Two more women paint Phil Spector as their tormentor · 2007-05-11 11:58
Two more women painted a portrait of Phil Spector as a dual personality who could be charming and then switch to being a gun-waving abuser who threatened their lives.
Their testimony brought to four the number of women called by the prosecution in Spector’s murder trial to describe a pattern of threats with guns before the 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson, who was killed by a shot fired from a gun in her mouth after she went home with the record producer from her job at a nightclub.
"He walked up, held the gun to my face between my eyes and said, "If you try to leave I'm going to kill you," witness Melissa Grosvenor testified.
Grosvenor said she met Spector in New York in 1991 when she was a waitress, found him "very charming, quick-witted" and had a platonic dating relationship with him for a year and a half.
She said after a dinner in Beverly Hills she went to his house, but when she told Spector around 2 a.m. that she was tired and wanted to go, he left the room and returned with a gun, The Toronto Star reports.
"I was shocked. I started crying… I was afraid. There was no doubt in my mind if I tried to leave he was going to kill me,"_ Grosvenor said.
Earlier, music industry photographer Stephanie Jennings testified that Spector threatened her with a gun and held her hostage in a hotel room, forcing her to call 911.
Jennings said she and Spector developed a long-distance relationship in 1994 and the following year she joined him for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions in New York.
She described being at a party where Spector became "extremely drunk, obnoxious."
She said she went back to her room and slept until a bodyguard knocked and told her Spector wanted her in his room. She said that when she refused, Spector showed up drunk and in a growing argument he slapped or pushed her, causing her to fall on the toilet. She said she grabbed Spector, who fell into the bathtub.
Spector left, returned with a gun, put a chair in front of the door "and said I wasn't going anywhere," she said.
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