Phil Spector to share a jail with notorious parent murderer Erik Menendez

When Phil Spector, the legendary music producer and convicted murderer, asked to move to a "better prison", he had in mind a place that did not house "gangsters and Manson types". Instead he's ended up in the same jail as an equally notorious Californian killer, Erik Menendez, serving life for killing his millionaire parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, in 1993.

Sixty-nine-year-old Spector is due to move this week to the Pleasant Valley state prison from the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison to make way for inmates who require mental health treatment.

Spector, sentenced to 19 years to life for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, will still be housed in a "sensitive needs yard" due to his notoriety, said California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton. "It's not about Spector,” she said. "It's about getting services to other inmates."

Erik Menendez was just 17 when he and his older brother Lyle shot their wealthy parents at point blank range at their Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers were not considered suspects and spent almost two years living a life of luxury on their inheritance. But after Erik confessed to his psychiatrist about the killings, the brothers were charged with murder in December 1992.

One man who would have enjoyed the irony of Spector and Menendez meeting up in the Pleasant Valley prison yard is Dominick Dunne, the novelist and journalist who died last week. Dunne covered both cases for Vanity Fair.

For an article titled 'Nightmare on Elm Drive' he visited the Mendendez home seven months after the murder, posing as a potential buyer for their Los Angeles mansion. The Spector trial was Dunne's last celebrity murder case. He called the record producer "a drama queen, albeit straight".