..I explained who I was, and complained about the dogs. He was disobliging and full of denials, taking no responsibility. After a while I got frustrated and turned to walk away, and he said, "What are you doing? Are you scared? You're going to run away?" And I said, "I'm not the one hiding behind a door with a shotgun." And then I ran away.

Abigail Bok is a lifelong Los Angeles resident - a professional woman who grew up in the private La Colina neighborhood north of Sunset Boulevard during the "me-decade." In, or around 1970, Phil Spector, his wife Ronnie and their adopted son Donte moved in, renting the main house on the estate of Richard Colburn, a patron of classical music in Los Angeles. Bok lived in the adjacent garden house of the estate with her grandmother.

Not long after they moved in, the Spectors began adopting more boys - Louis and his twin brother Gary. (Donte was adopted at birth in 1969).

"Donte, was a mixed race [mulatto] boy, but he grew up convinced that he was actually the biological child of Phil and Ronnie," says Bok. "I think she had a miscarriage, and Donte was brought in as a stand-in."

By 1974, the dysfunctional Spector family had fractured - Phil divorced Ronnie and remained in the exclusive neighborhood until the early Eighties with his adopted sons, and guns.

Ronnie Spector: The Ronette that got away.

Explaining the two-way mirrored front door, elaborate fencing, and killer dogs, Bok recalls, "Phil was very paranoid. He had bodyguards around him at all times. He would get drunk, and rant and rave on his balcony at night."

This was hardly the ideal environment for child rearing, and, apparently, he did not treat his boys very well.

Says Bok: "Phil had a refrigerator full of gourmet food for himself, and another icebox with TV dinners for the kids. The boys only got a dollar or week towards school lunches, so my grandmother would make daily bag lunches for those kids."

Eventually, Abigail's grandmother applied for custody of young Donte Spector, and Phil staged a clownish challenge in court.

"You'd think that, if you wanted to win in that situation, you'd show some respect," says Bok, "but he [Spector] walked into the courtroom, before the judge, wearing a lapel pin fashioned in the shape of a middle finger. He ranted and raved, and the judge ordered him removed from the courtroom. The bailiff actually picked him up and carried him out!"

Bok's grandmother won custody of Donte, but the troubled Spector boy ran away a year later.

"Donte wound up on the streets," says Bok. "He turned tricks, and had HIV by the time he was 18."

Recalling her introduction to the business end of Spector's shotgun, Bok explains, "I knew how not to show I was afraid, but he seemed very unpredictable, angry and not particularly coherent. So, yes, I was afraid." "But," she continues, "He was afraid of everything, so he would try to scare other people to diminish them and make himself feel more powerful. He's the classic bully-coward. He is so wrapped up in the emotions of the moment, he has no judgment."

As judgment day nears for the madman hiding behind his "wall of sound" accomplishments and mobbed up lawyer Bruce Cutler, Bok offers: "When I heard about the Lana Clarkson incident, I knew exactly what the scenario was. She was probably defiant and dismissive, and he pulled the gun to make her submissive. I think it might have been an accident as part of a scenario of trying to bully and intimidate her."

Whether Spector is convicted of murdering the 40-year-old Clarkson, or his shameless "she kissed the gun" suicide defense holds up similar to the cases of so many unjustly exonerated celebrity murderers before him, it is now painfully clear that Spector was always a fatal train wreck waiting to happen.

* Hollywood, Interrupted will be live-blogging gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Spector trial from Los Angeles Superior Court.