Phil Spector

A Los Angeles jury convicted Phil Spector of second-degree murder Monday, making the legendary record producer who worked with the Beatles and a host of other pop stars the first celebrity found guilty of murder on Hollywood's home turf in at least 40 years. The verdict read in a tense, standing-room-only courtroom came six years and two trials after police found Lana Clarkson, a statuesque blond actress, shot to death in a chair in Spector's 30-room Alhambra mansion.

Phil Spector stared straight ahead. It was the appointed hour for the legendary music producer's six-year murder case to come to a close and the courtroom was packed with reporters, fans and detractors eager to hear his sentence. But he did not look at the judge, take notes or whisper to his lawyer. For Spector, it seemed, it wasn't worth it.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office has determined that the death of a woman at record producer Phil Spector's mansion in Alhambra was a homicide, a spokesman said Monday. Lana Clarkson died of a gunshot wound to the head and neck, and she was shot by another, the coroner said. The decision about any charges Spector could face rests with the district attorney's office. Spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the case is under review. Details of the coroner's report remained sealed at the request of prosecutors.

In a courtroom with dimmed lights that recalled the dark Alhambra estate where an actress was shot to death six years ago, a prosecutor Monday called Phil Spector a "demonic maniac" with "a history of playing Russian roulette with the lives of women." "By the grace of God, five other women got the empty chamber and lived to tell," Deputy Dist. Atty. Truc Do said, referring to a string of former love interests who testified at Spector's murder retrial about harrowing encounters with him.

Larry Levine, the recording engineer who helped translate the grandiose sonic vision of record producer Phil Spector into some of the biggest-selling and most influential recordings of the rock era, died Thursday, on his 80th birthday, at his home in Encino. The announcement by his wife, Lyn, gave no cause of death, but he had suffered from emphysema and heart ailments, his cousin Stan Ross said.

A downtown Los Angeles hotel that housed Phil Spector and his defense team during his six-month murder trial last year is suing the record producer for $110,000 in unpaid hotel bills. Spector stopped paying the bills for rooms four months into his stay at the Westin Bonaventure, a few blocks from the Criminal Justice Center where his trial was held, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The judge in the Phil Spector murder retrial gave prosecutors tentative permission Tuesday to use Court TV footage of the testimony of a witness who died after the legendary producer's first trial ended in a hung jury. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler said he would make a final ruling after he screened a DVD of Dianne Ogden's testimony, but said video was more accurate than reading transcripts. Spector's attorneys had asked that jurors rely only on the transcripts.

A smiling Phil Spector shuffled out of a downtown Los Angeles courthouse 13 months ago after his murder trial ended in a hung jury, stepped into a chauffeured Mercedes and sped back to his Alhambra mansion. In the driveway of the hilltop estate, the legendary music producer and his wife danced ebulliently while waving to hovering news helicopters.

The jury that is set to begin hearing evidence against Phil Spector this week includes panelists with knowledge of guns and suicide, two issues at the heart of the music icon's murder retrial. According to jury questionnaires made public Monday, six panelists have fired weapons at a gun range or during military service and four keep weapons in their residences. Spector, 68, is accused in the 2003 fatal shooting of actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra mansion.

Thirteen months after a jury deadlocked over the guilt of legendary music producer Phil Spector in the death of an actress, a prosecutor rose before a second jury Wednesday and offered them the same promise he made to the first. "You will be introduced to the real Phillip Spector," Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson told the Los Angeles County Superior Court panel.