![]() Without the theatrics of that trial, Weinberg's speciality was studied doubt. Facing him was the same lead prosecutor from the first trial, Alan Jackson. His legal team was reduced to a single lawyer, Doron Weinberg. He was accompanied by just one bodyguard, and his young wife, Rachelle. Gone was the retinue of heavies that had marched into court with him every day the first time around. ![]() Two hours later, she was dead.įor the second trial, almost six years after Clarkson's death, Spector downsized. Initially she took the freakishly coiffed Spector for a woman, before being corrected by the management and told to treat him "like gold".Īfter some persuasion she agreed to go home with Spector for a nightcap, watching Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in the back of the Mercedes S430 limousine driven by De Souza on the way to "Phil Spector's Pyrenees castle", a 33-room turreted mansion perched on a hill in the unprepossessing Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra. There, Spector met Clarkson, an actor whose role, far removed from the showbusiness recognition she craved, was to guard the VIP area. Despite his occasional awkwardness with English, De Souza recounted how he had collected Spector for an evening out that had seen him visit a clutch of Hollywood haunts, Trader Vic's and Dan Tana's, imbibe a huge amount of alcohol – "navy grog", 150-proof tequila – and share his evening with two dates before ending at the House of Blues. While the first trial was dominated by forensics and the finer points on how blood spatters, the rerun came down to an elaborate game of did he, didn't he, involving meditations on memory, suggestibility and English language proficiency.Īt the centre of the dispute was Spector's stand-in chauffeur on the night of Clarkson's death, Adriano de Souza, a Brazilian student who proved an unflappable witness. "She kissed the gun," he told one interviewer. He provided other staples of the Hollywood justice story: the tirade on the steps of the courthouse, the elaborate and downright weird hairdo, the rococo attire, the trophy wife, the phalanx of bodyguards. Spector, too, played the part, seeming to revel in a return to the spotlight. The full force of Los Angeles's celebrity crime armada descended: news helicopters hovered overhead, high-priced lawyers – celebrities in their own right – were summoned, news crews and the idly curious gathered to peer through the iron railings of Spector's home.
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