Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Henry C. Lee (Branford, CT), chair and professor of forensic science at the University of New Haven and chief emeritus in the Department of Public Safety in Meriden, CT, is a lifetime distinguished member of the International Association of Identification and a distinguished fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He is the author (with Jerry Labriola, MD) of Famous Crimes Revisited, The Budapest Connection, and Dr. Henry Lee’s Forensic Files, and (with Thomas W. O’Neil) Cracking Cases and Cracking More Cases, among other works. Dr. Lee was formerly on Court TV’s Trace Evidence (now TruTV). He has also been a special news analyst on TruTV and a frequent guest on Larry King Live, the Nancy Grace Show, Fox TV shows, and numerous other national television programs.

Jerry Labriola, M.D. (Naugatuck, CT), is the coauthor with Dr. Lee of three books and is the author of six mystery novels, including the recently released The Strange Death of Napoleon Bonaparte and the critically acclaimed Murders at Hollings General. A former pediatrician for over thirty years and also a Connecticut state senator, he now lectures extensively on true crime and forensic science issues, while writing both fiction and nonfiction.

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SHOCKING CASES FROM DR. HENRY LEE'S FORENSIC FILES

Prometheus Books

Contents

PROLOGUE..............................................................9CHAPTER 1. The Phil Spector Case......................................11CHAPTER 2. Brown's Chicken Massacre...................................65CHAPTER 3. Murder in the Sacristy.....................................117CHAPTER 4. A Police Shooting and the Public Trust.....................173CHAPTER 5. Atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia...........................205EPILOGUE..............................................................237NOTES.................................................................239BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................247INDEX.................................................................249

Chapter One

We begin with a criminal case that rocked the suburbs of Los Angeles and beyond.

BACKGROUND

Phil Spector has been variously described as temperamental, brilliant, quirky—and sometimes violent. He has nonetheless made a mark as one of the giants in the music industry, more so as a record producer and songwriter than a performer. As we shall see, his life has been both glamorous and sordid, with stretches of enormous success and unexpected failure—or all of the above in the same month. Once called a "little man with lifts in his shoes, [with a] wig on top of his head and four guns,"1 he's had tales of flaunting of firearms—including confronting performers with a gun or laughing while pointing a loaded pistol at a fellow producer's head—haunt him. Such gunplay took a different turn, however, in 2003, when he was arrested on suspicion of the murder of an attractive forty-year-old actress named Lana Clarkson.

The Early Years

Harvey Philip Spector was born December 26, 1939, in the Bronx, where he learned to play guitar and piano at an early age. Even then he had visions of becoming a songwriter, session musician, and record producer. Following his father's death by suicide in 1949, he moved with his family to Los Angeles, and it was there that he immersed himself in all aspects of the music business. He and three high school friends formed a band called the Teddy Bears. They (and especially Spector as both songwriter and performer) burst onto the musical scene with songs that impressed several record companies. One ballad—"To Know Him Is to Love Him"—went to number one on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart in 1958, selling more than a million copies in a matter of months. He was a seventeen-year-old high school student at the time and had taken the title from the inscription on his father's gravestone. At such a young age, Spector was well on his way to becoming a millionaire. Although the group dissolved soon thereafter, nearly thirty years later the song became a hit again when Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt, working as a trio, reprised it in 1987.

From 1958 to 1966, Spector concentrated mainly on production, forming a new record company, cooperating with others, and working freelance with established artists. But he didn't abandon songwriting entirely; during this time he penned such hits as "On Broadway" for the Drifters, "Spanish Harlem" for Ben E. King, and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" for the Righteous Brothers. The latter is cited by Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) as the song with the most US airtime in the twentieth century. There were flops during this period, to be sure, but he seemed to take them in stride, immediately bouncing back with a vengeance—and another smash hit.

As a producer, he turned out blockbusters such as "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," "My Sweet Lord," "River Deep—Mountain High," "Just Once in My Life," "Unchained Melody," "Ebb Tide," and "Every Breath I Take." Also among his productions was the Beatles' colossal album Let It Be, and between 1960 and 1965, he produced more than twenty-five top 40 hits.

Spector's innovative trademark during the sixties was the dramatic Wall of Sound, a production technique that utilized large numbers of musicians to create a dense and thunderous effect. The process combined scores of instruments, sound effects, and vocals—overdubbing in duplicate or triplicate to create the layered, textured quality that he wanted. Spector himself called his technique "a Wagnerian approach to rock and roll: little symphonies for the kids." Sometimes enormous groups of musicians took part: two bassists, three guitarists, three pianists, two or three drummers, and other percussionists.

During this era he usually worked at the Los Angeles Gold Star Studios because of its echo chambers that were so essential to his Wall of Sound. This technique is what made him such an important figure in the music world. Microphones in the recording studio would capture the sound, which was then transmitted to an echo chamber outfitted with speakers and microphones. The signal from the studio, playing through the speakers, would reverberate around the room before being picked up by the microphones. The echo-laden sound was then channeled back to the control room, where it was transferred to tape. The natural reverberation and echo from the hard walls of the room gave his productions their distinctive sound, and when played on AM radio it resulted in a rich and complex quality with an impressive depth rarely heard in mono recordings. Songwriter Jeff Barry described the Wall of Sound as "basically a formula. You're going to have four or five guitars line up, gut-string guitars, and they're going to follow the chords ... two basses in fifths, with the same type of line and strings ... six or seven horns, adding the little punches ... formula percussion instruments—the little bells, the shakers, the tambourines. Phil used his own formula for echo, and some overtone arrangements with strings. But by and large there was a formula arrangement."

Spector's signature design changed the way pop records were created and brought fame to singing groups such as the Crystals and the Ronettes (whose lead singer, Ronnie Bennett, he married in 1968), among others.

It was almost inevitable that Spector would devise such a revolutionary new sound, because he had many unconventional ideas about musical and recording techniques. For example, he openly detested stereo releases, claiming they took control of the record's sound away from the producer and gave it to the listener. He was just as vocal in his opposition to albums, once characterizing them as "two hits and ten pieces of junk."

He used an uncharacteristically hands-off approach, however, in working with his favorite musicians, a core collection of session players he affectionately labeled the "Wrecking Crew." Its members included guitarist Glen Campbell, pianist Leon Russell, and drummer Hal Blaine.

In 1971 Spector coproduced John Lennon's chart-topping Imagine album, utilizing forty-four microphones simultaneously. Its title track—which hit number one after Lennon's murder in 1980—is widely considered among the greatest pop songs of all time. But his relationship with Lennon soon soured. Some unnamed sources claimed Spector suffered a nervous breakdown in a recording studio and even brandished a gun in front of the famous Beatle. Also in 1971, Spector recorded the music for the number one triple album The...