Nutjob

This month the trial of Phil Spector gets underway. The music producer who pioneered the "Wall of Sound" is charged with the murder of Lana Clarkson at his mansion in Alhambra, California. It is a trial about what happens when you point a gun at people too many times.
All we know for sure is that a blithering night of clubbing and drinking ended with Clarkson dead from a gunshot wound. What happened is no surprise. Spector has had many long years of erratic psychotic behavior.
Clarkson was no naif. She was a 40 year old actress and hostess who had been around. I'm sure she was savvy enough to know the treachery of Hollywood nightlife. Because she was employed by the House of Blues where she was hostessing the night she died - and Spector is part owner of the club - she may have felt obligated to accompany a too-drunk Spector back to is home. I suspect she intended to leave soon after arriving at the Spector madhouse. That isn't as easy as it seems. Spector is disturbingly skilled at keeping visitors trapped in his house. Talk about abandonment issues.

When did the "Wall of Sound" turn into the "Wall of Crazy"? A long time ago. There is a long list of witnesses that have found themselves imprisoned in his malfunctioning world.
In 1979, seminal punk band The Ramones worked with Spector on their album End Of The Century. In a documentary of the same name, guitarist Johnny Ramone describes a confrontation with Spector that eerily mimics what probably happened to Clarkson the night of her death. Spector's abrasive behavior is made inescapable by doors locked from the outside. Any expressed desire to leave is met with an irrational Spector sticking one of his guns in your face. Johnny basically told Spector to "fuck off" and asked, "Whataya gonna do, kill me?" The answer is possibly yes. Fortunately for him, he was able to get out of there...not the case for Lana Clarkson.
If you drunkenly point a gun at somebody enough times, eventually it's going to go off. That's no accident.