It is an image that has haunted Hollywood for six years: a pair of stockinged legs in black shoes, twisted and buckled on a red carpeted floor and with a revolver lying next to them.

The legs belonged to Lana Clarkson, a depressive 40-year-old blonde cocktail hostess at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, who had enjoyed a brief career in the 1980s as a B-movie Queen.

Last night any mystery over who was responsible for her death – she was killed by a point-blank gunshot wound to the mouth – was put to rest when a Los Angeles jury found the music producer Phil Spector guilty of murder.

It marked the conclusion of the second trial for Spector. The first, in 2007, ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict.

The inventor of the Wall of Sound recording technique, whose name became synonymous with the music and style of the 1960s, did not testify at either trial. His only comment on Ms Clarkson’s death remains a quote he gave to Esquire magazine: “She kissed the gun.”

However, the evidence against him was overwhelming.

Ms Clarkson’s body was found by the emergency services at Spector’s gothic-style mansion, Pyrenees Castle, early on Monday, February 3, 2003. She had been killed with one of Spector’s guns, a snub-nosed .38calibre Colt Cobra.

He had met the former actress, who starred in the 1985 pulp classic Barbarian Queen, for the first time hours before her death, leaving a $450 tip on a $13 drink and taking her home in his chauffeured Mercedes-Benz.

Spector, 69, long infamous in the music industry for his wildly eccentric behaviour and drunken gunplay, faces 15 years to life in jail. In addition, he will almost certainly lose what remains of his once vast music publishing fortune to wrongful death lawsuits from Ms Clarkson’s family.

His new wife, Rachelle, sobbed as the verdict was announced, though Spector showed no emotion. He was remanded to jail immediately, having previously been on $1 million bail.

Spector’s jury of peers – including a bus driver, a social worker and a postal clerk – had the choice of convicting him of involuntary manslaughter, which would have carried a sentence up to four years but decided on the more serious alternative.

Of the six men and six woman on the jury, three were gun owners, seven knew someone who had committed suicide, and one described himself as a fan of Spector.

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