Spector's Ex-Wife Discusses Murder Arrest

ByABC News via logo
February 3, 2003, 10:44 PM

Feb. 4 -- Ronnie Spector, ex-wife of legendary rock producer Phil Spector,says she's "baffled" over the murder arrest of her ex-husband because she never thought he was capable of killing anyone.

"I don't think he would murder anybody," Ronnie Spector told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America today.

"I'm still like in shock, you know, I haven't slept all night," she said.

Spector, the genius behind 1960s girl groups like the Ronettes and later, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Cher was arrested for murder Monday in the fatal shooting of a woman at his hilltop mansion in a Los Angeles suburb.

Police responded to the music producer's home after receiving a call from someone inside the estate about shots being fired. They found the body of 40-year-old Lana Clarkson in the foyer. After a brief investigation Spector the recipient of two Grammy awards was arrested.

Spector's ex-wife is Ronnie Spector, a member of the Ronettes, one of several girl groups he ushered into superstardom. She said Spector's reputation as a temperamental, reclusive and erratic genius is well-founded. But she says she never considered him a physical threat.

He Pulled a Gun and I Ran

"I never thought he would ever kill anybody," Ronnie Spector said."I ran away a lot of times when I was married to him because he would yell, but he would never hit me," she said. "In the first three months of our marriage he pulled a gun and I ran away because I was afraid, and I never saw him with a gun again."

Spector's neighbors said the 62-year-old producer was rarely seen at his home, a replica castle with a marble entrance overlooking a middle-class neighborhood and shielded by large pine trees, but he was sometimes seen coming or going in a white Rolls Royce or another car.

Robert Christgau, the chief music critic for the Village Voice, said Spector has always been known to those in the music world as someone with odd personality traits.

"He was kind of a paranoid guy, very reclusive, I mean some would say also charming and really smart, but most wouldn't," Christgau said.