Last photograph of Spector case victim as court told he confessed to murder

This is the last photograph ever taken of actress Lana Clarkson.

Just a few hours later she would be shot in the mouth in the home of Phil Spector.

Prosecutors claim that moments after the shooting, Spector confessed to his chauffeur that he had murdered the B-list actress.

After a night of drinking at Los Angeles nightspots including Dan Tana's restaurant, Trader Vics and the House of Blues, Spector persuaded the 40-year-old to go home with him for a nightcap.

The jury heard that the music producer had already sunk at least ten alcoholic drinks. When he first met Miss Clarkson, the court was told, she thought he was a woman.

When he asked to be allowed into the VIP Foundation Room at the House of Blues, Miss Clarkson, who was the hostess, at first refused to let him in.

"Don't you know who I am? I'm Phil Spector," he told her, according to the prosecution. She replied: "Oh I'm sorry, Mrs Spector."

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Phil Spector: A nervous smile as he arrives in court at the beginning of his trial

After talking to Spector, Miss Clarkson later relented to his attempts to persuade her to go home with him and left the club at around 2.20am.

But prosecutor Alan Jackson told the jury the late-night liaison ended in murder.

Mr Jackson said chauffeur Adriano De Souza was parked outside Spector's home when he heard a shot ring out at 5am.

"The back door then creaked open. Phillip Spector emerged from that door. He was wearing that same white jacket that he had been wearing that evening before. In his right hand a pistol.

"Between his fingers ran blood. Phillip Spector looked directly at Adriano De Souza from about four or five feet away and confessed: 'I think I killed somebody'. Adriano De Souza asked what had happened. Phillip Spector shrugged, then turned away.

"Mr De Souza for his part almost immediately went into shock and panic, he began to call for help.

"He looked inside the doorway and saw only her feet. He looked a little further around Spector and saw her bloody face."

Phil Spector had a long history of pulling guns on his girlfriends before he shot dead an actress at his hilltop mansion, prosecutor Alan Jackson told the court.

Opening his case, Jackson said the legendary pop producer could become "sinister and deadly".

He had previously held four wealthy women at gunpoint in separate incidents before shooting B-movie actress Lana Clarkson through the mouth.

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The victim: Lana Clarkson was shot dead at Phil Spector's hilltop castle

Spector, 67, wearing a blond page boy wig, beige suit and purple open-necked shirt, stared straight ahead as the Los Angeles deputy district attorney addressed the jury.

"The evidence is going to paint a picture of a man, who on February 3, 2003, put a loaded pistol in Lana Clarkson's mouth - inside her mouth - and shot her to death," he said.

He said Spector even came out of his house after a gunshot was fired, holding a pistol in a blood-soaked hand and told his chauffeur: "I think I killed somebody."

But the prosecutor said the murder did not happen in "a vacuum".

"She was the last in a very long line of women who had been victimized by Phil Spector over the years," said Mr Jackson.

Detailing four separate cases involving women who will say they were threatened by the producer, he continued: "You will see a pattern.

"The defendant was drinking, he had a romantic interest, he flew into a rage when she tried to leave and he pulled out a gun and forced her to spend the night."

He said Spector's previous targets included comedian Joan Rivers's former manager and a co-ordinator for the Grammy music awards.

Using swearwords and banging the table, the prosecutor detailed each incident, emphasizing their similarities and comparing them to the fatal night Spector took 40-year-old Lana Clarkson home to his rambling "castle" in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra.

With his new wife, Rachelle, watching from the public gallery, Spector occasionally shook his head as Mr Jackson ran through the "history of pulling guns on unarmed women".

"Lana Clarkson was the last of a long line of women victimized by Phillip Spector over the years," the prosecutor said, adding that the jury will hear from them.

"Before Lana Clarkson came Stephanie Jennings and before her Dorothy Melvin and before her Melissa Grosvenor. And before her Diane Halder.

"The evidence will show ladies and gentleman that the defendant has a pattern and that pattern began to emerge all the way back to the late 1980s.

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Prosecutor: Alan Jackson mimics a gun pointed to the forehead

"You will hear that each of these incidents is strikingly similar to the next and through the evidence you will hear from the first four women.

"Lana Clarkson however will have to tell her story from the evidence from beyond the grave."

Grammy co-ordinator Diane Hogden Halder dated Spector in the Eighties.

After a night of drinking, Spector "snapped" in a violent rage after she told him she didn't want to spend the night, said Mr Jackson.

"He pressed the barrel of a gun into her face, driving the steel of the weapon into her face, her neck, her forehead. She was scared to death. She was scared he was going to kill her," he said.

Two weeks later, he said Spector again pulled a gun on Miss Hogden Halder, who has not seen him since.

Spector met Melissa Grosvenor at a New York dinner party in 1991. The prosecutor said their dating followed a similar pattern. When she tried to leave after he had been drinking heavily, he whipped into a rage and "pointed a gun at her face."

Dorothy Melvin, Joan Rivers' ex-manager, thought Spector was "charming" when she first met him in 1989.

But on a visit to his then home in Pasadena, California, four years later, the prosecution says Spector held her at gunpoint, forcing her to give him her handbag because he feared she was trying to sneak out without telling him.

When she finally managed to persuade him to allow her to drive away, Mr Jackson said Spector came charging down his driveway waving a pump-action shotgun at her.

"He held it in her face and said, 'I told you to get the **** out of here.'"

The fourth woman, Stephanie Jennings, was allegedly barricaded in a New York hotel room by the gun-wielding producer.

Spector, famed for his Sixties "Wall of Sound" production style that created hits for the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner, pleads not guilty to second-degree murder. He claims Lana Clarkson killed herself by accident.

The actress had met Spector barely three hours before she died. She had gone home with him from her job as a nightclub hostess after being told to look after him.

The trial continues.