Spector Defense: Chauffeur's English Is Iffy

Perhaps something was lost in translation between Phil Spector and his chauffeur.

The music producer's defense team got Adriano De Souza, the driver working for Spector the night Lana Clarkson died, to say under cross-examination Wednesday that he sometimes had trouble understanding his boss. He also said that he and the soft-spoken Spector hadn't exchanged words very often.

The Brazilian-born De Souza testified yesterday that he had been dozing off in the car outside Phil Spector's suburban Los Angeles mansion at around 5 a.m. on Feb. 3, 2003, when he was awakened by a loud "pow" noise. A moment later, he said, Spector came out the back door, holding a gun at waist level, and told De Souza, "I think I killed somebody."

"Ever misunderstand him?" defense attorney Bradley Brunon asked De Souza.

"Yes," De Souza responded. Although his native language is Portuguese, he added, he had been taking English classes on and off for more than 20 years.

De Souza, who said yesterday that he had been in the United States for about four years prior to Clarkson's death, also admitted on the stand that his student visa had run out and that he is currently in this country illegally.

He remained unflustered, though, and stuck by his recollections. "The most important stuff that happened that night, yes, I remember very well," De Souza asserted.

Spector's alleged admittance to De Souza is a cornerstone of the prosecution's case. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office is alleging that the famed Wall of Sound creator had a history of getting liquored up and threatening his girlfriends with firearms and that his pattern turned deadly when he met Lana Clarkson, who died from a gunshot wound to the mouth.

Spector's camp is arguing that the Barbarian Queen actress shot herself.

In court Wednesday morning, prosecutors played at tape of the 911 call De Souza made to the California Highway Patrol Office shortly after the shooting, after, according to him, he looked through the back door and saw Clarkson slumped on a chair in the hallway.

"I think my boss just killed somebody," the heavily accented De Souza told the dispatcher. "I hear the, uh, uh, uh…like a noise. And then he opened the door and 'I think he—I killed her.' "

"You think your boss killed somebody?" the operator responded, ordering him to stay on the line. De Souza then described seeing a lady on the floor and Spector holding a gun.

"Because…he, he have a lady on the, on the floor and he have a gun in, in his hand."

"Did you hear him shoot?" the operator asked. "Yeah, I heard a pow," De Souza answered.

The driver was then transferred to an Alhambra police officer, to whom he repeated his story.

"I'm not inside anymore," De Souza told the officer. "I'm afraid to go inside. To which the officer said, "I don't want you to, okay?"

Under questioning from Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson, De Souza said that, before he called 911, he considered running away from the scene, but then drove the car outside of the property's gate and used his cell phone to call Spector's assistant, with whom he left a message, and then the cops.

"I didn't know what to do," De Souza said. "I tried to escape from that place…He could shoot me."

He said he called the assistant to get Spector's correct street address, but then remembered it was posted outside of the gate.

Earlier, De Souza described his relationship with Spector as professional and said that, although he often got his name wrong, Spector never called him "bad names." Spector did, however, complain sometimes about traffic and the routes De Souza chose to transport him around Los Angeles.

After De Souza was excused, Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler sent the jury on their way at lunchtime, as well, opting for a closed court to hear testimony from forensics expert Henry Lee, who the prosecution has alleged picked up a piece of acrylic nail from the so-called crime scene—evidence that never made its way to the D.A.

Lee denied the statement made by an investigator who was at the scene who claimed he saw Lee pick up what looked like a nail and put a small piece of white matter into a test tube.

"I feel pretty upset. I think my reputation is severely damaged," Lee, who was a prominent defense witness in O.J. Simpson's murder trial, told the court. He called the prosecution's allegation "an honest mistake," and said that he only collected blood stain samples and a piece of thread.

The jury is expected back in court on Monday.

Outside of the L.A. courthouse where Spector's fate will be determined by nine men and three women who supposedly didn't have a preconceived bias about the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's guilt or innocence heading into this trial, Inside Edition broadcast a two-year-old video made by Spector in which he talks about why he couldn't have murdered Clarkson, who died of a gunshot wound to the mouth.

"The deceased was standing when she took her own life, and she was, uh, 5-11 and she would have been 6-feet-2 with heels on, which she was wearing at the time of her death, and that the gun was in a downward position," Spector, who has been free on $1 million bail for the last three years, said on the tape made at his Alhambra manse. "I am 5-foot-5. It would have been physically impossible for me to have administered the death wound to her in any shape, way or form."

The tape was shot by his then-assistant Michelle Blaine, who told Inside Edition that Spector had originally planned to post the video on the Internet.

"I never heard of him doing these things that these women—quote-unquote—and the district attorney are saying about him now," Spector said, referring to himself in the third person. "I never heard him shooting people in the mouth. I never heard him do things like this. I mean, why now? Why at this stage of his life are these things believable? When did my credibility go down the toilet?"

When asked by someone off-camera why he thinks he's being targeted for murder, he said, "Because I'm Phil Spector. Because I live in a castle."