One photo has rocked the Phil Spector trial: the limp and lifeless body of the music madman’s alleged victim, Lana Clarkson.
The gruesome display was captured in the foyer of Spector’s lavish Alhambra, Calif., mansion in the early morning of Feb. 3, 2003.
Observers squirmed in the courtroom as the horrifying photo of Clarkson – a night-club hostess and former actress – was projected.
She is seen sitting next to the antique desk where Spector kept the gun he allegedly used to shoot her in the head in a fit of rage.
He claims that Clarkson was depressed, loaded the gun herself, and committed suicide.
As the photos were shown, Clarkson’s mom and sister averted their eyes, looking down. The jurors also seemed moved.
“Studies have shown that jurors can be psychologically scarred from seeing pictures like this,” said Professor Stan Goldman of L.A.’s Loyola Law School, who was in the court yesterday.
“These photos are very vivid. They’re vivid because she’s sitting there as if she were alive, but, of course, we know she’s not.”
Yesterday, the prosecution made a major score when it was allowed to play a police video of the first interview in which Spector’s driver, Adriano DeSouza, recalled the moment he saw the tall blonde slumped in the chair.
“I remember that [she] was like in this position, on a slant,” said DeSouza, who could be seen on the grainy black-and-white video simulating Clarkson’s lifeless body.
“You could just see the blood.”
DeSouza told cops that after he briefly gaped at Clarkson’s lifeless body, he looked back and Spector made a “stupid, stupid face.”
In a video police made five hours after the killing, DeSouza said he was about six feet away from Clarkson when he got his first look at her body.
“I can see the, the legs over there,” DeSouza recounted to cops. “Then I saw her.”
The video was introduced – over the strenuous opposition of defense lawyers – to show that DeSouza had told a consistent story from the beginning.
The defense had implied through its questions Monday that DeSouza, an illegal immigrant from Brazil, have been testifying in hope of having his INS trouble smoothed out by prosecutors.
But the video showed him telling cops that Spector said, “I think I killed somebody” before DeSouza had any idea that he may have immigration issues. It also showed that the Brazilian had a mastery of the English language at the time of the crime.
The jurors could be seen yesterday paying rapt attention to the video, and the 98 pages of the written transcript they were handed could be heard turning in unison.