We might have been enjoying one of those holidays of banks, but it was business as usual in the States yesterday, and the Phil Spector murder retrial resumed in LA after that previously reported delay caused by the illness of the legendary producer's main defence lawyer, Bruce Cutler.
And the main event of the day was the testimony of another of those women due to tell the court how Spector once threatened them at gun point. This time it was talent booker Dianne Ogden-Halder, who said that Spector had twice prevented her from leaving his home during their friendship in the 1980s. On the second of those occasions, in 1989, she said that Spector turned "demonic" and tried to rape her at gun point.
Ogden-Halder says that on that occasion, Spector refused her request to leave, and ordered her upstairs. There he pulled a gun on her, ordered her to remove some of her clothing, and then tried to have sexual intercourse with her by force. "He was talking, screaming, like he had been taken over by something. He was demonic", Ogden-Halder told the court, "it was not like it was him, it was like he wasn't Phillip".
Asked if Spector had tried to be 'intimate' before attempting rape, she continued: "He didn't have to do that, he could have been romantic but he did it by gunpoint. He wanted to rape me. I don't know why he was doing this. He had me take off some of my clothes, and he tried to have intercourse with me. It was just 'icky' because it wasn't him. I didn't want to make to love with him like that, with him telling me he was going to blow my brains out. That was not romantic to me".
Ogden-Halder says that no sex took place. She fell asleep after the ordeal, waking the next morning to hear Spector singing in the shower as if nothing had happened. "It was weird," she concluded, "I started wondering 'Did I just dream that?'"
Asked why she hadn't reported the incident to the police at the time, she said: "I thought it was an isolated incident and that he needed help. I couldn't call the police on him. Now I feel guilty... I don't know".
As previously reported, the prosecution are trying to demonstrate that Spector has a history of violent behaviour towards women when they are alone in his house, often pointing guns at them, hoping that that will convince the jury he pulled the trigger the night actress Lana Clarkson was shot dead at his Beverley Hills home. Spector denies murdering Clarkson, claiming she shot herself.
The case continues.