Spector defence team try to discredit witness

The defence in Phil Spector’s murder trial today sought to undermine the credibility of the fourth woman to testify to being threatened with a gun by the record producer in the years leading to actress Lana Clarkson’s shooting death.

Melissa Grosvenor on yesterday told a story similar to the other women - initially finding Spector to be charming and suddenly being terrorised with a gun when she sought to leave his presence.

“He walked up, held the gun to my face between my eyes and said, ’If you try to leave I’m going to kill you,”’ Grosvenor testified under prosecution questioning.

When Grosvenor returned to the stand today, defence attorney Roger Rosen asserted she had not told investigators in a 2004 interview details she told the jury, including that Spector put the gun in a holster and yelled at her while pacing.

She said she was sure she had mentioned those things.

Rosen got her to acknowledge that Spector never had her hold a weapon and never put a gun into her mouth. Grosvenor also admitted she never inspected the weapon and did not know if it was loaded.

“And finally, the weapon, of course, was never discharged that day was it?” Rosen asked.

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if it was,” Grosvenor replied.

Grosvenor’s testimony supported prosecutors’ efforts to show a pattern leading to Clarkson’s death in the foyer of his suburban mansion after she went home with him from her job at a nightclub on February 3, 2003.

Spector’s lawyers say Clarkson shot herself in the mouth.

Grosvenor testified that she met Spector in New York in 1991 when she was a waitress, found him “very charming, quick-witted,” and dated him for a year-and-a-half.

She said after a dinner in Beverly Hills she went back to his house, but when she told Spector around 2am that she was tired and wanted to go, he left the room and returned with a gun.

“I was shocked. I started crying. ... I was afraid. There was no doubt in my mind if I tried to leave he was going to kill me,” Grosvenor said.

She said he holstered the gun and “started walking back and forth, cursing and talking crazy.”

Grosvenor said that after the confrontation she fell asleep and the next day Spector did not talk about it. She said after she returned to New York he started asking her out and left threatening messages when she declined.

On cross-examination, Grosvenor acknowledged she was convicted of embezzlement in Georgia and later lied on an employment application when asked about a criminal history.

Earlier, music industry photographer Stephanie Jennings testified that Spector threatened her with a gun and held her hostage in a hotel room, forcing her to call police.

Jennings said she and Spector developed a long-distance relationship in 1994 and the next year she joined him for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions in New York, where Spector got her a room on his floor of the Carlyle Hotel.

She described being at a party where Spector became “extremely drunk, obnoxious.”

She said she went back to her room and slept until a bodyguard knocked and told her Spector wanted her in his room. She said that when she refused, Spector showed up drunk, and in a growing argument he slapped or pushed her, causing her to fall on the toilet. She said she grabbed Spector, who fell into the bathtub.

Spector left, returned with a gun, put a chair in front of the door “and said I wasn’t going anywhere,” she said.

Jennings said officers responding to her emergency call treated her “as if I was a call girl.” She said she did not press charges.

On cross-examination, Rosen suggested Jennings was not as scared as she contended and confronted her with statements she made to sheriff’s detectives in 2004.

In the interviews she said she did not feel threatened and continued to date Spector.

Asked about Spector’s gun, she said, “I never really thought he was going to use it to kill me. I never thought he was purposely going to use it to kill anyone.”

Spector, 67, rose to fame in the 1960s and ’70s, changing rock music with what became known as the “Wall of Sound” recording technique.

Clarkson, who was a hostess at the House of Blues when she met Spector, was best known for her role in Roger Corman’s 1985 “Barbarian Queen” movie.