A Good Thing Never Ends

When Phil Spector and his wife Ronnie Spector adopted their son Donté in 1969, Phil tried to pass him off as their biological child. He wrote an actual theatrical script breakdown for Ronnie to manage the unveiling of their new child. Two years later, Phil gave Ronnie a set of adopted twins for Christmas. Just a few months after that, she escaped. Ronnie had been tormented by Phil and kept prisoner in his mansion throughout their marriage. The day after their wedding in 1968 he surrounded the estate with a barbed-wire fence. Bars went on the windows next, and monitoring intercoms were installed in all the rooms. Then a set of 10-foot electrified gates went up. He would hide her shoes so she couldn’t leave on her own. On the rare occasions she was permitted to leave Phil made her drive with a life-size blow-up doll of himself. He frequently pulled a gun on her and installed a gold coffin with a glass top in the basement, promising that he would kill her if she tried to leave him. She escaped barefoot with the help of her mother in 1972.