Witness says Spector is paying her sister

The fourth and final woman to allege that Phil Spector threatened her with a gun testified Thursday that she believes the music producer is giving money to her sister.

Defense attorney Roger Rosen had pointedly asked Melissa Grosvenor if she had told her sister not to testify in the case. Moments later, under questioning by prosecutor Patrick Dixon, Grosvenor shot back: “My sister is a drug addict. I put her in rehab.... I stopped giving her money, and I think now Spector is giving her money. That’s why she is doing this against me.”

Spector’s attorneys and prosecutors did not ask her to elaborate.

Spector, 67, a producer for bands including the Beatles, Ike and Tina Turner and the Righteous Brothers, is charged with killing 40-year-old actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra mansion on Feb. 3, 2003. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on $1-million bail.

Four women have testified that Spector pointed guns at them when they rejected his advances. The prosecution contends Spector routinely brandished guns when drunk and that the encounter with Clarkson fit the pattern. But they argue it went further when Spector shot her.

The defense has dismissed the argument as concocted in hindsight. Spector never fired a gun at the women, and Clarkson, whom he had just met at the House of Blues, shot herself in an “accidental suicide,” the defense said.

Grosvenor said Spector pointed a handgun at her when she tried to leave his home, then in Pasadena, in 1992 or early 1993. She said she fell asleep in a chair and left the next morning.

Under cross-examination, Spector’s attorneys grilled Grosvenor on Wednesday about a 1989 embezzlement conviction. She said she had stolen from a bank where she worked.

Rosen asked Grosvenor on Thursday if she had told her sister not to testify in the Spector case, saying her sister could go to jail for not testifying. Grosvenor said she told her sister not to lie under oath, which could land her in jail, setting off a series of questions leading to her statement that she believed Spector had paid her sister.

Jean Rosenbluth, a USC law professor who has been watching the trial, said Grosvenor’s declaration about her sister, if true, could hurt the defense if it plans to call the sister as a witness to impeach Grosvenor.

Rosen said the defense will call one or two of Grosvenor’s sisters. They will show, he said, that Grosvenor was “untruthful.”

Following Grosvenor’s appearance, prosecutors played an answering machine tape from Stephanie Jennings, a photographer who earlier testified that Spector threatened her with a gun in 1995 when she refused to join him in his New York hotel suite. The two messages from Spector were not related to that incident, but prosecutors played them to back up Jennings’ testimony that Spector was given to hostile rages.

The brief messages were incoherent and obscene -- a reading of the transcript shows about 20 of the 166 words are profanities. Near the end of one message, Spector says he will “put you out of business. I’m gonna try real hard to do so and I guarantee you I will.”

Later, Rommie Davis, a high school classmate who had dinner with Spector the night of Clarkson’s death, testified that Spector consumed two daiquiris over dinner, which she said disturbed her because she had not seen him drink before that weekend.

Rosen, cross-examining Davis, noted that she had told investigators in previous interviews that Spector was not drunk. Davis said, “I am not an expert on alcoholism and what constitutes being drunk.”

Kathy Sullivan, who drank with Spector later that night, testified they had been drinking but said that Spector was well-behaved.

Rosenbluth said Davis’ seeming contradiction probably would not harm her credibility with jurors, since she did not appear to be someone motivated to lie to hurt Spector.

Davis in fact approached Spector in the courtroom after jurors left for lunch and spoke to him for perhaps a minute as they stood facing each other. Spector nodded, not quite smiling, but with a warm expression as he listened to Davis.

Outside the courtroom, Davis, close to tears, related her feeling toward Spector through a reporter: “I said I care very much about you, I always will. You were always, always, always good and kind.”

The trial resumes Monday with additional testimony from Sullivan and others who encountered Spector the night of the shooting.

peter.hong@latimes.com