New Netflix doc revisits Lana Clarkson's murder, Phil Spector's trial. What to know

The 2003 death of the actor Lana Clarkson is being revisited in the Netflix true crime series “Homicide: Los Angeles.” In 2009, music producer Phil Spector was found guilty of fatally shooting Clarkson. He maintained his innocence until his death in 2021.

The first episode of the Dick Wolf-created series looks into Clarkson’s life and death, as well as Spector’s conviction. The episode features interviews with the former district attorney for L.A. County, former L.A. Sheriff’s Department detectives and Clarkson’s mother, among others. The episode also features television footage from the time, as well as photos of evidence and recordings of phone calls.

Read on for more on the real-life case.

Who was Phil Spector?

Born in the Bronx in 1939, Phil Spector was a music producer and songwriter.

Spector rose to fame during the 1960s and ‘70s, working with top artists like the Beatles, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Ike and Tina Turner, the Ronettes, Cher and the Ramones, among others.

He produced songs like “Let It Be,” “Imagine,” “River Deep — Mountain High,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” “Be My Baby” and “Twist and Shout.”

Spector is known for pioneering the “wall of sound” producing style that was used in some of his hits, which used more instruments at once.

A self-made millionaire by the age of 21, he became a 1989 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 1997 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee. In 2005, Rolling Stone named Spector No. 64 among the greatest artists of all time, just one spot after Turner.

Spector was married three times. He was married to Annette Mearer when he met Ronnie Benentt, the lead singer of the Ronnettes and his to-be second wife. They married in 1968 and divorced in 1974, per NBC News. Ronnie Spector described her former husband as abusive and controlling in her 1991 memoir, “Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts and Madness."

He married Rachelle Short in 2006 and filed for divorce in 2016.

Who was Lana Clarkson, and what happened to her?

Lana Clarkson was an actor who appeared in “Barbarian Queen” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Clarkson and Spector met while she was working as a nightclub hostess, and she went to his home in Alhambra, a suburb of L.A., for a drink, according to testimony from his murder trials.

Later that night, she was dead of a gunshot wound in the foyer of his home, as laid out in his murder trial. Prosecutors showed footage of the pair leaving the House of Blues nightclub at Spector's 2007 murder trial trial. “She was found dead two hours and 55 minutes later,” a prosecutor said, per AP's reporting at the time.

Spector was arrested in connection with the killing in February 2003, then formally charged in November 2003 with second-degree murder. Spector faced two trials. The first ended in a mistrial in 2007; the second in a conviction in 2007. He did not testify.

He pleaded not guilty. Until his death, Spector said Clarkson’s death was an accidental suicide. He told Esquire in 2011 that she “kissed the gun.”

The defense argued Clarkson shot herself under the influence of drugs or alcohol, AP reported from inside the courtroom.

The prosecution at both trials included testimony from other women who described Spector threatening them with guns. Music coordinator Dianne Ogden said during the 2007 murder tiral that Spector tried to sexually assault her at gunpoint. She returned to his house and he threatened her again. “Phillip from behind me said, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ He said, ‘I have an Uzi with me and I’m going to kill you,’” she said on the stand, per NBC News.

During the first trial in 2007, Spector’s chauffeur from that evening testified that he heard a gunshot, saw Spector emerge with a gun and say, “I think I killed somebody.”

Spector’s defense team argued at the time that the chauffeur could have misheard what Spector said and tried to prove the gunshot wound was self-inflicted.

The first trial concluded with the jury deadlocked 10-2, favoring conviction, resulting in a mistrial, AP reported.

The jury in the second six-month trial in 2009 ultimately convicted Spector. He was sentenced to 19 years to life for second-degree murder plus four years for personal use of a gun, which he served until the time of his death, AP reported.

In 2011, a California appeals court rejected Spector’s bid to overturn his 2009 conviction. Spector’s lawyers argued that the jurors at the second trial should not have heard testimony from other women who had gun-related incidents with Spector, according to legal documents, NBC News reported at the time. Issuing a ruling, the presiding judge said the evidence was “admissible to prove that the cause of Clarkson’s death had neither been an accident nor a suicide.”

The Supreme Court declined to review the murder case in 2012.  

What happened to Phil Spector?

Spector died in January 2021 at 81 of natural causes, the California Corrections Department said in a news release, according to NBC News.

A list of Spector’s assets was released in February 2021, which included an electric guitar from Lennon, a note from Ono, diamond cufflinks from Elvis Presley, a framed letter from former President Richard Nixon and music recordings from Celine Dion, according to NBC News.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com