Homicide

You have me locked up like some goddamn fucking turd.

You have me jerking around when somebody comes over to my house

and then blows her fucking head open.

Then you people come around,

and arrest me, bang the shit out of my fucking ass,

and beat the shit out of me.

I'm gonna make you fucking people pay for this. This is bullshit.

Waiting at the Alhambra Police Department in custody was Phil Spector.

I knew from the phone call from my lieutenant

that he was a very wealthy music producer.

Me, personally, I'd never heard of him.

Spector's style is often credited

with changing how we hear pop music.

This case was going to be what I call "red ball,"

a case that's gonna draw a lot of attention.

And you have to recognize that going in.

And I think we all did.

The LA County Sheriff's Department is the best of the best.

Some of the highest-profile cases are tried in Los Angeles.

You have to be dedicated 110%.

This is murder. There's no more serious crime.

It boils down to a passion and a sense of duty.

Justice comes from finding the truth.

There's something special and different about celebrity cases.

And it's always been Los Angeles

that seems to be the epicenter of those cases.

Everybody thinks of Los Angeles and they think of Hollywood.

Hollywood and actors and directors and producers.

There's so much more to it than that.

However, that is sort of the... the heartbeat of this city.

LA is a funny place,

and the LA County sheriffs serve the entire county,

from the worst poverty imaginable in America

to the greatest wealth in America,

to $100 million oceanfront estates.

We police all of that.

So it's quite a variety.

My ultimate goal was Homicide.

And I was fortunate enough in 1999 to make it.

At the time, my children were seven and nine.

People were saying they're too young,

because it's a lot of hours and there's always something to do,

but we worked around our family life.

If that meant we're going in the office at ten o'clock at night to get it done,

that's what we were gonna do.

My partner Paul Fornier and I were about to get off call

when we received a message from the desk

that we were being assigned a case in a mansion in Alhambra.

And the only information we had... That a woman was found dead,

and a music producer was involved.

I was a bit surprised that there was this large palatial property there

in this kind of small town

that's really just a suburb of downtown Los Angeles.

Alhambra is a sleepy hollow.

It's middle-class, single-family residence.

And now you have this monstrosity, if you will, in the middle of nowhere.

So as we got closer, we saw a large crowd behind yellow crime scene tape.

And I remember Paul said, "Put on your big-boy pants."

A female had been shot inside of the residence.

The victim has been pronounced dead at the location.

When I got there, it was an absolute zoo.

The news copters were up above and news vans up and down the street.

When we arrived on scene,

we first talked to Alhambra police officers.

Let me explain how it works.

The sheriff's department covers a large area of LA County.

And in that county, you have smaller municipalities.

They have their own police department.

However, they don't have the resources that the sheriff's department has.

There are 100 homicide detectives in the LA County Sheriff's Department,

so they will reach out to us,

and we will assume responsibility for the case.

Alhambra police officers told me

that they had received a 911 phone call from Phil Spector's chauffeur.

When they arrived, they could see Phil Spector

walking back and forth in the upstairs window.

They're trying to get his attention, to come downstairs.

And the guy's not complying. He's not coming out.

They entered the home where they confronted Phil Spector.

He's not cooperative.

They see a woman slumped over in a chair, obviously dead.

Phil is ranting, "This is the most devastating thing I've ever seen."

One of the officers had the whole thing recorded.

This is absolute fucking nonsense.

I don't know what that fucking lady... what her problem is.

But she was with security at the House of Blues.

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.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

They have to tase him.

I believe they even used a ballistic shield to knock him down.

The Alhambra officers conducted a very preliminary investigation.

Based on that investigation, they took Mr. Phil Spector into custody.

I've been around long enough to know

that people take death in a myriad of ways.

You have to take into account everything. You have to keep an open mind.

And based on what Spector is saying, suicide is a possibility.

Back door was open.

As we enter in, I see a young lady.

She's sprawled out in a chair in the foyer.

There's a .38 caliber handgun by her foot.

You could see she was suffering from a gunshot wound inside of her mouth.

We didn't know who she was. We didn't know if they had a relationship.

Maybe something went sideways.

Is this a crime? Is this a suicide? Could this be a horrible accident?

A three-pronged investigation.

We treat all death investigations on the surface, at first glance,

as if they're a murder.

We send homicide cops to every suicide

that occurs in the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff.

Every accidental death, with the exception of a traffic collision,

we send a homicide cop.

I'm starting to look at the paraphernalia in Mr. Spector's home,

and I am starting to grasp the importance of this person in that industry.

Phil Spector's fame as a producer

at times eclipsed the artists he worked with.

You see Tina Turner. You see pictures of the Righteous Brothers.

You see the Beatles, the Grammy nominations,

and all the awards that he had gotten over the years.

As the lead investigator,

if this thing works out well, kudos to you.

But if it goes sideways, you are held responsible.

We assigned Mark Lillienfeld,

one of the most seasoned detectives at Homicide,

to do the scene

because we knew that was going to be a critical part

in this whole investigation.

Big cases and Mark Lillienfeld kind of go hand-in-hand.

High-profile cases can stress cops out, and I couldn't care less.

We put the same amount of effort

and resources and diligence into every murder scene.

The house was in horrible shape.

It was poorly lit.

It was filthy.

And there were mice and rats and roaches.

For somebody of such extreme wealth, it was like, well, a bit out of character.

You'd think he would live this extravagant lifestyle.

There was everything in that house. I mean, literally.

Like he was a multi-millionaire pack rat.

You're like, "I know I need to make sure that I don't miss something."

But you're also like,

"Spector probably hasn't been in this room for six years."

It was the most unique crime scene investigation

I'd ever been involved in,

and truthfully, one I'd never wanna have to do again.

It was awful, it was terrible,

because it was so convoluted.

So we knew we had the decedent remains right there.

We had physical evidence of blood, the gunshot wound that was visible.

She'd been shot in the mouth.

So there were teeth and fragments of teeth that were spread out amongst her remains.

They were on the carpeting. They were across the room on a stairway.

We collected it, we photographed it, we diagrammed it, we held it for DNA.

You gotta get past the ick factor and the emotional part of that.

You gotta get past that. "What do these things tell me?"

We're there to speak for the dead,

and they leave us clues with physical evidence.

All of us knew that when you're standing over a dead person,

that's an awesome responsibility, and you have to take it seriously.

You have to take a somewhat spiritual ideology.

I could look at a dead body, have no effect.

That's just a shell, and the person's spirit is already gone.

I do think it has an accumulation, being in the presence of death.

The job can take its toll.

Now you focus on solving it.

And so we just methodically took our time before releasing the scene.

Usually, you hold a scene, maybe... if there's a lot of evidence,

maybe seven, eight hours.

On this one, we held it over a day.

On the floor was a loaded .38 caliber revolver

manufactured by the Colt firearms company,

and there was one spent cartridge in the cylinder of that weapon.

There was, mixed in with that, a thumb-lock device

off of the back door to the home.

Most people have a deadbolt and it goes from the door into the frame,

and it provides that extra security.

In order to throw that deadbolt,

you twist this thumb device,

and that was off of the lock itself and was lying on the floor.

It was very unusual. Like, "How did that happen?"

Some people would say, "It looks like the gun was placed by her foot."

The problem is you could never reenact where a gun would land.

You know, gun drops,

and it just flops around.

A leather snap holster was in a drawer of the bureau,

and it was clear that that leather holster

fit the two-inch Colt blue-steel .38 caliber revolver.

So, uh, that... that weapon came from that holster.

It was about 5:00 p.m., almost 12 hours later.

The coroner's office finally had confirmation

of the identity of the victim.

This was Lana Clarkson.

At that point, we were able to obtain the mother's information.

We're heading over to see Donna.

I got a phone call from Lana's sister, Fawn.