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Daily News (New York)
May 3, 2007 Thursday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION

LOS ANGELES - Tooth or nail . . . or a big red herring?

Phil Spector’s murder trial was thrown into chaos yesterday when a former clerk for lawyer Robert Shapiro came forward and swore the rock mogul’s first defense team found and may have concealed a key fragment of tooth or fingernail at the crime scene.

Spector, 67, hired Shapiro, an ex-member of the O.J. Simpson defense Dream Team, immediately after he was booked for Lana Clarkson’s slaying on Feb. 3, 2003, but he later fired and sued the high-profile lawyer.

Ex-clerk Gregory Diamond kept mum until about two weeks ago regarding the al-leged evidence tampering he claims he saw during a Shapiro-led defense team visit to Spector’s mansion. Then he contacted authorities.

Diamond named Shapiro’s associate, lawyer Sara Caplan, as the person who picked up something “white, whitish and quite small” on the floor “lodged be-tween the carpet and the staircase.”

He said Caplan gave the item to Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist working for Spector’s team, who examined it and said it might be “a fragment of a tooth,” Diamond testified.

Diamond testified the white item was “passed around” to other defense team members at Spector’s house, including another ex-Simpson minion, private inves-tigator Bill Pavelic.

“I don’t know who had it last,” Diamond said.

Prosecutors suspect the tiny item could be a missing fragment of Clarkson’s acrylic thumbnail.

Diamond denied he earlier told cops he had seen Pavelic put the white frag-ment in his pocket.

“That question was put to me and I said ‘No,’ ” he replied.

The ex-law clerk’s story dovetails with a 2004 allegation that the defense team had found at the scene - and hidden away - a missing sliver of Clarkson’s nail that could prove she struggled before she died or might have tried to block the fatal shot.

But Baden testified immediately after Diamond and denied the incident ever happened.

Today, Caplan, Shapiro and other members of the defense team will be called to the hot seat to tell their sides of the story.

City News Service
May 3, 2007 Thursday

One of Phil Spector’s former attorneys testified today she saw famed forensics expert Dr. Henry Lee manipulate evidence at Spector’s Alhambra mansion after an actress was fatally shot there.

Spector, 67, is accused of killing 40-year-old Lana Clarkson in the foyer of his mansion on Feb. 3, 2003. Spector’s defense team maintains that Clarkson shot herself.

Testifying outside the presence of the jury, Sara Caplan — a Beverly Hills-based criminal defense lawyer — said that the day after the shooting, she saw Lee pick up a flat white object the size of her fingernail and put it in a vial in the foyer of Spector’s “Pyrenees Castle.”

Prosecutors have long accused Spector’s lawyers of evidence tampering, in particular a piece of a broken fingernail belonging to Clarkson. If such evidence exists, it may prove there was a struggle between Clarkson and Spector just before her death, prosecutors contend.

Caplan testified that she pointed out a few areas of interest in the foyer to Lee, who is expected to testify in the murder trial. Lee then picked up a flat white object and said it “might be interesting,” Caplan told the court. Lee then put the object in a vial, she said.

The revelation may support the testimony of Gregory Diamond, a former employee of Spector’s ex-lawyer Robert Shapiro, who claimed that Spector’s defense team manipulated evidence in the case.

Diamond, a paralegal who once worked for Shapiro, said he was in the foyer the night of Feb. 4, 2003, after homicide detectives left the scene. He testified he saw Caplan pick up a what appeared to be a tooth fragment and hand it to Dr. Michael Baden, another forensics expert. Baden has denied knowing Diamond.

On the stand today, Caplan denied picking up anything at Spector’s mansion.

“I would never touch an object at an alleged crime scene, ever,” she said.

Bill Pavelic, a private investigator working for Shapiro, confirmed Diamond was at Spector’s mansion that night.

Diamond contacted prosecutors two weeks ago, and he was interviewed by Los Angeles police officers. In court yesterday, he testified that Shapiro asked him to observe the defense team’s investigation of where Clarkson died.

That investigation occurred immediately after police finished their initial crime scene investigation at Spector’s home, Diamond testified. He said he watched the investigation for about three hours.

Under questioning from defense attorney Christopher Plourd, Diamond admitted he was a writer who pitched a law-type show to CBS in 2004. Diamond also admit-ted to contacting a Los Angeles Times reporter about the Spector case before he ever called prosecutors. He also admitted to contacting the New York Times, Court TV reporter Beth Karas and the legal Web site, thesmokinggun.com.

If Fidler rules that defense attorneys deliberately withheld evidence from prosecutors, he may impose sanctions.

Spector faces 15 years to life in prison if found guilty.