What happened to Phil Spector? Music producer turned murderer in Netflix’s Homicide: Los Angeles

The life and crimes of Phil Spector are back in the limelight thanks to the new Netflix docuseries Homicide: Los Angeles. The show, from Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, is a follow-up to Homicide: New York that aired earlier this year. The new series takes viewers inside a series of real-life murder cases investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The first episode focuses on a particularly high-profile case: the 2003 murder of actor Lana Clarkson by Spector, who was one of the most famous and acclaimed music producers of all time. While there was plenty of evidence stacked against Spector, the trial still took several years and ended in a mistrial before Spector was eventually convicted in a second trial in 2009. The LA County District Attorney’s office was under significant pressure to prove they could convict a celebrity, particularly following their failure to do so in the OJ Simpson trial in 2005.

“I was surprised to learn that the DA’s office had not won a celebrity case in 40 years before [Spector’s] conviction,” Homicide: Los Angeles producer Jane Lipsitz recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “I also did not realize until we were in it that he had evaded prosecution and jail for so many years. The stakes for the DAs were so high in this series.”

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Born Harvey Phillip Spector in the Bronx, New York City on Boxing Day 1939, the aspiring musician moved to Los Angeles while still a teenager. At the age of 19, he co-founded a vocal pop group, The Teddy Bears, and wrote and sang on their 1958 number-one hit “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” In the 1960s he became known as a musical auteur, who sought control over every aspect of how a record was made through his label Philles Records. He developed a dense production style known as the “Wall of Sound” and produced acts including The Ronettes, The Crystals and Ike & Tina Turner. In 1963 he released a Christmas album, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, which remains a perennial festive favorite.

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In the 1970s, he produced Let It Be for The Beatles, along with a string of huge chart hits including the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” By the end of the decade, he was working with the likes of Leonard Cohen (on 1977’s Death of a Ladies’ Man) and the Ramones (on 1980’s End of the Century) but his behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. Cohen, the Ramones and John Lennon all said Spector pulled a gun on them in the studio.

Lana Jean Clarkson was born in Long Beach, California on April 5, 1962. She made her film debut with a small part in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982, and the following year could be seen dancing behind Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. She became best known for her work in B-movies, particularly the five she made with director Roger Corman. In 1985 she played the lead role in Corman’s production Barbarian Queen, which Corman later referred to as “the original Xena.”

Although she achieved a cult following, roles had begun to dry up by the turn of the century. In February 2003 she was working as a hostess at music venue the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, which is where she met Spector. They left together in his limousine and drove to his home in Alhambra, a huge mansion known as Pyrenees Castle.

Hours later the driver heard a gunshot before Spector exited his house through the back door with a gun. The driver testified that Spector said: “I think I just shot her,” although the producer later claimed that Clarkson had committed suicide when she “kissed the gun.” These claims were dismissed in his second trial after a series of women testified that Spector had a habit of locking his dates inside his home and threatening them with a loaded gun until they did what he wanted.

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Spector was married three times. He married his first wife Annette Merar in 1963, and while still married to her began an affair with Ronnie Bennett of the Ronettes. They married in 1968 and she was widely known as Ronnie Spector for the rest of her life, despite his mistreatment of her. The morning after their wedding, she awoke to the sound of workmen constructing a barbed-wire fence around their estate. She was held captive until June 1972, when she escaped and fled into the night barefoot, Spector having taken all her shoes.

In 2006, a month before he was charged with Clarkson’s murder, Spector married his third wife Rachelle Short. At the time he was 67 and she was 26. He filed for divorce in 2018, complaining that while he lived on an allowance of $300 a month behind bars, she was lavishly spending his fortune on expensive jewelry, two homes for her mother, a Ferrari, an Aston Martin and a $350,000 private plane.

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Phil Spector died on January 16, 2021, at the age of 81. He had been an inmate at a prison hospital, the California Health Care Facility, since 2013 but had been moved to San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, California, at the time of his death. He was pronounced dead of natural causes, later attributed to complications caused by COVID-19. He was still serving his 19-year sentence for Clarkson’s murder at the time of his death, and would have been eligible for parole in 2024.