AS A Los Angeles jury ponders the fate of the pop impresario and accused murderer Phil Spector, his young bride is preparing to launch herself on a new career as a singer.

Rachelle Short, 26, a former swimsuit model described by a Spector biographer as a “trial bride recruited to make the madman look more normal”, is to call herself Chelle as she seeks her own musical fame.

Short has already recorded some songs with her husband, who made a fortune producing records for 1960s acts ranging from Tina Turner to the Beatles. But she has told friends she is seeking an additional producer with a more “modern” sound.

Colleagues say she is a talented soul singer. She is said to see herself as the next Beyoncé Knowles and would like to work with Justin Timberlake’s producer, Timbaland.

Last week Short, who become Spector’s second wife a year ago, was reprimanded by the trial judge for giving an interview to the Court TV channel in which she insisted, despite mounting testimony from women who claimed to have been threatened by Spector with a gun, that she still believed he was innocent.

Short did not say that Spector, 67, expects to win his trial. If he loses, he faces going to jail for the rest of his life for killing actress Lana Clarkson in his rambling east Los Angeles home after they met in a Hollywood club four years ago.

The prosecution claims Spector, who has admitted he takes medicine for schizophrenia, shot Clarkson in the mouth when she rejected his sexual advances and tried to leave his house. It produced five women who were threatened with guns after trying to get away from him in the past. Spector claims Clarkson shot herself, either accidentally or in a suicide.

Spector, who has attended court in an array of wigs and colourful costumes over the past four months, is said to have taken sartorial advice from Short about calming down his image in recent weeks. Observers say he has grown increasingly reliant on her as his legal team has split. His leading lawyer, the mafia defender Bruce Cutler, resigned hours before the crucial final stages of the hearing began.

During the trial Short has held his arm as he has walked haltingly into the courtroom and covered his hands when they started to shake uncontrollably during testimony from former girlfriends he has called “enemies”.

Until last week Short was content to stay in the shadows, but school friends from her home town in Pennsylvania say she has always been immensely ambitious. Before moving to California five years ago she studied music at the Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina.

She appeared topless in Playboy magazine, but has always said music is her abiding passion.

She is believed to have met Spector on one of his nocturnal “meanderings”, when he would be chauffeured around Hollywood nightclubs charming women half his age with tales of working with the stars. He curtailed his club crawls after he was accused of murder and employed Short as his personal assistant. They married last September.

Mark Ribowsky, author of the biography He’s a Rebel, said: “No matter what Spector felt about her personally, or her about him, it was also a political decision to marry for both of them. It makes him seem slightly more normal and, for her, there is fame of a sort.”

Observers do not believe she married Spector for his money: he may have earned £50m over the past 40 years but four years of preparing for the trial has depleted his fortune.

Spector’s adopted son Gary, who has attended the trial over the past few days, said his father was prepared to lose the case, but would spend all his money on lawyers if he did, rather than give any to the Clarkson family, who have launched a civil action.

“I see him as someone who will spend his last cent on something futile rather than let someone take it from him,” he said.

There were 75 witnesses during the four-month trial, but neither Spector nor Short took the stand. A verdict could come as early as tomorrow.

See clips of Phil Spector's wife Rachelle defending her husband on Court TV

Times Recommends

• The Japanese Prime Minister is doomed: or is he?
• Brighton company 'involved in cyber attack'
• The art of survival: it’s all in the mind