40. Phil Spector Charged With Murder

As a record producer, pint-sized Phil Spector created the sound of the 1960s, using a multitude of instruments to re-create the feeling of a first kiss and the fracture of a broken heart. Through the 1970s and ’80s, the reclusive Spector earned a reputation as a borderline psycho and gun-nut. He has waved pistols at John Lennon and Leonard Cohen.

Bad craziness undid Spector when, in 2003, a dead B-movie starlet was found in his home. Lana Clarkson had died of a gunshot wound that Spector blamed on “accidental suicide.” In an interview given a week earlier, he had described himself as “relatively insane.” Phil didn’t help his sanity’s cause when he appeared at his second-degree murder trial in a variety of wigs that made him look like everything from a blond pageboy to a collision between TV’s Screech and a bottle of Rogaine.

In 2007, a deadlocked jury resulted in a mistrial. In public, the jury is still out on Phil Spector. Phil is just out to lunch.

Watch Tina and Ike Turner perform Spector’s “River Deep, Mountain High”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KkMSkmx7sM

-Charles Bottomley

Sixteen-year-old Amy Fisher had been having an affair with Joey Buttafuoco since May 1991, but the married auto worker refused to leave his wife for his underage mistress. In May 1992, an enraged Fisher went to the Buttafuoco’s Massapequa, Long Island home, and shot his wife Mary Jo in the face with an Titan .25 semi-automatic, leaving her deafened in one ear and her face partially paralyzed.

Although Fisher, whom the New York tabs dubbed “The Long Island Lolita”, spawned not one but two TV movies (Drew Barrymore perfected Fisher’s vacant stare in the underrated The Amy Fisher Story), her story lacked a happy ending. After accepting a plea deal, Fisher served seven years at the Albion Correctional Facility, but her public humiliation didn’t end there. In 2007, Fisher’s then-husband Louis Bellera released a sex tape showing the now thirtysomething Fisher looking decidedly less Lolita-like.

Buttafuoco, for his part, served six months for statutory rape, got dumped by Mary Jo, and continues to surface as a one-word punchline on The Howard Stern Show. It’s enough to make a guy want to pummel someone, and in 2002, Buttafuoco got his chance when he thrashed female pro wrestler Chyna on Fox’s Celebrity Boxing. [Charles Bottomley]

An heiress living her life as a student in the post-hippie stomping grounds of San Francisco, Patty Hearst seemed to be the picture of privilege. But when members of the Symbionese Liberation Army kicked in her door, mauled her boyfriend, and carried her away for ransom in February of 1974, the 19-year-old’s life was changed forever.

The radical SLA guerillas demanded that their captive’s father, son of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, feed the Bay Area poor–and he complied. But his daughter wasn’t released, and a stream of SLA-distributed audiotapes of her pleas for help began to take on a tone of indictment–she started to chastise her parents for not rescuing her, sometimes sounded like she was even siding with her captors’ political goals. Hearst’s final tape fully condemned her family, declared her allegiance to the terrorists, and pronounced her rebirth as an SLA member named “Tania.” Soon she was photographed robbing a bank while sporting a beret and assault rifle, kicking off of a string of cross-country holdups in which she played a key role.

When the police finally caught up with Hearst, and a jury sentenced her to 25 years in jail, the public still didn’t know if she’d been a victim of brainwashing or a willing participant in SLA mayhem. It didn’t matter to Jimmy Carter and John Waters, however. The president commuted her sentence, and the director cast her in some of his silliest films. These days the gun-toting “Tania” is a soccer mom in suburban Connecticut.

America reeled when, in 1996, six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was discovered strangled and sexually assaulted in the wine cellar of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado.

The former Little Miss Merry Christmas’s painted Kewpie-doll face became a nightly news fixture, and America was gripped by a necromantic furor. Armchair detectives pondered clues such as the undigested pineapple found in her stomach and the unidentified male DNA found in her underwear. As the case ground on, everyone from the police to supermarket tabloids to Colorado’s governor began to suspect the parents’ involvement. Allegations of a cover-up raged; grand juries were convened. But no one was ever charged.

In 2006, just as public interest had waned, ex-schoolteacher John Karr confessed to Ramsey’s murder. Karr fit the profile–if the profile is looking like someone you’d never leave your six-year-old alone with. But no positive DNA match was made, and Karr was found to be living in Alabama at the time of the murder.

In July 2008, the Colorado D.A. officially cleared the girl’s parents of any wrongdoing in her death.  “JonBenét” can now be filed away in the bulging Cold Case album of American scandals.
[Charles Bottomley]

Take a 13-year-old American girl, a randy (albeit brilliant) movie director decades her senior, and a nude private photo shoot in Hollywood’s hottest hottub (Jack Nicholson unknowingly donated his to the cause), and you’ve got the ingredients for a monster scandal — even without the champagne and Quaaludes.

After churning out some of Hollywood’s most memorable movies (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown), Polish director Roman Polanski was charged with rape, sodomy, child molestation and giving drugs to a minor. The ensuing trial dragged on throughout 1977, and public opinion around the world was split as to his guilt, with the European media blaming victim Samantha Gailey (now Geimer) and American media gunning for pervy perp Polanski.

The 44-year-old director Polanski ultimately pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, and was sentenced to 90 days in state prison for psychiatric evaluation. But as the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired revealed, the director found out the judge was plotting a much harsher punishment and he skedaddled to France, where he remains a fugitive.

In a brand new twist, Wanted and Desired uncovered possible prosecutorial misconduct that could overturn the 30-year-old case. Too bad for Polanski that the film wasn’t made earlier — he might have been able to pick up his 2002 Best Director Oscar for The Pianist in person.

Once upon a time, the biggest pop star in the world was accused of molesting a frequent visitor of his Neverland Ranch and settled out of court before a criminal suit could be brought against him. He ignited global fury and another court case 10 years later by claiming in a documentary that he shared his bed with young boys (his accuser also suggested that MJ shared more than that and plied him with alcohol or “Jesus Juice”). He was eventually proven innocent by a jury but to pop fans who no longer want to be associated with him, he’s as good as guilty eternally. Where his career is concerned, this is THE END. Seriously.

Michael Jackson [Photo by Kimberly White-Pool/Getty Images]

Michael Jackson [Photo by Phil Klein-Pool/Getty Images]

Michael Jackson [Photo by Doug Benc/Getty Images]

Michael Jackson [Photo by MJ Kim/Getty Images]

Michael Jackson [Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images]

If only Monica Lewinsky hadn’t blown Bill Clinton! We know that Mr. I-Did-Not-Have Sexual-Relations-With-That-Woman wouldn’t have been impeached in 1998 for lying under oath. But there is so much we don’t know … Would a zippered Clinton have gone on to prove MVP in Al Gore’s presidential campaign and subsequent victory in the 2000 election? Would we be in Iraq? Would we have attacked a real enemy instead — global warming, say? Would we have affordable oil, a viable economy, friends who speak other languages?

Forget the sordid details: the blue dress adorned with presidential seed, the intern’s claim that the commander-in chief deployed a cigar-tube in her free-fly zone, the fact that she was only 21 when the “inappropriate intimate contact” began. Instead, join us in wondering: When Monica blew the president, did she blow everything? Maybe. (OK, probably.) That’s why we’ve ranked a few measly blow jobs between consenting adults as the second greatest celebrity scandal of all time.

Monica Lewinsky [Getty Images]

Monica Lewinsky [Getty Images]

Monica Lewinsky [Getty Images]