This day in 1972: With the help of her mother, a barefoot Ronnie Spector left her husband Phil’s Beverly Hills mansion for the last time, leaving behind her adopted sons, three year old Donté and six year old twins, Louis and Gary.

Within days she filed for a divorce that would be granted in 1974.

According to an interview in “The Telegraph”, Phil Spector screamed at her so often and so violently, that she eventually became mute: “The last year of my marriage I didn’t talk at all. Because if I said anything he’d yell at me, so why say anything. I was a scared little girl from Spanish Harlem living in this mansion with five servants, not knowing what to do with any of it. I cried every night I was married.”

She also said Phil set up a glass-topped coffin in the basement and told Ronnie’s mother that if Ronnie ever left him, he would kill her and keep her there like Snow White.

Finally, in the summer of 1972, her worried mother paid a visit. “She said, ‘honey, you’re going to die here’. She knew.” The two of them stayed up for three days and nights meticulously planning her escape. Phil often hid her shoes, so she left barefoot in order to not to arouse his suspicions. His parting words (not that he knew it) were directed to her mother: “Now Mrs Bennett don’t let Veronica step on anything sharp.”