Witness recounts Spector's threats with gun

LOS ANGELES — Pressing her index finger to her cheek to mimic a gun barrel, a former assistant to Phil Spector testified Monday the famous music producer and murder defendant threatened to shoot her in 1989.

"He put it all over me," Dianne Ogden, on the verge of tears, said as she moved her finger from her right cheek to her nose to her forehead.

Spector, she said, ordered her to the bedroom of his home, then in Pasadena, because, Ogden said, "he wanted to rape me."

Spector, the producer of records for the Beatles, Ike and Tina Turner and the Righteous Brothers, is charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson, who was shot in the mouth at his Alhambra mansion Feb. 3, 2003. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on $1 million bail.

Ogden, who said she had been a friend and part-time assistant to Spector, is the second woman to testify that the music producer threatened her with a gun when she tried to leave his home.

Prosecutors are expected to call at least two other women to testify they also were held at gunpoint when they rejected Spector's advances, bolstering the district attorney's theory that he followed a pattern of luring women to his home, drinking, then pulling guns on them when they tried to leave — the blueprint, they say, for Clarkson's death.

Defense attorneys contend Clarkson shot herself after meeting Spector that night at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, where she worked as a hostess in the club's VIP room.

Ogden said she had been at Spector's Pasadena house in March 1989 for a party with a few others and was preparing to leave around midnight. She described putting her handbag over her shoulder and heading for the door when she said Spector approached her with a rifle. Clarkson was found dead with her bag over the shoulder, which prosecutors say indicates she was trying to leave Spector's house.

Ogden stopped her narrative to declare: "I want to make it clear I was subpoenaed to come here."

Ogden never contacted police about Spector's threats and spoke up only when investigators appeared at her Park City, Utah, home in 2004, she testified.

Ogden smiled and spoke affectionately of Spector. But the charming man whose friendship she enjoyed became vicious when drunk, she said.

She said she followed his orders to spend the night in his Pasadena home because "he said he was going to blow my brains out." Asked if they had sexual relations, Ogden responded, "He tried."

Ogden said she continued to see Spector because she felt he "needed help" and his outbursts were out of character. A few months after she said she was forced to spend the night, Ogden said Spector chased her with an Uzi submachine gun as she drove away from his house.

Ogden's account of being chased down Spector's driveway echoed testimony from Dorothy Melvin, a former girlfriend, that Spector followed her with a shotgun as she drove from his house in 1993.