LOS ANGELES — The testimony of two former insiders on Phil Spector's defense team raised questions Thursday about whether noted criminalist Dr. Henry Lee concealed evidence he recovered from the scene of an actress's death.

The witnesses, an attorney and a private investigator who worked for Spector's first lawyer, told the judge presiding over the music producer's murder trial that they saw Lee with a small item of evidence, identified by one as a fingernail, during a defense search of Spector's home.

No such evidence was turned over to authorities, as the law requires, and Lee did not mention handling or collecting the item in a report he prepared for the defense.

Attorney Sara Caplan, a former associate of famed criminal defense attorney Robert Shapiro, said she saw Lee pluck "a little white thing" from the carpet of Spector's foyer the evening after the fatal shooting of Lana Clarkson and place it in a clear evidence vial.

She said she did not know what became of the object, which she described as "flat with uneven edges" and about the size of a fingernail.

"I didn't watch what he did with that," she said of Lee.

The investigator, Stanley White, said he was present when Lee announced finding human "tissue" and said he had a short but vehement disagreement with the scientist about what the item was.

Stanley White

"I said it looked like a piece of fingernail. Dr. Lee said to me, 'You're crazy.' I said to Dr. Lee, 'You need glasses,'" White testified.

After hearing the accounts, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler said he wanted to hear directly from Lee. Spector's lawyers told him Lee, perhaps the most famous forensic scientist in the country, is traveling in China and will not be available for two weeks. Testimony in the trial is scheduled to resume Monday.

Fidler said he is committed to getting to the bottom of the allegations and scheduled Friday for a third day of hearings and witnesses outside the presence of the jury.

"I believe the court has an absolute obligation when there is any inference or allegation that any evidence has been tampered with to make inquiry," he said, adding, "We now have to continue to guarantee the sanctity of any evidence or lack of evidence that may be presented to the court."

Lee is expected to be one of the defense's most important witnesses. He is to testify that the crime scene supports Spector's claim that Clarkson, 40, took her own life. Prosecutors accused him earlier this week of failing to disclose blood spatter tests and asked for unspecified sanctions against the defense.

The allegations of missing evidence surfaced shortly after Clarkson's Feb. 3, 2003, death, but were put to rest the following year when Spector's defense assured a judge that they had held nothing back from prosecutors.

The issue arose again this week when a former law clerk for Shapiro, Spector's first attorney, claimed he saw the defense team find what another defense expert, Dr. Michael Baden, identified as a tooth fragment that had apparently been overlooked during an extensive search by crime scene technicians.

Greg Diamond

The accounts of the former clerk, Gregory Diamond, Caplan and White were not consistent. Diamond testified that Lee never handled the object and that it was Caplan who picked it up from the carpet and Baden who examined it. Caplan said she never touched the item and said White could not have seen Lee handling anything because he was consigned to guard duty outside the house and never entered the foyer.

White ventured the most definitive statements about the object, saying on a scale of 1 to 10 he was "9.5" sure it was a fingernail. A retired sheriff's department homicide detective, he said pieces of fingernails and fingers at crime scenes were common because victims often used their hands to defend themselves from blows or gunshot wounds.

"It looked like a defensive-wounded fingernail," he said of the item Lee allegedly showed him.

White testified that the object was streaked in silver, suggesting gunpowder, and a portion was red. He said he did not know if the red was nail polish, blood or something else.

Clarkson wore pale acrylic nails the night of the shooting. Although all her nails were intact, a small piece of acrylic on her right thumb was broken. The defense has said a broken thumbnail is a "classic sign" of a self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

In his report, which was filed in February, Lee describes collecting carpet fibers and two pieces of "thread like material" but nothing consistent with a tooth or fingernail.

Another defense investigator at the scene, Bill Pavelic, took the stand before White and Caplan and said he never saw Lee or anyone else touch a small white piece of evidence.

Asked about White, Pavelic scoffed and said bitterly, "I consider Mr. White to be a prosecution witness and a snitch."