Let's say you're standing trial for the murder of a woman who died in your house – what's the last thing you'd want to do? Chances are it involves staggering out of your house covered in blood, holding a gun and saying "I think I killed somebody."
Silly old Phil Spector – that's exactly what he apparently did straight after Lana Clarkson died in his house in 2003. Yesterday the court in the Phil Spector murder trial heard the testimony of Spector's driver Adriano DeSouza – a man who claims he saw Phil Spector stumble out of his home on the night that Lana Clarkson died, holding a pistol in his blood-covered hand and saying "I think I killed somebody." However, Phil Spector's defence team is hoping to deflect away from this testimony by concentrating on DeSouza's lack of English skills. After all, to a foreigner "I think I killed somebody" probably does sound quite a lot like "That crazy woman in there just shot herself. How about this weather we're having, huh?"
Yesterday was a sad day in the Phil Spector murder trial, because it appeared to be the day that women stopped claiming that Phil Spector was a gun-toting maniac. Over the course of the last three weeks the court has heard how Phil Spector apparently hit a women on the head with a gun, then tried to rape another woman at gunpoint, then threatened two more women with guns then sort of dressed up like Elmer Fudd or something. That's all well and good, but it doesn't really tell anybody what happened on the night that Lana Clarkson died.
But that changed yesterday as Phil Spector's driver Adriano DeSouza took to the stand. It's probably not an exaggeration to call DeSouza the most important witness who'll take part in the trial, because it was DeSouza who saw Phil Spector emerge from his house at 5am on the night that Lana Clarkson was shot to death, holding the gun that killed her. It was also DeSouza who called 911 after Phil Spector apparently told him "I think I killed somebody." If it was also DeSouza who convinced Phil Spector to wear a bunch of wigs that made him look like the world's biggest lesbian Buck's Fizz fan then he'd have the hat-trick.
However, as the most vital part of the prosecution's case against Phil Spector, Adriano DeSouza is also the defence's biggest target. And this was shown when Phil Spector's no longer ill lawyer Bruce Cutler went on the attack, as the LA Times reports:
He called DeSouza an illegal immigrant who spoke poor English and was manipulated by police. DeSouza, he said, was merely "a substitute driver with a language problem, who was full of snacks and cookies and water and sound asleep, sitting in a closed car, with the heat on, and the radio on, and the fountain going."
It's a good point – fill us full of enough snacks and cookies and water and leave us in a warm car for long enough and we'll start falsely accusing people of murder too.
Bruce Cutler's point about Adriano DeSouza's lack of English skills was made clear a few times into his testimony, when he accidentally referred to a briefcase as a wallet, and inadvertently called Phil Spector a "she."
Oh, think up your own lesbian haircut jokes for that one. We're running short.
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Truth says
One question is where’s that fag Steve Escobar? Is he getting down under the table for anyone new?