There is a lot of discussion revolving around the link between narcissism and self esteem. Since narcissists are generally defined as being arrogant, entitled, and having an inflated sense of self-importance, on the surface it would seem that these individuals would have high self esteem. However, the link between most forms of narcissism and high self esteem is fairly small.
People with a stable sense of high self esteem know in their very core how awesome they are. While there is a chance that manifests itself through narcissism, it’s more likely to just improve their interactions with other people, especially in a work setting. These people tend to handle negative feedback and constructive criticism well because deep down they still know they’re awesome, they just made a mistake or did something that can be improved upon.
But when it comes to fragile high self esteem, it’s a completely different story. For these people, their sense of self worth is dependent on external validation and lying to themselves rather than being something more innate. They often come across as introverted, anxious, and insecure. These individuals seek constant validation and recognition, as any form of negative feedback risks damaging their illusion of themselves.
Unlike stable self esteem, fragile self esteem has a very high correlation with vulnerable narcissism. Vulnerable narcissists have the same feelings of superiority to others, but they are extremely self-conscious and hypersensitive to rejection. Though normally not as violently dangerous as malignant narcissists, vulnerable narcissists tend to be extremely controlling perfectionists.
They have high levels of aggressive and abusive behaviours, and can be extremely manipulative to achieve their goals of perfection. They feel they need to be, because if anything they do is perceived as less than perfect it risks shattering their fragile psyche and send them spiraling into depression.
On a day to day basis, it’s the sort of personality that would make a celebrity yell “Don’t you know who I am?” at the faintest perceived slight in order to immediately be placated with praise and approval to quickly repair the damage to their ego. But in the most extreme of cases, when abuse and threats don’t get the person what they want, it’s the type of personality that can quickly turn violent.
It’s also the type of personality that might cause a person to yell at the police responding to a 911 call that they work for him and that he’s friends with the mayor. After being taken into custody that same night, such a person’s first statement to interrogators might even be, “She’s a piece of shit 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, and say that I murdered her. What the fuck is wrong with you people?”
The Barbarian Queen
Lana Clarkson was born on April 5, 1962 in Long Beach, California before her family moved to Sonoma County in northern California. I know we don’t say this much on this channel, but Lana had a happy and normal childhood. She even got her own horse for her 10th birthday which she loved riding.
But part of a normal childhood for kids in California is dreaming of becoming a famous entertainer. I know that’s a pretty normal dream regardless of where people are from, but it seems much more realistic when you’re living in the same place that a lot of the famous celebrities live and work.
The family moved back to Los Angeles county when Lana was 16, and she began to actively pursue a career in the entertainment industry. She landed her first role in the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High as Mrs. Vargas, a role that allegedly wasn’t even in the script.
According to the story, Lana was just hired to play an extra for the prom scene in the movie. She was 18 at the time of filming, so that certainly makes sense. Vincent Schiavelli decided before they started filming the scene that it would be funny to do the “ugly guy with a hot wife” trope, and he selected Lana from a lineup of extras to be introduced as his beautiful, younger wife.
It was a very minor part and she didn’t even have any lines, but since she was no longer hidden in the background it was enough to get her noticed. This brief appearance was enough to get the beautiful, 6 foot tall Lana a number of appearances on some of the most popular television shows of the 1980s like Three’s Company, The Jeffersons, Who’s the Boss, and Night Court. She never played a recurring character on any of these shows, but she began developing a loyal fanbase.
After that brief appearance in Fast Times, her modeling career began to take off as well. Despite never working for any major designers, Lana’s work as a high fashion model took her all around the world including Japan, Argentina, and numerous countries throughout Europe. She spent so much time traveling that she even wound up learning to speak Italian and Spanish.
But as wonderful an opportunity as it was, modeling wasn’t her passion. She didn’t want to just be a pretty face, she wanted to be a legitimate actress. She appeared as an extra in Scarface, dancing behind Michelle Pfeiffer at the Babylon Club. It had been another major film, but it was also another nonspeaking role.
Unfortunately, just a few short months before Scarface came out, the movie with Lana’s first starring role hit theaters. I only say “unfortunately” because of who was behind the movie. Lana was about to learn the hard way that two of the scariest words an aspiring actress could ever hear were “Roger Corman.”
When it came to men in Hollywood, especially back in the 1950s and 60s, working with Corman was a great thing. He is credited with having a huge role in launching the careers of big names like Jack Nicholson, Robert de Niro, Charles Bronson, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and James Cameron. But as for women, there was, um…and uh…well Sandra Bullock’s career seems to have survived her encounter with Corman.
By the 1980s Corman was known as the “King of B-Movies”, and I would conservatively estimate he was directing about 40 movies each week. Lana’s first movie with him was 1983’s Deathstalker, one of five sword and sorcery films in which she would star. These movies are generally bad, but they’re low budget and have a decent sized cult following so it was profitable enough for Corman to keep churning them out. Deathstalker may have only pulled $12 million at the box office, but it also only cost about $450,000 to make.
Two years later, Lana would land the titular role in Corman’s Barbarian Queen, a role she would later reprise in the film’s direct to video sequel Barbarian Queen II: The Empress Strikes Back. She took all of her roles very seriously, far more seriously than they deserved. She wasn’t hired to be a good actress, she was hired to look hot, get naked, and mow down her enemies with a sword. That’s not to say that she wasn’t a good actress, Corman just wasn’t interested in making good movies. Why bother trying to create quality content when you can make millions by lazily filming some tits and blood?
Lana had been able to support herself throughout the 80s as an actress, model, and by appearing in commercials. She even had the time to volunteer weekly with the Los Angeles AIDS charity Project Angel Food, a charity that delivered meals to people who were too sick to shop or cook for themselves.
Delivering meals may not seem like the biggest deal, but it actually says a lot about her character given the context of when this was happening. This was a time when the general public was so terrified of AIDS and misinformed about it that people thought you could catch the disease just by standing too close to someone. It was a time period when the town I grew up in thought it was completely appropriate to have a giant banner in the center of town to inform us of our town’s current AIDS population.
A banner that nobody seemed to take issue with, because it stayed up there for years. Your average person at the time would simply not have been comfortable with going door to door to visit AIDS patients. Oh, and if you’re wondering the number was 14.
Anyway, when Lana hit her 30s, her acting career started to slow down. She got the occasional role, but they were becoming fewer and farther between. Working with Corman had a huge negative impact on her ability to land acting gigs, leaving her viewed as the hot naked chick from a bunch of B movies rather than as a serious actress, despite how seriously she had taken her work.
But as I said, these films did have a sizeable cult following. At first Lana resented these fans, because she thought they were laughing at her and her performance. I suspect that’s a really common reaction from stars of B movies, especially if they didn’t understand going in that’s the kind of film they were making. She quickly realized that they weren’t laughing at her, but rather at the movies and the genre as a whole.
Those movies could have had the greatest cast in the world, but they would still be poorly written garbage produced for as little money as possible.
After having this realization, Lana began frequenting the growing comic book convention scene where she would sign autographs for her fans. She was known for being extremely friendly, and she would always stay as long as it took to make sure that everyone who wanted to say hi and get an autograph from her had the chance to do so instead of just abandoning the line of people at whatever time her scheduled appearance ended.
She also created her own website to sell autographed photographs and DVDs as a further way to supplement her income and interact with her fans on the site’s message board. But through all this, she hadn’t given up on her dream of entertaining people and being a star. I kept saying that she wanted to be a serious actress, and she did want to be taken seriously as one, but her real dream was to be a comedic actress.
Most of her television appearances had been in comedies so she had the opportunity to show off at least a little of her comedic talent, but Lana was mainly being cast as eye candy. With her 40s rapidly approaching and her final acting credit being in 2001, she decided she was going to take a different route to entertain people: stand-up comedy.
Lana began developing a stand-up set, but with her acting roles seemingly gone for now she needed another source of income. While she did still have convention appearances and her website, it just wasn’t enough anymore to make ends meet. In January of 2003, she got a job as a hostess at the House of Blues in West Hollywood to keep herself afloat. Celebrities visited their all the time, so it also potentially would give her the chance to make important connections to help her in her new career of comedy.
Though her job was just as a hostess, Lana’s coworkers also jokingly referred to her as the bouncer since she was already six feet tall before putting on her heels for work. During her second month on the job, she realized she was actually going to have to perform her duties as bouncer.
Upon seeing a diminutive, elderly looking character with long curly hair wearing sunglasses and leading a younger female companion towards the VIP area, Lana stepped in their way to stop them. Towering nearly a foot above the intruder, she said something to the effect of, “Ma’am, you’re not allowed to come in here. This section is for VIPs only.” The man looked up at her and yelled, “Do you know who the fuck I am?”
She was quickly informed by a coworker that the man was Phil Spector, and that he was indeed a very important person who needed to be taken good care of. Lana was extremely apologetic and waited on the couple diligently, comping food and making sure they had what they needed. The girl that had accompanied Phil was actually his second date of the evening, and at this point he was more than a few drinks in and allegedly had taken some pills as well.
Phil’s date wound up leaving, possibly because he was a completely insufferable boor, and his attention turned entirely towards Lana. He kept asking her to stop working and have a drink with him, but she refused and continued doing her job.
At around 2:30 am after they had finally finished closing for the night, Lana left the House of Blues and began walking towards her car to finally go home. She was approached on the street again by Phil, who continued to insist that she come back to his castle for a drink. Perhaps she decided that ingratiating herself to someone as important as Phil could help her jumpstart her career, but she finally relented. Security footage from the House of Blues showed Phil’s chauffer escorting Lana into his car.
These were the last images taken while she was still alive.
”I Think I Killed Somebody”
Phil’s driver, Adriano de Souza, drove to the house Phil referred to as his castle and parked outside. His plan was to wait for them to do whatever they were going to do, then drive Lana back to her car. At just after 5 am on the morning of February 3, 2003, Adriano heard a loud noise from inside the house. He decided to get out of the car to investigate.
As Adriano approached the house, Phil opened the door. He was holding a gun in his hand, and there was blood splattered on the white jacket he had been wearing. From outside Adriano could see Lana’s legs, and when he moved to get a better view he saw her slumped over in a chair, dead from a gunshot wound to the face. Phil told his driver, “I think I killed somebody” before walking back inside and closing the door.
Adriano immediately ran back to his car, grabbed his cell phone, and called Phil’s personal assistant, Michelle Blaine. This wasn’t because he had any intention of the three of them trying to conceal the crime, he just wanted to ask her what the address was before calling the police. It may seem strange for Phil’s personal driver not to know his address, but the mansion, referred to as Pyrenees Castle, was hard to miss. He wouldn’t have needed it, but he did find the address before calling 911 to request police.
Within minutes, police swarmed the scene and prepared to take on an armed suspect. As they were deciding on a plan of action, Phil opened the door and started walking towards them with his hands in his pockets. They demanded that he put his hands on his head which he did, but he quickly forgot and put them back in his pockets, repeatedly telling the police that they had to come see this and that there was a dead lady inside.
Again police ordered Phil to place his hands on his head, warning him that he would be tasered if he didn’t comply. And again Phil did as he was told briefly before promptly forgetting again and walking forward with his hands in his pockets. Fifty thousand volts later, police brought Phil inside where they placed him on the ground and handcuffed him.
Initially, the scene looked like a suicide. There didn’t appear to be any blood on Phil and the gun was on the floor next to Lana’s left leg, precisely where it would have fallen if she was left handed. She wasn’t, but if she had been that might have helped Phil’s case a tiny bit. But even without knowing Lana’s handedness, police immediately recognized that the crime scene wasn’t adding up.
One of the police made the clever decision to leave a recording device on the banister next to the incapacitated Phil while they searched the house in the hopes he might say something incriminating. On the recording, he can be heard saying, “I’m sorry there’s a dead woman here. But I’m sorry but this happened…It was a mistake. I don’t understand what the fuck you people is wrong with you. The gun went off accidentally.”
That’s not exactly a murder confession, but Phil’s own words would certainly undermine his legal defense that Lana had committed suicide. They also undermined his claim from earlier in the recording that he was neither drunk nor stupid, given his difficulty in putting together a sentence.
But even without Phil’s vaguely incoherent words, there was plenty of other evidence to point away from Lana’s death being a suicide. To start with, why was there only one phone call to 911? Adriano made a call, but Phil hadn’t. You could argue that he was in a state of shock and was unable to make a phone call, but none of his behaviour really supported that. It supported that he was drunk and stupid, but the only shock he seemed to have experienced came from the police taser.
Next, why would Lana go to somebody else’s house to commit suicide with their gun? That’s a really weird thing to do, but let’s just humour the idea for a moment. The gun used was a .38 Colt Cobra snubnosed revolver, and there was an empty holster that fit the gun in a drawer about 5 feet away from where Lana was seated.
When police arrived, that drawer was the only one in the entire house that was opened. How could she have possibly known that there was a gun in that drawer, and why would she even bother searching random drawers for a gun when there were multiple on display on the walls?
There’s also the location where the body was found. Adriano had been able to see Lana from outside the house because she was seated in a chair in the foyer. She also had her jacket on and her purse was hung over her shoulder. After having been inside Phil’s house for at least two hours, if Lana was in the foyer wearing her jacket and purse that’s a pretty strong indication that she was trying to leave.
But maybe that’s all a bit too circumstantial for you. I’d certainly argue that it’s extremely suspicious and heavily points towards Phil’s involvement in the shooting, but it’s probably not enough to clear the bar of reasonable doubt. Luckily, there was plenty of other forensic evidence.
The reason there wasn’t any of Lana’s blood on Phil when the police arrived is because he had since removed the white jacket he was wearing and left it in the master bedroom. That jacket definitely had blood on it, and further forensic analysis found blood inside Phil’s pockets as well. There was also blood found on the banister and a doorknob which had to have been left there by Phil’s hands.
One place police didn’t see any blood was on the gun. There also weren’t any fingerprints on it either, indicating that rather than call 911 Phil was doing a terrible job attempting to clean up the scene and destroy evidence. A bathroom near the foyer contained a cloth diaper covered in Lana’s blood, which had been used to wipe down the gun and most likely to remove any visible blood from Phil’s body.
This wouldn’t have been immediately evident at the scene, but Phil’s hands were covered in gunpowder residue as well. Of course the defense would bring up the fact that Lana’s hands also had gunpowder residue on them, but that doesn’t mean she held the gun.
The gun had been fired while inside Lana’s mouth, and the type of revolver used creates a roughly three foot cloud of gunpowder residue. If her hands had been on or above her lap when the bullet fired, they would have been generously dusted with residue regardless of who pulled the trigger. On the other hand, if Phil was an unsuspecting witness to a suicide who claimed to not have been that close to Lana when it happened, the residue shouldn’t have gotten on his hands at all.
That evidence wouldn’t be known until later, but it didn’t matter. Between the suspicious circumstances, the blood on Phil’s jacket, his shoddy attempt to clean up the crime scene, and his monologue that randomly switched between being belligerent and apologetic, the police had seen enough. Phil was arrested on the spot for the murder of Lana Clarkson and brought to the station where he went on the insane rant from the beginning of the episode during his initial interrogation.
To the general public, this seemed unthinkable. In the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial, it was impossible to believe that authorities would try to hold a celebrity living in California responsible for their crimes. But when it came to the people that actually knew Phil, there wasn’t a whole lot of surprise. Most of his friends and acquaintances heard the news of his arrest for murder and thought, “yeah, that makes sense.”
The day after the arrest was made, the only person that seemed to speak out on his behalf was his ex-wife, Ronnie Spector. Ronnie claimed she was baffled and hadn’t slept all night because she was in such shock over the news. She admitted that, sure, he was an abusive and controlling husband and she divorced him after six years because she knew she had to get away from him. She even admitted that he had pulled a gun on her in the first few months after they got married.
But to actually pull the trigger? That didn’t sound like Phil to her.
Then again, she may just have been trying to be polite. Ronnie had already written her 1990 autobiography in which she detailed the full extent of her abusive marriage, including how she signed away all of her music rights in the divorce settlement under threat of death.
So before the tragic murder of Lana Clarkson, who actually was Phil Spector? He’s regarded as one of the most influential people in the history of pop music, he produced hit after hit with his famous Wall of Sound technique, yet no one who knew him seemed surprised to learn that he was a murderer. What the Hell happened in his life to lead us to this point?
To Know Him is to Hate Him
Harvey Philip Spector was on December 26, 1939 in the Bronx. He hated his first name so he went by Phil instead. Phil faced a lot of abuse as a child. Some verbal abuse came from his mother, but most came from his classmates.
He was a tiny child with big, protruding ears that would have made him an easy target for bullies. Being an asthmatic diabetic didn’t help his cause either, nor did the fact that his family was poor. According to Phil, his classmates were all middle to upper-middle class, so being poor just gave them one more reason to pick on him.
Things only got harder for Phil when he was nine years old and he saw his father commit suicide to escape his crippling debt. There are different accounts of exactly how this went down, with some saying Phil’s father shot himself in front of the child and others saying that Phil didn’t witness the event but found the body. Either way, that would be a deeply traumatic event.
A few years later Phil’s mother moved the family to Los Angeles. He was about ready to enter high school, and he was sick of being picked on. While he had probably hoped he’d have that huge, teenage growth spurt that would leave him big enough to defend himself, it never happened. Phil only grew to be 5’5”, so he was going to need some help if he wanted to survive high school.
His first plan was to learn to play guitar, something he wanted to do anyway. Phil loved music and was obsessed with the status and respect that musicians had. Elvis had just become an international sensation, and Phil saw the way that men and women alike seemed to worship Elvis like he was some sort of God. That’s exactly what Phil wanted for himself, and was determined to make it happen.
But he wasn’t famous yet. Though he had become friends with other aspiring musicians, as far as everyone else was concerned he just went from being an unlikeable little shit to an unlikeable little shit with a guitar. That wasn’t going to prevent him from being bullied, so he was going to need protection.
Luckily for him high school sports teams tend to have GPA requirements, requirements that many of the football players weren’t able to meet on their own. Phil taught the football players how to get A’s in certain classes (presumably by cheating), and in exchange they would act as his bodyguards.
Not only did having bodyguards keep him safe, it gave Phil his much needed sense of control and superiority. These were the same people that used to torment him, but now they answered to him.
Phil formed a band, The Teddy Bears, with some of his classmates, and following their graduation from high school they auditioned for Era Records. Era signed them to record two to three singles, and if the songs did well they would get a larger deal.
During this time, Phil was also being mentored in sound production by Stan Ross, and he was a quick study. It didn’t take long before he felt that he could control the production of a song from start to finish. The Teddy Bear’s first single, “Don’t You Worry My Little Pet” didn’t make any waves. This was the first song they recorded for their audition with Era, and while it didn’t make them famous it had gotten them that valuable studio time.
It was at their second recording session that the Teddy Bears recorded the song “To Know Him is to Love Him”. Phil had written their first single as well, but he was particularly obsessed with this song. The title came from the epitaph on his father’s tombstone, and he was determined to make the recording perfect. By this point he had veritable months of experience as an apprentice producer, and so he took complete control over the production of the single.
Two months after the single was released, it still hadn’t been played once on the radio. Then, it was suddenly on every radio. “To Know Him is to Love Him” became an international hit, spending three weeks on top of the Billboard charts in America and hitting #2 in the UK. He attributed the song’s success to the fact that he had controlled every aspect of its creation including writing it, performing it, and producing it.
And I guess there were a couple other musicians involved too including the lead singer, but they weren’t important. This was Phil’s show, and he was the sole reason they had sold over 2 million albums. Era signed the band to record the 1959 album The Teddy Bears Sing!, but now that they had a pop sensation on their hands they weren’t screwing around anymore.
The original singles only cost Era $75 in studio time, so they weren’t overly concerned if Phil wanted to take the reins on producing one of the singles. But now that there was real money to be made, it was time for this punk ass kid to get out of the way and let the industry professionals do their jobs producing the album.
You would think this would have crushed Phil’s ego, but it wound up doing the complete opposite. I’m sure he was pissed off at first, but when everything else The Teddy Bears recorded failed to chart, it just validated Phil’s beliefs. He was the best and most capable person in the music industry, and the only reason their new songs weren’t selling is because Era hadn’t let him produce them.
The band was dropped by Era after failing to chart again, and Phil briefly formed another band that didn’t go anywhere either. But he wasn’t really interest in performing anymore. His true calling was as a producer, and he knew he was going to revolutionize the industry.
Phil had met a promoter named Lester Sills when he was still in the Teddy Bears, and Lester hooked him up with an apprenticeship in New York working for the songwriting and production duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. He co-wrote some songs and did session work as well, playing the guitar solo in the hit song “On Broadway”.
By 1961 Phil was ready to set out on his own, so he and Lester Sills co-founded the record label Philles Records, a portmanteau of their first names. After courting multiple artists, they signed their first group in late 1961, the Crystals. The Crystals had multiple hits reaching as high as #10 on the Billboard top 100, but they weren’t quite able to make it to number one.
The following year, Lester left Philles Records and Phil took a job as a producer at Liberty Records. If you think that sounds like a giant conflict of interest, you would absolutely be right. In his brief time at Liberty, Phil heard the song “He’s a Rebel” written by Gene Pitney and recorded by Vikki Carr. Simon, I know you haven’t recognize a single name you’ve said for the past 20 minutes other than Elvis, but I promise you they were all extremely famous.
Anyway, Phil rushed back to his studio and had Darlene Love and the Blossoms record a cover of “He’s a Rebel” to be released before Vikki Carr’s version. The song was attributed to the Crystals, because that’s just the way the Blossoms were treated, and it quickly rose to #1. It would be his second of many top hits, but 1963 is the year things really took off when he produced Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans cover of “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah”, the famous track from Disney’s infamous Song of the South.
It was with this album that Phil first fully implemented his signature Wall of Sound recording technique. The Wall of Sound was a revolutionary idea, the likes of which the music industry had never seen before, that created a much bigger and fuller sound. It was a true testament to the brilliance of…it’s a fucking orchestra. That’s it. That’s the whole technique. The only reason the Wall of Sound was considered groundbreaking was because pop music from the 1940s and 50s had been so painfully shallow and vapid.
As the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson put it, “In the 40s and 50s, arrangements were considered ‘Okay here, listen to that French horn’ or ‘listen to this string section now.’ It was all a definite sound. There weren’t combinations of sound.” So that was Phil’s incredible idea: multiple instruments at the same time.
Sometimes he’d even have the same part played on similar instruments like a piano, electric keyboard, and harpsichord and blend them together to sound like a single instrument. You know, the sort of thing that ensemble musicians are generally trying to do when they perform live anyway. Composers had this shit figured out centuries ago, and it hurts my soul that this was Phil’s big innovation that let him get away with so much bullshit throughout his career. Sure he fine tuned the recordings to sound good coming out of a radio or jukebox, but producers should’ve been doing that anyway.
That same year, Phil married his first wife, Annette Merar. Annette had been the lead singer of the Spectors Three, the short-lived band that succeeded the Teddy Bears. Their marriage would only last three years, in no small part to Phil’s affair with Ronnie Bennett, the co-founder and lead singer of the Ronettes. The Ronettes signed with Philles Records in 1963 and Ronnie was instantly attracted to Phil. Despite being a newlywed, Phil began the affair as soon as the Ronettes were signed.
Anybody who has read about this story before could probably tell you that Ronnie was 17 years old to Phil’s 24 when this affair began, though this isn’t actually true. I haven’t been able to find where that story originated or why it is so widespread, but Phil was only four years older than Ronnie. There’s already plenty of stuff wrong both with their relationship and with Phil as a person, so there’s no need to try to make him look even worse with misinformation.
In the short time the Ronettes were active, they became a huge success. They had half a dozen top 40 hits, with their hit “Be My Baby” peaking at number two. When they toured the UK their opening act was The Rolling Stones, and when the Beatles toured the US in 1966 the Ronettes were their opening act, becoming the only girl group to tour with the Beatles. They broke up in 1967, and in 1968 Ronnie Bennett became Ronnie Spector.
And for the first year or so, they were happily married. There was that one time Phil pulled a gun on her, but Phil was already known for pulling guns on people. The two adopted a child together and at first it seemed like they were going to be the perfect celebrity couple, but after the honeymoon phase was over things got real bad real fast.
Ronnie was very literally a prisoner in her own home. Phil erected a chain link fence around his mansion which was then covered in barbed wire, and he purchased a number of guard dogs. He would steal and hide Ronnie’s shoes so that she couldn’t try to run away, and she was never allowed to leave the house. There were at least five servants on staff, so if she wanted anything Phil would send them instead.
The only time Ronnie was allowed to leave Phil’s castle was once per month to buy “feminine products”, but if she took more than 20 minutes he would send bodyguards to go retrieve her. Oh yeah, and when she did leave the house she had to have a life-size dummy of Phil in the passenger seat.
Eventually Phil started to realize that his wife was unhappy and that she might eventually make a run for it, with or without shoes. But Phil had an ace up his sleeve. Having grown up in the 40s and 50s, he knew that there was one surefire way to trap a woman in a loveless marriage.
The couple returned to their mansion on Christmas day, 1969, though it’s unclear where they had been. Let’s just say it was Christmas mass. Anyway, as the car pulled in, Ronnie saw her Christmas present running circles around the fountain.
You know those car commercials where the sociopathic husband buys his wife a $60,000 SUV with a giant bow on it for Christmas, as if that’s a normal purchase for middle class people to make without discussing it with their spouse first? Now imagine one of those commercials, but replace the new car with brand new twin sons. That was Ronnie’s surprise Christmas present, and Phil’s plan to keep her trapped in the house forever.
But he still worried that she might have some reservations. Perhaps springing a surprise double adoption on Ronnie may not have won her over the way he hoped, so he devised a new plan. He had a large, golden coffin with a glass lid installed in the basement. Whenever he was worried that Ronnie might try to run, he reminded her that if she tried to leave he’d kill her and put her corpse on display inside the coffin for all his guests.
In 1972, about 4 years into their marriage, Ronnie’s mother came to visit. She was horrified with everything she saw, and they stayed up for 3 days and 3 nights planning an escape. It wasn’t an amazing plan, but it was a plan. Ronnie broke a window and ran out without any of her belongings, not even her shoes.
Also, despite her comments to the press following Phil’s 2003 arrest, during the divorce proceedings she testified to the fact that he didn’t only pull a gun on her once. He did it all the time, including after she escaped the house. Phil allegedly threatened to hire a hitman to kill her if she didn’t sign over all of her future earnings from the records he produced, and he allegedly pulled a gun on her and threatened to kill her if she didn’t give him custody of their children.
That wasn’t just the kind of man that Phil was in private, either. He acted like this all the time. Like I said, he was known for pulling guns on people, what they casually referred to as “gun play” as if that’s a totally normal thing. They even claimed that he would colour coordinate his guns to match his outfits. It was not only how he handled his personal life, but his professional life as well.
Now I’m not going to go over Phil’s entire music career. He produced so many number one hits that it would take forever, and frankly he’s a piece of shit so I’d just rather not. But there are a couple stories I want to go over to highlight just how volatile his personality was, and how well known that fact was to everyone who met him.
Phil was notoriously difficult to work with, even early in his career. He was an obsessive, controlling perfectionist that was miserable to be around, and everybody knew it. You can even find lists online with titles like “The Top 5 Singers Phil Spector Pulled a Gun On”. But they couldn’t argue with the results, so the top recording artists sought him out even despite his reputation. One such group, and finally one that Simon’s heard of, was The Beatles.
After doing production work on John Lennon’s solo single “Instant Karma!”, Phil was brought to the UK to turn Let It Be into an album. At this point the Beatles were on the verge of breaking up, and Let It Be was just an abandoned pile of tapes recorded by four guys that didn’t want to be there. But Lennon and George Harrison thought that Phil could turn it into something usable.
He did, but first he had to terrorize Lennon a bit. Phil reportedly chased Lennon through the studio halls with a gun. At one point, he even allegedly pulled a gun at Lennon at near point blank range and fired at the thermostat on the wall. The gun was almost right next to Lennon’s ear, and after the shot was fired he said something to the effect of, “If you’re going to kill me that’s fine, but if not I’ll need my hearing.” That seems like a very British response to a very American action.
It doesn’t really sound like Phil was the type of person anyone would want to associate with, but Let It Be went to number one in both the US and UK so the next year Lennon hired him again to produce his solo album Imagine. Lennon could call himself a communist all he wants, but it sure sounds like he loved making money.
In 1974, Phil was in a serious car crash. His body was flung through the windshield and he received massive head trauma requiring hours of surgery and 700 stitches, 300 on his face and 400 on the back of his head. Phil had always been paranoid and reclusive, but following the accident he withdrew from society even more. It’s quite probable that the head injury had only made him even more insane and unpredictable.
One of the last albums he worked on was the Ramones End of the Century, which was recorded at Phil’s mansion. In interviews from the early 80s following the album’s release, the Ramones were quite candid about what a hostile environment it was. They said that they were literally kept hostage at the mansion for days at a time, being threatened with a gun every time they tried to leave. The in studio experience was miserable for them as well.
Johnny Ramone explained that they played the first chord of “Rock ‘N Roll High School” and Phil just listened to it in the studio for 12 hours. He also described having to repeat his part hundreds of times for hours on end, an experience he speculated must be what Chinese water torture is like. There was nothing rock or punk about the way that Phil wanted to intensely labour over every note, and the Ramones seemed to genuinely hate everything about the experience.
It’s not surprising that they would hate being held hostage at gunpoint, but what was surprising was how vocal they were about it. Everyone in the industry knew what a lunatic Phil was, but they were from a more dignified era when people didn’t talk about such things publically.
Then all these damn punk musicians came along and started talking in interviews about all the behind the scenes stuff that was supposed to be kept secret. First you had Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols calling out Jimmy Savile in ‘78, now the Ramones were going after Phil Spector, I mean where was it going to end?
Of course, despite the fact they had absolutely nothing positive (and quite a bit negative) to say about Phil, End of the Century was the Ramones highest charting and most commercially successful album ever. Then again, their dedicated fans hated it for sounding like over polished pop music designed for radio.
Shortly after that album, Phil’s career went almost entirely dormant. He would take on the occasional project, but he mostly just hung around stockpiling ridiculous wigs he could wear to cover all the scars on his head from the accident. Though since he wasn’t working, he had plenty of time in 1994 to write a letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s nominating committee to prevent the Ronettes, and most specifically his ex-wife, from being considered for induction. Because he was not only a gun-wielding maniac, but he was apparently also a petty little bitch.
And that pretty much brings us to 2003 and the events that took place following his visit to the House of Blues.
The Trials
After his initial arrest Phil was released on $1 million bail, and it would be over four years before the trial finally began. During this time he would go through three different sets of lawyers. His first lawyer was Robert Shapiro, part of O.J. Simpson’s “dream team” of defense lawyers.
Shapiro was present for some of the early pretrial hearings and secured Phil’s release on bail, but he was quickly fired. When the trial finally began in 2007, Phil’s lead defense attorney was Bruce Cutler, who was best known for defending famed mob boss John Gotti.
There were a couple really important decisions made by the judge before the trial began. The first was that the trial would be televised, because that’s just how we roll in America. But more importantly, the judge ruled that he would allow testimony not only from Phil’s ex-wives, but also from four other women he had pulled guns on.
Normally, a person’s past misdeeds can’t be used against them as evidence of a current alleged misdeed. Even prior convictions are supposed to be off the table. However, these four women all had the exact same story as each other, and it was very similar to Lana’s story. Each of the other women, all of whom Phil had been “romantically” interested in, went drinking with him. When they went back to his mansion they rejected his advances, and he pulled a gun on them to prevent them from leaving.
Phil’s intended defense was that Lana accidentally committed suicide. He said she was playing with the gun, and in his words “kissed the gun”, and either it misfired or she accidentally pulled the trigger. But the testimony from the other witnesses would show that Phil was trying to coerce Lana the same way he tried to coerce all the other women that weren’t interested in him, and the judge decided it “can be used to show lack of accident or mistake”. Even if firing the gun was an accident, there would be almost no way Phil’s defense team could argue that he didn’t intentionally point the gun directly at her face as he had done so many times before to others.
The trial lasted for 6 months, and the prosecution presented the evidence we discussed earlier as well as additional testimony from the other women Phil had pointed guns at and from his ex-wives. Five months into the trial, Bruce Cutler quit the case citing “a difference of opinion” with Phil over their defense strategy. That’s not a great sign for the defense, and his associate attorney had to take over as lead for the closing arguments.
The forensic details regarding the blood splatter and such were a bit more technical and detailed than I got into, but based on the evidence presented I hope I haven’t left you with any reasonable doubt. The defense tried to paint Lana as a depressed, failed actress who couldn’t pay her rent and would sleep with anyone she thought could help her career. There wasn’t really evidence to support this other than a couple e-mails she had written to friends, but it was nothing that would reasonably support suicide. It was just the typical venting about work and finances that happens between friends sometimes.
To both the prosecution and viewers at home, the case seemed open and shut. The evidence of Phil’s guilt was overwhelming, and to call the defense flimsy would be giving it too much credit. And because this is America, I can tell you exactly how the deliberation process went for the jurors, because again that’s just how we roll here.
In an interview, one of the jurors for the trial explained exactly what happened. He showed up for deliberation fully expecting everyone to agree that Phil was guilty. He figured they’d hang out for a couple hours so they could get their free lunch, then they’d return the verdict of guilty and go home. But as soon as deliberations began, he asked the foreman if they could do a quick poll to see where everybody stood. The votes were four guilty, five not guilty, and three undecided.
Apparently not everybody agreed that it was an open and shut case, and the jury spent 12 days deliberating. After those 12 days, the final vote stood at ten guilty and two not guilty. They were completely deadlocked, and nothing was going to get them to agree.
Although there were two not guilty votes, the blame for the deadlock was placed entirely on a single juror. In a criminal case, it is the burden of the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. However in this juror’s mind, they had to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The jurors would go over the evidence with him and explain the only scenario that made sense. He would come back with, “yeah, but this this and this could have happened, we just don’t know.”
They tried to explain that his scenarios were very technically possible, but they were not even remotely reasonable. But there was absolutely nothing short of video evidence of the murder that this particular juror would have found satisfactory to meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” threshold, so they eventually gave up.
With the jury deadlocked, a mistrial was declared and they had to start all over again. But the prosecution wasn’t concerned. They were obviously annoyed, but they knew why the deadlock happened and had no reason to believe it would happen again. As long as they could make sure to disqualify any needlessly nitpicky douchebags during jury selection, they believed that they would be fine.
They were correct, and after an unnecessarily long 19 days of deliberation, the jury in the second trial found Phil Spector guilty of murder in the second degree and of using a firearm in the commission of a crime. He was sentenced to 19 years to life in California state prison.
He may have been found guilty by a jury of his peers, but deep in their hearts Phil’s lawyers knew that they could keep sending him invoices for massive amounts of billable hours if they kept filing pointless appeals and motions.
In 2011, Phil’s conviction was upheld on appeal. His request for a second appeal hearing was denied, and the state Supreme Court declined to review that decision. But his lawyers weren’t done. They were going to take this case all the way to the United States Supreme Court if their client would pay for it.
SCOTUS denied the petition for them to review the case, as did the Federal District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Phil’s attorneys continued filing motions for appeal until at least 2015, by which point it feels like it was just a legal form of robbery. Phil would have been eligible for parole next year, but he died in prison on January 16, 2021 due to Covid.
Wrap Up
Phil Spector was a tiny little man, both literally and figuratively. Despite being lauded for his creative genius, he was a weak and fragile narcissist who had to control everyone and everything around him in the only way he knew how. Though he was only ever charged with the one murder, there’s no telling the depth of the emotional trauma he caused to those around him.
Many of the musicians he worked with may have been able to justify it as “gun play” and just “Phil being Phil”, but the women he took out for drinks could never have suspected their nights would end being held prisoners at gunpoint. And of course there was his second wife Ronnie, who met him before his affinity for brandishing guns in public had developed. There was no way for her to suspect the years of abuse and trauma that she would suffer at his hands.
Lana Clarkson was a kind, intelligent, and talented performer whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had she not been working on that night in particular, we can only guess where her career might have gone. Maybe her career in show business had reached its end, or maybe she was going to become the next Joan Rivers. We’ll unfortunately never know.
But this whole story highlights that we as a society need to be less forgiving of so called eccentricities among celebrities just because they are considered geniuses in their fields. Nobody should get a free pass for violent crimes just because of their wealth and status.
It also shows that perhaps we should actually listen to those punk kids once in a while. You don’t have to like their music or their anarchist messages, but when they start making allegations like “this guy’s a serial diddler” or “this guy held us hostage for days at gunpoint”, it’s probably worth at least looking into.
Key Takeaways
- Fragile high self-esteem correlates strongly with vulnerable narcissism, characterized by hypersensitivity to rejection and controlling perfectionism.
- Phil Spector exhibited a lifelong pattern of gun violence and controlling behavior toward women, including imprisoning his wife Ronnie and threatening musicians.
- Lana Clarkson was a working actress and model who took B-movie roles seriously and volunteered with AIDS patients during widespread public fear.
- Forensic evidence contradicted Spector’s suicide defense: blood on his jacket, gunpowder residue on his hands, and a wiped-clean gun.
- Spector’s first trial ended in a mistrial due to one juror demanding proof beyond a shadow of a doubt; he was convicted in the second trial.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between stable high self-esteem and fragile high self-esteem according to the article?
People with stable high self-esteem have an innate sense of self-worth and handle negative feedback well because they know they’re awesome deep down. Those with fragile high self-esteem depend on external validation and lying to themselves rather than having something more innate; they often come across as introverted, anxious, and insecure, seeking constant validation because negative feedback risks damaging their illusion of themselves.
What is vulnerable narcissism and how does it relate to fragile self-esteem?
Vulnerable narcissism has a very high correlation with fragile self-esteem. Vulnerable narcissists have feelings of superiority to others but are extremely self-conscious and hypersensitive to rejection. They tend to be extremely controlling perfectionists with high levels of aggressive and abusive behaviors, and can be extremely manipulative to achieve their goals of perfection. If anything they do is perceived as less than perfect, it risks shattering their fragile psyche and sending them spiraling into depression.
Who was Lana Clarkson and what was her career before her death?
Lana Clarkson was born April 5, 1962 in Long Beach, California. She began pursuing entertainment at 16, landing her first role in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She appeared on popular 1980s TV shows and worked as a high fashion model internationally. She starred in Roger Corman B-movies including Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen. In her 30s her acting career slowed, and by 2003 she was working as a hostess at the House of Blues in West Hollywood while developing a stand-up comedy career.
What happened on the night of Lana Clarkson’s death?
On February 3, 2003, after meeting Phil Spector at the House of Blues where she worked, Lana reluctantly went to his mansion. His driver Adriano de Souza waited outside. At just after 5 am, Adriano heard a loud noise, approached the house, and saw Phil holding a gun with blood on his white jacket. Through the door he saw Lana slumped over in a chair, dead from a gunshot wound to the face. Phil told him, ‘I think I killed somebody’ before walking back inside.
What evidence suggested Lana Clarkson’s death was not a suicide?
Evidence included: only one 911 call was made (by the driver, not Phil); the gun was found next to her left leg but she was right-handed; an empty holster was found in the only opened drawer in the house; Lana was in the foyer wearing her jacket with her purse on her shoulder, suggesting she was trying to leave; Phil’s white jacket with blood on it was found in the master bedroom; blood was found inside Phil’s pockets, on the banister, and on a doorknob; no blood or fingerprints were on the gun, suggesting cleanup; a blood-covered cloth diaper was found in a bathroom; and Phil’s hands had gunpowder residue despite claiming he wasn’t close to her when it happened.
What was Phil Spector’s childhood like?
Phil Spector was born December 26, 1939 in the Bronx. He was a tiny child with big, protruding ears who faced abuse from classmates and some verbal abuse from his mother. He was also an asthmatic diabetic from a poor family. At age nine, his father committed suicide to escape crippling debt—either in front of Phil or with Phil finding the body. His family later moved to Los Angeles where he entered high school still small at 5’5”.
What was the ‘Wall of Sound’ technique that Phil Spector was famous for?
The Wall of Sound was Phil Spector’s signature recording technique first fully implemented in 1963. It involved using multiple instruments simultaneously to create a bigger, fuller sound—essentially an orchestra approach. Sometimes he would have the same part played on similar instruments like piano, electric keyboard, and harpsichord and blend them together to sound like a single instrument. The technique was considered groundbreaking because pop music from the 1940s and 50s had been so shallow and vapid with isolated instrument sounds rather than combinations of sound.
How did Phil Spector treat his first wife Ronnie Spector during their marriage?
Ronnie Spector was essentially a prisoner in her own home. Phil erected a chain link fence with barbed wire around his mansion and purchased guard dogs. He stole and hid her shoes so she couldn’t run away, and she was only allowed to leave once per month to buy ‘feminine products’ with a 20-minute time limit and bodyguards sent after her. She had to have a life-size dummy of Phil in the passenger seat when she left.
He installed a golden coffin with a glass lid in the basement and threatened to kill her and display her corpse if she tried to leave. He also pulled guns on her frequently and allegedly threatened to hire a hitman during divorce proceedings.
What happened during Phil Spector’s first murder trial?
Phil Spector’s first trial began in 2007, over four years after his arrest. The judge allowed testimony from his ex-wives and four other women he had pulled guns on, all with similar stories of rejecting his advances and having guns pulled on them. The defense claimed Lana accidentally committed suicide. After 6 months of trial and 12 days of deliberation, the jury was deadlocked at 10 guilty and 2 not guilty, with one juror requiring proof beyond a shadow of a doubt rather than reasonable doubt.
A mistrial was declared.
What was the outcome of Phil Spector’s second murder trial?
In the second trial, after 19 days of deliberation, the jury found Phil Spector guilty of murder in the second degree and of using a firearm in the commission of a crime. He was sentenced to 19 years to life in California state prison. His conviction was upheld on appeal in 2011, and subsequent appeals to the state Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court, Federal District Court, and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals were all denied. He died in prison on January 16, 2021 due to Covid.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: Phil Spector - Music Producer and Murderer
- Hero image source by OrdinaryScarlett / openverse, cc0.
