Phil Spector's future looks bleak.
Eight months and multiple lab tests later, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has finally wrapped up its investigation into the shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson, concluding that the legendary record producer was indeed the trigger man, the Los Angeles Times reports.
"It's not an accident. It's not a suicide," Captain Frank Merriman told the Times today. "Phil Spector shot her."
Spector, of course, has been free on $1 million bail since being arrested on the morning of February 3 for the alleged slaying of the Clarkson, who was discovered shot once in the face and splayed across the floor in the rock pioneer's foyer of his sprawling castle-style retreat in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra.
After turning the case over to prosecutors on Thursday, Merriman would not reveal what charges await Spector--that's a decision left up to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office--but he did add that investigators managed to dig up "plenty of evidence" to support their theory that the 62-year-old music legend fired the fatal shot.
District attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons confirmed that prosecutors were reviewing the case, but stressed that no decision would be immediately forthcoming.
"The evidence they presented is considerable and we're now going to go through it and make a determination as to how to proceed," Gibbons told E! Online on Friday.
Merriman also indicated that police would not fight requests to open up the case file, unlike during the investigation when it petitioned to have them sealed. Those details, including the coroner's ruling on Clarkson's cause of death, were closed to the public while the Sheriff's office continued to conduct forensic tests.
Spector, an avid firearm collector with a history of pulling guns on several artists whom he's produced in the past, most notably the Ramones, has denied shooting the B-movie star, stating in an Esquire magazine article in June that Clarkson killed herself.
"There is no case," Spector said in his first public statement on the incident. "I didn't do anything wrong--I didn't do anything. I called police myself. I called the police. This is not Bobby Blake. She killed herself."
He said he remains as baffled as everyone else and is not sure why, as he put it, "she kissed the gun."
"I have no idea why [she killed herself]," added the producer. "Never knew her, never even saw her before that night...I have no idea who she was or what her agenda was...[D]on't know where or how she got the gun."
However according to the Times, authorities had already contradicted his contention that it was suicide, believing that a crime had occurred.
Spector first encountered the 40-year-old star of Barbarian Queen at the House of Blues, the Sunset Strip club where Clarkson worked as a hostess in the VIP room. Despite Spector's claims that she was "loud and drunk," Clarkson's coworkers said it was Spector who was the one drinking that night.
Spector's attorney, Robert Shapiro, did not return phone calls seeking comment.