdict that was true.
The family's pleased that the jury rejected the distortion
and trashing of Lana Clarkson's life,
which was a part of this trial,
the past trial, and has been going on now for six years.
No matter your fame, or your wealth, or your supposed celebrity,
you will stand trial,
and you will be accountable for your actions.
This was the first celebrity conviction in 40 years.
Obviously, that was a very, very big deal for everybody involved.
It was nice to know
that you could put on a case in Los Angeles
against a well-funded, very powerful celebrity
and have the satisfaction that the truth was gonna come out.
[Lillienfeld] Mr. Spector got 19 years to life.
There is the…
not the rehabilitative part of the law, but the punishment part of law.
Sit in your cell and think about what you've done
the rest of your fucking life until the day you die
and you're carried out in a casket.
He's getting exactly what he deserves.
[stirring music playing]
[music trailing off]
[pensive music playing]
[Smith] I was gone before the case even went to the first trial.
I left the job with PTSD.
I was wound too tight for the job, honestly.
Danny retired, uh, somewhat young.
I think that Mark is the one that said one time,
"Everyone's got their number of bodies."
That number is different for everyone, but at some point,
you've had your fill and you're done.
[Lillienfeld] This job, it's a magnificent, wonderful job,
and it's been great to me and my family,
uh, but it's a very debilitating job.
It is, uh, emotionally dangerous.
[Smith] I've got friends who have committed suicide,
other friends who have drank themselves to death,
and it wasn't called suicide, but that's what it was.
There's more law enforcement suicides every year
than there are line of duty deaths.
You know, It's significant.
To do it as long as Mark did it, you have to be like Mark,
where you really can let things glance off of you.
[tense, cryptic music pulsing]
[Lillienfeld] In 1994,
I was still a young and new journeyman homicide detective.
I've only been a murder cop two years.
Myself and my new partner assumed control
of the Mickey Thompson and Trudy Thompson murders.
It's a high-profile case.
Being into cars back then, I knew that Mickey Thompson was a legend.
[reporter 1] His wife, Trudy, was also involved in promoting the events.
[reporter 2] The ambush murders of Thompson and his wife, Trudy,
in the driveway of the couple's Bradbury home…
[woman] They went after her first.
It was planned to torture my dad, and it did.
[dramatic outro music pulsing] d, and it did.