Spector faces new witness in murder trial

Phil Spector (pictured), the legendary music producer, is facing a second legal battle over his alleged murder of Lana Clarkson, the struggling B-movie actress who was found dead from a gunshot wound to the mouth at his Los Angeles home in February 2003. The first trial, held last year, ended in a jury deadlock, but the prosecution team are hopeful of a guilty verdict when the re-trial begins in September because another woman is now prepared to testify that Spector once threatened her with a gun when she rejected his advances. She is Norma Kemper, one of his former personal assistants.

According to a motion filed by prosecutors, Spector took Kemper to the LA restaurant Dan Tana’s in 1996, a place he also visited on the night Clarkson died. The document claims Spector, 68, became drunk and made a pass at Kemper. When she turned him down, he showed her a gun in a holster beneath his jacket and said: “You know I could kill you right now.”

Kemper joins a roll call of six other woman who have already testified that he pulled a gun on them. However, Spector's defence team plan to oppose the use of Kemper and the other women’s testimonies and maintain that Lana Clarkson’s fatal gunshot was either self-inflicted, an accident or suicide.