Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 17: Phil Spector and the murder of Lana Clarkson
At 5:02 on the morning of February 3, 2003, a chauffeur named Adriano de Souza made a frantic 911 call.
Within minutes, two officers pulled up to a 33-room mansion at 1700 Grand Avenue in Alhambra, east of Los Angeles. It was a large home known as the Pyrenees Castle, “The Castle,” for short, because of its many turrets.
They walked up the 88 stairs to the front door. Looking through the windows, they see a man with strange straggly hair pacing back and forth. The door was open, so they pushed it and went in.
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The man came to meet the officers, speaking weirdly and not making a lot of sense. He said, “Hey, you gotta come in and see this.”
Inside was a blonde woman slumped in a chair. The man continued to babble and got so agitated that he got tasered. But he didn’t go down. The cops had to wrestle him to the floor.
With the man under control, one of the cops checks on the woman. There’s a small revolver lying on the floor next to her. There’s an open drawer on a nearby table with an empty holster…and on the floor, a bunch of teeth.
The woman—whose name turned out to be Lana Clarkson—was dead. The crazy man on the floor was the famous producer Phil Spector. Had he shot Lana? Or was it (as he would claim) a suicide?
This was the beginning of one of the most spectacular and weird music business murder trials in history. this is Uunchartered: Crime and Mayhem in the Music industry. Do I have a story for you…
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- Toronto: AM 640 (4-5am)
- London: 980 CFPL (4-5am)
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- Edmonton: 630 CHED (1-2am)
- Calgary: QR77 (770 AM and 107.1 FM) (1-2am)
- Winnipeg: 680 CJOB (1-2am)