THE record producer Phil Spector, who goes on trial for murder in Los Angeles tomorrow accused of shooting an actress at his home, is to seek the help of his ex-wife Ronnie, whom he turned into a star but later “imprisoned” in their marital home.

He plans to call Ronnie as a character witnesses in what is expected to be the most highly publicised trial in California since Michael Jackson’s. It will be the first big case to be televised live in the state since O J Simpson’s in 1995.

Spector, 68, is accused of killing Lana Clarkson, a B-movie actress, at his £2m home in east Los Angeles after a night of drinking in Hollywood four years ago.

The musical prodigy - whose credits include the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ and Tina Turner’s River Deep, Mountain High - has described himself as a “bipolar who refuses to take his medicines” with a taste for “girls and guns”.

Prosecutors are believed to have lined up several witnesses who will recount how a manic Spector threatened them with guns in the past, holding the weapons to their heads until they bowed to his will.

Nobody was with Spector and the 40-year-old actress in his castle-like mansion when, according to confused statements he gave to police, a drunken Clarkson suddenly seized a Colt .38 from his holster, “kissed the gun” and shot herself in the face.

But he also allegedly told detectives, “I didn’t mean to shoot her. It was an accident,” a statement he has since disputed.

Although his lawyer, the former mafia defender Bruce Cutler, has not yet issued a list of defence witnesses, legal sources say Spector has “reached out” to his ex-wife, who is happily remarried and lives in Connecticut.

Her response is unknown. But Ronnie Spector, former lead singer with the 1960s girl group the Ronettes, laid out her “mixed up” thoughts on the shooting in a recent biography.

When she heard of the shooting in February 2003, she wrote: “I knew this guy who had imprisoned me in his home for years during our marriage to try and control me was capable of real crazy behaviour. But cold-blooded murder? To actually pull the trigger on someone?”

She added: “I lived with him for 10 years and I knew two Phil Spectors. There was the charming Phil who makes great records and gets everyone laughing, the man I loved. But I’ve seen the dark rage that can suddenly rise out of nowhere in the dead of night when the gates to the mansion are closed and locked tight, and that Phil Spector is terrifying.”

Last week, when the Ronettes were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ronnie, 63, pointedly failed to thank her exhusband, who created early hits such as Be My Baby, and ducked questions about him. Spector, it emerged, had written to the voting committee suggesting the Ronettes were not good enough to stand alongside the greats.

Observers say this is typical of the turbulent behaviour that has marked Spector’s life. As a child he escaped from the tragedy of his father’s suicide into music. He had his first hit, To Know Him Is to Love Him, with his school group the Teddy Bears when he was just 18.

Crippling stage fright turned him into a fierce and egomaniacal record producer, whose eccentricities became as famous as his records. Spector, creator of the symphonic “wall of sound”, nearly always carried a gun he called his “peacemaker”, even to church, and reportedly threatened many musicians with it.

Dee Dee Ramone, the late bassist with the punk group the Ramones, claimed Spector once held him at gunpoint for two days in a studio until he perfected a guitar riff. When a violinist imitated his lisp, Spector chased him with a gun.

One witness for the prosecution, a former girlfriend named Deborah Strand, alleged he put a gun to her cheek, saying: “What are you going to do now?” Another ex-girlfriend told investigators he demanded that she strip at gunpoint.

Judge Larry Paul Fiddler, who has allowed the cameras into the courtroom, has ruled that the jury should not hear about Spector’s previous convictions for gun offences.

Spector, who is free on £500,000 bail, is said to be “cleaning himself up” for the trial. He has discarded an Afro wig he wore at early hearings, opting instead for modestly curled 1970s-style wigs, and has instructed staff to lock up all “unnecessary” guns in his home for the duration of the trial, which is expected to last two months.

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