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05-30-09, 09:47 PM
THE pop music producer Phil Spector is selling his 30-room mansion in Los Angeles to fund an appeal against his 19-year prison sentence for murdering a Hollywood actress there.
Spector, 69, has asked his young wife Rachelle Short to arrange the sale and to store valuable artefacts from his rock’n’roll life, including musical instruments given to him by John Lennon and Ike Turner, for a possible auction.
Selling the faux-French mansion at 1700 Grand View Drive, Alhambra, may cover only a small part of his multi-million-dollar legal bills. According to estate agents, its value has fallen from $1.3m (£800,000) to $800,000 (£500,000) in recent months.
“As a murder house, it might reach $1m for an appropriate buyer,” said a Sotheby’s International estate agent. “We are not representing the estate, but we have already had inquiries.”
In 1998, when Spector paid $1.1m for the house, he told Esquire magazine: “I’ve brought myself a beautiful and enchanting castle in a hick town.”
The New Yorker surrounded the decaying mansion with 6ft walls, electrified wire and a hand-painted sign declaring the estate was “Phil Spector’s Pyrenees Castle”.
This is where prosecutors said Spector shot his victim, the B-movie actress Lana Clarkson, 40, after she tried to leave after a night of club-hopping in February 2003.
Spector maintained that she was out of control, dancing around his house singing his 1960s hit You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ before producing an unregistered Colt Cobra handgun, waving it around and then suddenly pressing it to her head and pulling the trigger.
Spector staggered out of the house into the driveway with a second gun in his hand and told his chauffeur, who was parked outside: “I think I killed somebody.” Later that day he told police, who had shot him twice with a Taser gun before bundling him to the ground: “Nobody takes a gun from me.”
After 10 months of forensic and witness testimony, spread over two near-identical trials, the jury rejected the defence case that Clarkson killed herself.
On Friday he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison, which means he will become eligible for parole when he is 79.
Spector’s lawyer, Doron Weinberg, said his client “was doing as well as can be expected”, but was looking forward to his appeal.
A spokesman for the victim’s family said: “After six years of character assassination by Mr Spector’s lawyers, we are pleased with the result. There is no joy here, but now he knows that actions have consequences.”
Spector, 69, has asked his young wife Rachelle Short to arrange the sale and to store valuable artefacts from his rock’n’roll life, including musical instruments given to him by John Lennon and Ike Turner, for a possible auction.
Selling the faux-French mansion at 1700 Grand View Drive, Alhambra, may cover only a small part of his multi-million-dollar legal bills. According to estate agents, its value has fallen from $1.3m (£800,000) to $800,000 (£500,000) in recent months.
“As a murder house, it might reach $1m for an appropriate buyer,” said a Sotheby’s International estate agent. “We are not representing the estate, but we have already had inquiries.”
In 1998, when Spector paid $1.1m for the house, he told Esquire magazine: “I’ve brought myself a beautiful and enchanting castle in a hick town.”
The New Yorker surrounded the decaying mansion with 6ft walls, electrified wire and a hand-painted sign declaring the estate was “Phil Spector’s Pyrenees Castle”.
This is where prosecutors said Spector shot his victim, the B-movie actress Lana Clarkson, 40, after she tried to leave after a night of club-hopping in February 2003.
Spector maintained that she was out of control, dancing around his house singing his 1960s hit You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ before producing an unregistered Colt Cobra handgun, waving it around and then suddenly pressing it to her head and pulling the trigger.
Spector staggered out of the house into the driveway with a second gun in his hand and told his chauffeur, who was parked outside: “I think I killed somebody.” Later that day he told police, who had shot him twice with a Taser gun before bundling him to the ground: “Nobody takes a gun from me.”
After 10 months of forensic and witness testimony, spread over two near-identical trials, the jury rejected the defence case that Clarkson killed herself.
On Friday he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison, which means he will become eligible for parole when he is 79.
Spector’s lawyer, Doron Weinberg, said his client “was doing as well as can be expected”, but was looking forward to his appeal.
A spokesman for the victim’s family said: “After six years of character assassination by Mr Spector’s lawyers, we are pleased with the result. There is no joy here, but now he knows that actions have consequences.”