Spector Witness: "He Scared the Hell Out of Me"

According to those prosecuting Phil Spector, more than one woman was put under the gun when the famed music producer was around.

A second witness who swears that Spector once threatened her with a gun took the stand Monday, testifying that he once chased her out of his house while brandishing an Uzi.

Dianne Ogden, a self-described former friend—but not a sexual partner—of Spector's, described two incidents in which the Wall of Sound creator, who's accused of the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson, freaked her out with his penchant for guns.

Ogden first described visiting Spector, whom she met in 1982, at his Pasadena home in March 1989. He had been drinking and quickly got verbally abusive, threatening to kill her and pointing a pistol at her, she said, when she tried to leave.

"Phillip was screaming the F-word," Ogden said, fighting back tears. "He wasn't the man I loved. It wasn't him. He was demonic. It was scary. It scared the hell out of me."

At some point, he put a gun to her face and tried to get her to go upstairs and spend the night, Ogden continued. "He wasn't Phillip," she said. "He used a high-pitched screaming voice. The F-word was in there and 'bitch' was in there."

"Did you want to be there?" Deputy District Attorney Pat Dixon asked.

"No," Ogden answered.

"You wanted to go home," Dixon said.

"Yes," Ogden replied, going on to say how Spector made her strip and then tried to have sex with her. She called the experience "icky."

"If we were going to make love, I didn't want it to happen like that," Ogden said. "He said he wanted to blow my brains out and that wasn't romantic to me."

Two months later, Ogden said, she went back and Spector ended up chasing her from the house, waving what he said was an Uzi.

Defense attorney Bruce Cutler, back in court after a week-long absence to be treated for diabetes-related complications, loudly insisted that Ogden's story had changed since she first talked to investigators several years ago.

"You formed an opinion, just like the police and the media!" Cutler shouted, prompting a rebuke from Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, who ordered him to never "yell and point at a witness in my courtroom ever."

Ogden maintained, however, that she was telling it like it is, or was, boosting the prosecution's argument that Spector has long been a gun-happy menace to women and was more than capable of pulling the trigger Feb. 3, 2003, in the hallway of his Alhambra mansion.

Under Cutler's questioning, Ogden also said that Spector never actually fired a gun in her presence and was, as a whole, kind and generous during their seven-year friendship and that L.A. sheriff's deputies contacted her at her Utah home in 2004 and urged her to testify.

Dorothy Melvin, a former assistant to Joan Rivers, testified Apr. 26, that Spector had threatened her with a revolver at his Pasadena residence in July 1993 and then followed her down the driveway with a shotgun.

On Monday, prosecutors played six apologetic yet increasingly belligerent phone messages from Spector to Melvin, the first of which has him saying, "I know it's hard to deal with a loony" and "I just want you to know what you did last night [calling the police] was the right thing."

In another message, he said that he missed her and that "it was all me and my inexcusable behavior."

In the fifth message played, however, Spector warned, "I expect a return call, but be careful what you say to me. Nothing you say to me is worth your life. Goodbye, Dorothy."

Spector then threatens to sue her in the expletive-laced final message. "I'm going to get you for what you did," he said.

To corroborate Melvin's testimony, Pasadena police Sergeant Chris Russ testified that he went to Spector's home to retrieve Melvin's purse after she reported the threat and, inside, he saw a pump-action shotgun. Russ said that Melvin hadn't wanted to press charges for fear of embarrassing Rivers, her boss at the time.

Defense lawyer Roger Rosen got Russ to admit, however, that he never saw a handgun in the house and that he wrote in his report at the time that Spector "displayed" a gun to Melvin, rather than pointed one at her, and didn't mention Melvin having any injuries. (Melvin had testified that she sustained a wound to the head.)

Russ then testified that Spector was gracious to the police at first, but then became "irate and uncooperative," after which the cops handcuffed him.

Also on Monday, Fidler questioned a juror—an executive at New Line Cinema—about an email he received from a freelance reporter affiliated with the Los Angeles Times who was asking about the impact the juror's time spent in court might have on his employer.

When asked whether the outside interaction might affect his ability to remain impartial, the juror said no and was allowed to stay.

"While it shouldn't have happened, it doesn't appear to have had a major impact," Fidler said.

Testimony is set to resume Wednesday. The trial was postponed for a week, first after Cutler requested a medical absence and then to hold an evidentiary hearing, during which the prosecution brought allegations that the defense tampered with evidence, namely a piece of broken acrylic fingernail that forensics expert Henry Lee may have taken from the scene of Clarkson's death and which was never turned over to the prosecution. Fidler is expected to issue a ruling once Lee, who's currently in China, has testified.