Convicted music kingpin and one time teen billionaire PHIL SPECTOR is living a sad and lonely life — now that he’s become of the disgraced celebrities in prison, as he’s left studying for a High School equivalency diploma!
HBO’s upcoming movie starring Al Pacino as wigged out killer Phil Spector is one of the most anticipated TV events of the year – but the quirky rock ’n’ roll legend won’t be watching. The 72-year-old pop music producer is currently cooling his heels in a minimum security prison in central California – and the facility doesn’t get HBO!
“He doesn’t go out to the yard too often,” says Lt. Lupe Cartagena, spokesperson for the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, the same place Robert Downey Jr. spent time in 1999. “He doesn’t have many visitors. He turns a lot of people away.”
Spector was convicted in 2009 of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson, 40, who died of a gunshot wound to her mouth at his palatial Los Angeles home.
Now, the former musical genius behind classics like “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” and “Be My Baby” is spending most of his 19-years-to-life sentence in a 45-square-foot cinderblock room in the “Sensitive Needs Yard.”
He has a cellmate.
A high school dropout from The Bronx, Spector is required to get his GED under prison rules. “His ego is shattered,” says longtime friend Steve Escobar. “I am sure this is an embarrassment.”
Believed to be bipolar, Spector was an infamous Hollywood hermit who lived in near isolation at his hilltop mansion – before he turned the place into a murder scene.
Called Pyrenees Castle, the 8,700-square-foot, eight-bedroom home is now said to be heavily mortgaged and in need of serious repairs. But Spector refuses to let his fourth wife, Rachelle Short Spector – who is 41 years his junior – put the crumbling estate on the market.
Rachelle is probably the only visitor the celebrity inmate agrees to see, sources say. He is estranged from his four grown children, and shunned producers of the HBO flick – set to air on March 24 – when they approached him to consult on the project.
“He chose to have no involvement with them at all,” explains attorney Dennis Riordan. “He certainly doesn’t view it as an accurate portrayal of what went on at that trial – because it is not. It has invented events.”
