Mistrial declared in Phil Spector murder case

Year
2007
Month Day
September 26

Music producer Phil Spector’s trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson ends in a mistrial when the jury cannot come to a unanimous verdict.

On February 3, 2003, police responded to a 911 call and found the 40-year-old Clarkson dead of a gunshot wound to the mouth in the foyer of Spector’s mansion in Alhambra, California. Spector, who pioneered the “Wall of Sound” production technique in the 1960s and worked with numerous top musicians, including the Beatles and Ike and Tina Turner, met Clarkson earlier that night at The House of Blues in West Hollywood, where she was a hostess. Clarkson, who had appeared in various B movies, agreed to go back to his home that night for a drink. The legendary record producer, then 63, had a reputation for carrying guns and being eccentric and domineering.

Spector was arrested and then freed on $1 million bail. In September 2004, he was indicted for second-degree murder. Jury selection began in March 2007, with opening statements the following month. During the trial prosecutors argued that Spector shot Clarkson because she resisted his advances. The prosecution put a series of women on the stand who testified that Spector had threatened them with guns in the past. Spector’s chauffeur, who had driven his boss and Clarkson back to the mansion that night and was waiting in the car when the gun went off in the house, testified that Spector came outside with a gun in his hand and told him, “I think I just killed somebody.”

The defense claimed Clarkson, depressed about her career and struggling with money problems, had shot herself, perhaps accidentally. There was no forensic evidence to prove Spector had held the gun, although there was a spray of blood on his clothing. The defense argued the blood pattern showed Spector was too far away to have shot Clarkson. Throughout the trial, Spector sported a range of dramatic hairstyles and was accompanied to court by bodyguards and his much younger new wife, who he married in September 2006. On September 18, 2007, after deliberating for a week, the jury came back deadlocked, 7-5. However, Judge Larry Paul Fidler refused to grant an immediate mistrial and instead gave the jurors new instructions and ordered them to resume deliberations. The jury returned on September 26 to report they were still deadlocked, 10-2, with the majority voting to convict Spector.

Shortly after Judge Fidler declared a mistrial in the case, the Los Angeles Country Distict Attorney’s Office announced plans to seek a retrial. Spector was convicted of murder in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.

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Work begins at company that designs first mass-produced car radios

Year
1928
Month Day
September 26

On September 26, 1928, work begins at Chicago’s new Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. (The company had officially incorporated the day before.) In 1930, Galvin would introduce the Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio. (The name had two parts: “motor” evoked cars and motion, while “ola” derived from “Victrola” and was supposed to make people think of music.)

In 1921, engineer Paul Galvin and his friend Edward Stewart started a storage-battery factory in Marshfield, Wisconsin; it went out of business two years later. In 1926, Galvin and Stewart re-started their battery-manufacturing company, this time in Chicago. That one went out of business too, but not before the partners figured out a way for home radios to draw power from an electrical wall outlet; they called it the dry-battery eliminator. Galvin bought back the eliminator part of his bankrupt company at auction for $750 and went right back into business, building and repairing eliminators and AC radio sets for customers like Sears, Roebuck.

Soon, however, Galvin’s attention turned to the car-radio business. The first car radios–portable “travel radios” powered by batteries, followed by custom-installed built-in radios that cost $250 apiece (about $2,800 in today’s dollars)–had appeared in 1926, but they were way too expensive for the average driver. If he could find a way to mass-produce affordable car radios, Galvin thought, he’d be rich. In June 1930, he enlisted inventors Elmer Wavering and William Lear to retrofit his old Studebaker with a radio and drove 800 miles to the Radio Manufacturers Association’s annual meeting in Atlantic City. He parked outside the convention, turned up the music (for this purpose, Wavering had installed a special speaker under the Studebaker’s hood), and waited for the RMAers’ orders to come rolling in.

A few did, and Galvin sold enough of his $110 5T71 car radios to come close to breaking even for the year. He changed his company’s name to Motorola and changed the way we drive–and ride in–cars forever.

For his part, William Lear went on to invent the eight-track cartridge-tape system, which came standard in every Ford car starting in 1966. Meanwhile, carmakers developed their own radio-manufacturing divisions, gradually squeezing Motorola out of the market it had built. The company stopped making car radios in 1984. Today, it’s best known for making cellular phones.

READ MORE: The Cars That Made America 

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Allies slaughtered by Germans in Arnhem

Year
1944
Month Day
September 26

On September 26, 1944, Operation Market Garden, a plan to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem, fails, as thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

British Gen. Bernard Montgomery conceived an operation to take control of bridges that crossed the Rhine River, from the Netherlands into Germany, as a strategy to make “a powerful full-blooded thrust to the heart of Germany.” The plan seemed cursed from the beginning. It was launched on September 17, with parachute troops and gliders landing in Arnhem. Holding out as long as they could, waiting for reinforcements, they were compelled to surrender. Unfortunately, a similar drop of equipment was delayed, and there were errors in locating the proper drop location and bad intelligence on German troop strength. Added to this, bad weather and communication confused the coordination of the Allied troops on the ground.

Watch a special about Operation Market Garden on HISTORY Vault

The Germans quickly destroyed the railroad bridge and took control of the southern end of the road bridge. The Allies struggled to control the northern end of the road bridge, but soon lost it to the superior German forces. The only thing left was retreat-back behind Allied lines. But few made it: Of more than 10,000 British and Polish troops engaged at Arnhem, only 2,900 escaped.

Claims were made after the fact that a Dutch Resistance fighter, Christiaan Lindemans, betrayed the Allies, which would explain why the Germans were arrayed in such numbers at such strategic points. A conservative member of the British Parliament, Rupert Allason, writing under the named Nigel West, dismissed this conclusion in his A Thread of Deceit, arguing that Lindemans, while a double agent, “was never in a position to betray Arnhem.”

Winston Churchill would lionize the courage of the fallen Allied soldiers with the epitaph “Not in vain.” Arnhem was finally liberated on April 15, 1945.

READ MORE: The Allies Hoped Operation Market Garden Would End WWII. Here’s What Went Wrong

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