2 more women say Spector held a gun on them

Two women testified Wednesday that Phil Spector threatened them with guns when they spurned him -- bringing to four the number of women making such allegations -- but the music producer’s defense team hit harder at the new witnesses than they had the others.

The women recalled incidents similar to those previously described by two others. All involved a drunk Spector pointing a gun at them as they refused to spend the night with him.

But under cross-examination, defense attorney Roger J. Rosen pointed out discrepancies in one woman’s testimony and zeroed in on an embezzlement conviction of the other witness.

Charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra home Feb. 3, 2003, Spector has pleaded not guilty and is free on $1-million bail.

The morning appearance in court of Stephanie Jennings, who said Spector had pointed a gun at her in a New York City hotel room, seemed to awaken Spector, who has mostly sat sullenly during the trial.

Spector stood next to Rosen in the well of the downtown courtroom moments before the cross-examination, whispering into the lawyer’s ear. Spector smiled several times during their conversation.

Jennings said she was staying in a room paid for by Spector at the Carlyle Hotel in 1995 when he came to her room. Spector demanded she accompany him to his suite, she said, and sat in a chair in front of her door while pointing a handgun at her.

He left shortly after she called 911, she said.

Rosen produced a transcript of a 2004 interview of Jennings by homicide detectives in which she said, referring to the gun, “I never thought he would use it to kill anyone.”

Addressing the seeming contradiction, Jennings said she did not believe Spector meant to kill her, but she feared for her life because he could have shot her accidentally. “That’s why I called 911,” she said.

Rosen also noted that she had told detectives Spector held a gun but did not point it at her. He also produced a contract she had signed with the National Enquirer detailing her agreement to provide an interview and photographs for $1,000.

Unlike his more combative colleague, Bruce Cutler, Rosen was civil for most of the cross-examination but became testy as he pointed out Jennings’ inconsistencies.

“Were you lying then or are you lying now?” he asked, before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler directed him to stop, and told jurors to ignore his snipe.

Melissa Grosvenor, who met Spector when she was a waitress in New York City, said that in 1992 Spector flew her to visit him in Pasadena, where he then lived. He paid for a hotel room, she said, but she joined him at his home after dinner the day she arrived.

She said Spector pulled a gun on her when she asked to leave his home, and she fell asleep in a chair in the living room, her handbag over her shoulder. Grosvenor said she flew back to New York the next morning.

Clarkson was found shot to death in a chair, her handbag on her shoulder.

Prosecutor Patrick Dixon ended his direct examination of Grosvenor by asking whether she had been convicted of embezzlement in 1989; she answered, “Yes.”

Beginning his cross-examination, Rosen asked: “I’m going to start where Mr. Dixon left off, are you as you sit here today a convicted felon?” Grosvenor, a Georgia native, calmly replied, “Yes, sir.”

Rosen then got Grosvenor to acknowledge that she had stolen from a bank where she had worked and later lied about it on a job application. Just before the court recessed for the day, Grosvenor said Spector had paid half the cost of her vision-correction surgery in 1992.

Grosvenor is to return to the stand today. Prosecutors plan to call friends of Spector who were with him the evening before Lana Clarkson was shot, as well as employees of various restaurants he visited.

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peter.hong@latimes.com