Murder. Thanks for having me Nicky, for our listeners, and on your
personal and professional background, especially as it relates to how you began reporting on
writers. I have been a journalist or back in two thousand and five,
I was a crime investigated writer at the Daily News, and my boss pretty
much as sign me breaking crime stories and I would dig into them and try
to get a head on them together. So one day in January tenth,
my name is Christian. I'm a writer, a researchers, being a teacher
and a victim initial of the social media manager, administrator and colonial murder with
my partner in Famous Alone of Temple University, even though he never graduated from
there, he just got an honorary degree later on. He did it ten
for a few years and just beloved and I was a huge fan myself.
I grew up watching Fat Autward and the Cosby Kids on Saturday Morning cartoons with
my brother. I watched The Cosby Show. It got me out of all
the chaos and all the griefs in my own home after my older brother died
when I was sixteen years old. I love that show. I thought Bill
Cosby was the flexible and I was even excited when I moved to Philly because
I just loved him. I thought maybe I'll end up doing a story about
him or meeting him sometime. I didn't think it would be this story.
And I had just done of the expose and drug facilitated sexual assaults being on
the rise in Philly like a year or two before. What I found was
truly horrifying because it is the perfect crimes. These drugs take away a victim's
memory, they take away their ability to resist. Most of them are gone
out of their system within twelve hours, so if they wake up the next
day and want to go to the hospital and get tested, the drugs are
already gone. Even worse than that, if you go to the police,
they could even say you took the drugs voluntarily. And who are they going
to believe you? Or what if the person is someone like Bill Cosby,
who you say did this to you, America's dad? Who do you think
the police are going to believe? So it was really a wake up call
to be about these crimes. I thought they were truly horrific. So to
find Bill Cosby, America's dad, being accused of this was horrific. And
my job as a journalist is to put my personal feelings aside and try to
find out what the truth is and get both sides. And I thought,
we know who Bill Cosby is, or at least who we think he is.
Who is this woman accusing him? Because of course they weren't naming her,
which is common with sexual assault cases. News organizations don't name a sexual
assault victim without their consent, although that would quickly change with this case,
although not with my stories. But I found out through a source at Temple
who she was. I had her name and I was able to do a
Nexus search on her and found out she was one of the top ten high
school basketball players in Canada. She got recruited by forty to fifty colleges in
the US and ultimately went to the University of Arizona on scholarship. She dreamed
of playing for the WNBA one day. When that didn't happen, she went
to Italy and played professionally for eighteen months, and then she ended up back
in Canada and was trying to figure out what to do next because it was
clear she was never going to play professional basketball. Then Don Staley, who
was the Temple women's basketball coach, at the time, and a close friend
of Cosby's came to her through a friend and asked her she wanted to be
director of operations for the women's basketball team. That's how she met Cosby.
It took the job, she got there, and eight or ten months later
she was at a home basketball game and Cosby was there and a donor introduced
them. Now, Cosby was also very close to Don Staley. As I
said, there was a poster of their pictures of two of them on the
walls at her office, and he devoted the Philadelphia premiere of the Fat Albert
movie to Don Stalely, so there was that aspect to it. Plus,
Cosby was on the board of trustees at Temple University, basically Andrea's boss,
and he followed up with the phone. He began calling her at the offices
there, asking questions about the women's basketball team. He at the time,
he was even doing commercials for Comcast, which was local then not the Mammoth
it is now Comcast TV, about the women's basketball team, so he was
just all in. Remember, he used to wear Temple University sweatshirts or shirts
on the Cosby Show. So they struck up a friendship and what she thought
was a mentorship. Now, as he later sent in his own deposition,
he had his eye on her romantically from the very beginning, and it was
if you read some of the stuff I WoT he was like a predator versus
pray thing. He was just slowly reeling her into his circle and gaining her
trust, grooming her. And he did what he did with so many of
the other victims. He groomed her family. He met her mom and her
sister when he did her performance in Canada. They had pictures with him.
It's like a script he was working from and it was very well bought out
and very well performed. So anyway, that's how I got on it,
and I quickly discovered she was very credible and that she had a lot of
evidence to support her claims. Then a second woman came forward and said that
he had done the same thing to her thirty years ago, and she told
her story to me exclusively tomorrow Green. She first actually told the d the
local DA's office was investigating. Then she also told Andreas lawyers because she had
obtained lawyers because she's going up against Bill Cosby and what had made her He
drugged and assaulted her at his home. She had gone to him for advice
because she was going to quit her job at Temple in January two thousand and
four, and she wanted advice on how to tell Dawn, and Cosby invited
her over and he had made moves on her two times prior. Now she's
gay, and he knew she was in a relationship with a woman. And
she's on six feet tall. He's a seventies he's thirty years older than her,
like ten years older than her own father. And she's if anything happened
and handle it because she was a very strong, fit athlete, almost six
feet tall and very fit. So she really wasn't worried about not being able
to handle these situations with him, Like I said, he was on the
border trustees. But that night he said, are you nervous? And he
knew she only took holistic medicine. She didn't take prescription drugs or anything,
and he was very into holistic medicine or so he said, so she was
very nervous. He said, he you stressed, and she said yes,
and he said, here's two herbal pills. It's like herbal meditation. And
right then within twenty minute, she started feeling woozy. She started trying to
stand up, she couldn't really walk, and they were sitting in his kitchen
and he led her over to a couch in the next room and put her
on the couch. And at that point she's paralyzed. She can't move,
she can't speak, and he begins sexually assaulting her as she's in and out
of consciousness. And when she woke a few hours later, she was laying
on the couch and who closed with her shoveled, and he comes down the
stairs. He's standing there in a white bathrobe, and he offers her a
muffin and some tea, and she's just going through this whole thing. Oh
my god, what just happened. What happened? This is America's dad.
This is what happened. And that's what a lot of sexual assault victims go
through in these circumstances, because I think, as statistic is, eighty five
percent of sexual assaults are from someone the victim knows, only fifteen percent or
stranger sexual assaults. So she went home to the shower. She was trying
to figure out what to do. She did try to confront him a month
or two later, because she just wanted to know what drug you gave me,
what did you do? And he just said something to her life,
you had an orgasm, and she just was just okay. She moved back
home. She was going to go back to massage school to be missus like
her dad back in Canada. She went home and her parents knew something was
wrong with her. She came home, she was pale, she was shaking,
she didn't eat, she didn't want to socialize. She was having nightmares
where she was screaming in her sleep. One morning in January two thousand and
five, she woke up from another nightmare and these dreams apparently were about women
being raped in front of her, and it was her fault because she hadn't
spoken up. And that's what made her finally call the police because she was
so worried he was going to do this to someone else and it would be
her fault because she had not spoken up. And that's what started this whole
thing. But the DA at the time decided not to charge Cosby. Into
this day, that's what ultimately led to his being free last year. But
that's a whole other thing. So anyway, that's a long story. That's
how I got on it, and it became like this whole thing. I
got interviews with other victims, he had done this too, and so on
and so forth, and that's how I got on it. I started out
being the biggest fan of Cosby, just trying to do my job as a
journalist and set my personal feelings aside. And the more I dug into this
and the more I found out about her, the more credible I found her.
How did you deal with having to come to the realization that America's Dad,
Bill Cosby is a dangerous predator? How did you deal with that?
Especially because you said you were a fan of the show. That's such a
level of cognitive dissonance. How do you deal with that? It was really
interesting, and my journalism training helped me because I was able to just the
facts, man, focus on the facts, focus on presenting both sides.
And it wasn't until I started writing my book in the summer of eighteen after
his conviction that I really and I made it from my point of view because
it was very difficult to get a book deal on this in general because of
who Cosby is, and at that point, this was eighteen, there had
been the other media jumped in twenty fourteen and begining very aggressively reporting it.
But I was the only one doing it in two thousand and five, and
I was attacked by the rest of the media back then. But for that
book, I really had to dig into my own personal feelings. My editor
would send it back, Okay, we need you to really think about this.
That's when it really started. And when I wrote the chapter about the
sentencing, and I was at his sentencing and I saw him after he was
sentenced to prison, and I saw him starting to roll up his sleeves and
he's wearing those red suspenders how Tuxtable used to wear. I found myself feeling
sad. I'm like, why am I feeling sad? And I wrote about
that in the book because it was just it was separating realizing he never was
Cliff Fuxtable, that this person I thought he was is not who he is.
Cliff Tuxtable was a fictional character, and Bill Cosby is not Clif Tuxtable.
And I'm not America's dad either. No, I mean he was,
but he used that as a cover and that helped him gain the trust of
these women as well. As I wrote about I started at my own substat
column last year because I felt like there are things I still wanted to say
about this as things evolved. But I don't want to write news stories because
I put my opinion out there, So I write opinion pieces when things happen.
And with the recent development with Judy Houth in the civil case and she
was sixteen year old girl, I thought most people don't realize how many of
his victims were teenagers. Yeah, that's a whole other level. I've been
trying to sort out my feelings about or at least lay out there for other
people to see, because I still think he has so many fans that don't
want to believe this and don't believe this and truly believe he's innocent. Well,
based on your own research and reporting, Nikki, how many women do
you think Bill Cosby has assaulted? There are sixty five known victims. I
say known because for every one of them, I think there's at least ten
more, if not one hundred more. There are other women who will tell
you that they know of other women some of the victims. I think we'll
look at one of these years when a lot of the teenagers happened. It
was like all in one year, in nineteen seventy five. So the victims
state the earliest known one is nineteen sixty five. She was a seventeen year
old version, and the most recent one that we know about, I believe
it's two thousand and eight, which I think was Chloe Coins. And there
are so many that have never come forward. I believe that. And as
I hoothesized in the book, or I say without saying in the book,
like how many didn't surviveing drugged and sexually soughted by Bill Cosby? Because how
do you know when you drug someone without their knowledge or consent that they're not
allergic to the drug. I didn't know I was allergic to demroll until I
got bitten by my parents' dog at hand surgery, and they gave me dem
all and I broke out in hives all over my body, And had they
not given me the anecdote, I would have died. So a couple of
the women have talked about trying to drive after he drugged them, and some
of them dinged other cars, and how many women did not survive that drive
home? And it's very easy for someone with a lot of power like him
to cover that up and had Andrea Constant not gone to the police. But
he had a pattern when once Andrew went to the police, then he came
to her and offered her a scholarship for her massage school. For how many
women got scholarships when they dropped their police complaints or didn't go to the police,
or just stopped didn't go to the police because he gave them a scholarship
quote unquote a scholarship quote unquote. There's no way of telling how many there
are, but I am confident there are many more. We do pride ourselves
on being a victim centric podcast, so it is important to us to get
out the stories of the victims, which is why we really like all the
covers that you've done on Cosby, and so we believe Andrea Constant and all
the other women. Why do you think it is that there are still people
who just don't believe it. I was reading through your book and I was
appalled at the number of people who jumped to Cosby's defense, both well known
and people who would still show up and go to his shows and offer him
standing ovations. Why are there still people out there who just don't want to
believe that Bill Cosby was living like this wholly different existence from the Daddy Huxtable
image on TV. Because these are people we are first of all, America's
a celebrity worshiping country. We worship our celebrities here. I guarantee you all
the people who are supporting him have never met him or again, or probably
ninety nine percent of them. He's got a half a million followers on his
Facebook page. They've grew up with him, they saw him on TV.
They don't want to believe it. It's very different than a Harvey Weinstein or
Jeffrey Epstein because most people never heard of either of those two people before those
scandals broke. But Bill Cosby was a beloved international icon. People thought they
knew him. They are just reluctant to let go of that image they have
of him. It's ridiculous if you think about it, because he's a celebrity.
Just because you play a nice guy on TV doesn't mean you are one.
He's an actor, He's a brilliant actor. If you gauged his acts
of mystrosity against the way he portrays himself on television, I think that's a
big part of it. It's just celebrity worship, and they just worship him.
In reading your writing and the writing of others, I walk away with
a reception, Nikki, that it's quite possible that it was common knowledge in
elite entertainment circles as well as in comedy circles when I was a kid.
Bill Cosby was a comedian who was then breaking into television. In the early
part of his career, he was a touring comedian who played clubs and went
out and toured the country. As I understand it, as far back as
the nineteen sixties he was known as a serial rapist. That this pattern of
drugging women and raping them while they were unconscious may extend back fifty years or
more. Is that a fair perception. I know it extended back at least
into the seventies that people in Hollywood and people were aware of that. I'm
not as certain about the sixties. That was the days of I Spy,
but he was certainly preying on women then, and it certainly became very pop
beat up. People knew. Even tomar Green talked about what in nineteen sixty
nine, nineteen seventy, Doctor Amar who was Cosby's friend who was her friend,
was like, don't be alone with him. Do not be in a
room alone with him. So people close to him certainly knew that he was
doing this, and they just I don't know, Maybe it was because it
was the sixties and it was coeludes and they're just I don't know. He
had so much power once he went on I Spy, especially, which was
around nineteen sixty five sixty six. Yeah, he just had so much power.
That's how men like that get away with it. I remember when this
rebroke again in twenty fourteen and one of the Cosby survivors got a text from
Quincy Jones who said, I've been telling Bill for years to stop drugging women.
It was like, at least Quincy tried to stop him, because everybody
else. I listened to Joe Rogan and Bill Maher I don't know last year
the year before before Rogan's podcast went to Spotify, and they were laughing about,
oh, yeah, I knew back in the nineties he was doing that,
said, I knew back in the eighties he was doing this, and
blah blah blah, and these modeling agencies knew they were sending him victims.
So many of these women were and they were barely out of their teams.
Some of them were teenagers. Most of them were barely out of their teams
of twenty twenty one, twenty two, and they just sped him victims because
William Morris's agency knew because they were helping pay off the victims. It's interesting
because I read the Cosby biography too, that Mark Whittaker did that Cosby cooperated
with. I read in there that in the early seventies, I think it
was around then, Camille took over the money for Cosby because he had a
manager that stole a lot of his money. And I'm thinking, all right,
so how did Camille that know if she took over the money. Then
I learned how that industry works when you have a manager, because I had
an agent since getten d up, but I had an agent and the money
would go to her first. So that's what if the money goes to the
agency first and then it goes to the performer. So I'm guessing that's how
they were able to pay off these women without Camille knowing, because they took
it out of whatever money came into the agency goes to the agency first,
and then it goes to the entertainer. When you referenced Camille, you're referencing
Camille Cosby, his wife who he's still married to all these years. On,
Yes, his wife, Camille. So is it plausible at all that
she didn't know? She packed up the kids and moved out of Beverly Hills
to western Massachusetts where they still have this palatial estate. And I think in
the early seventies, and he was traveling a lot on touring a lotons.
So when he went to Chicago, he stayed at the Playboy Mansion, at
the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, or he stayed at the one in Beverly Hills
with Hugh Hefner. So maybe she knew he was cheating on her. But
I don't know if she's just still got blinders on. I'll told Laura Richards
when I was on Tough about Cosby, when she was talking about coercive control,
I'd never thought of it in these terms. But Camille is six years
younger than Cosby, completely dependent on him financially for their entire marriage. Is
he just in control of everything with her? She seems like a fierce independent
woman when you see her, But is she one of the things that I
hadn't really thought about before I read the book, but once you mentioned it
in the book, I couldn't stop thinking about it is how many other people
had to have been complicit in this, and not just the agents, but
like his handlers, his assistance, the people who would even just give his
card, take his luggage to his room or whatever. There had to have
been so many other people who knew about this but were willing to stay quiet.
And that's just unfathomable to me, just the idea that there were so
many people who knew this and it was a whole conspiracy of silence. And
if you look at p J. Maston when she walked into that like she'd
known Cosby for a few years through the Playboy world because she was at Playboy
Bunny Mom. When she went into his hotel room they were going to go
out to dinner and invited up first for a drink. There were three other
people in the hotel room. I know who a couple of them are,
and you would recognize those names, but she doesn't say it publicly for a
reason. And then he says, would you like a drink? She says
sure. He says, what Grand Marnie. Why didn't he just go to
the barber drink. No, he calls down to the bell man, sends
the bellman out to get it, he brings it up. What did he
really send the bell man out for? And then they come up and they
do it, and then she wakes up ten hours later and she's been raped.
So she took two SIPs of that drink. Grand Marnie would not do
that to you. And there were three other guys in there at the time
when all this happened, so they knew something was up. There are so
many enablers. And Stacy Pinkerton who ended up meeting her at the sentencing,
and she's in the epilogue. She met his driver Cam on the ride to
the airport from her hotel. She's a flight attendant and he's already want to
meet Phil Cosby, so he procured she served her up to him and then
again, Oh, I'm going to mentor you. I'm going to help you.
Do you want to get a mob get your good New York. Nothing
happens, they're safe. You gained that sense of security. But then,
as you know, to IMPLEMENTE was very interesting when I was on real crime
profile because we're talking about Terree Serenis, and that's the only only one he
admitted to. Given Quaylutes too, but she was nineteen. That was an
instantaneous thing. He saw her in the gift shop at the Las Vegas Hilton.
She was there with her younger brothers and sisters, and he just walked
up and put his arm around her and said, do you want to marry
me? As when he spotted her, he just instantaneously decided that and then
invited the show and got her back there. That's what Jim pointed out,
And I hadn't really thought about that. That was one of He read her
immediately and he could tell this was someone he could do this too. And
Teresa herself will say that that's terrifying. So he had to have had these
drugs with him almost always everywhere that he went, and he must have been
carrying that with him. Yeah, it's terrifying. Linda Traits another victim,
almost victim. Actually, she's worked at Figaros, which is where and they
said, Sunny, they all corroborate each other without even knowing each other,
and without even knowing they corroborate each other. So she was a waitress at
Figaros, which was where tomarrow Green said that he drugged her. He invite
her, who's going to ride home? It takes her to the beach and
he pulls out a briefcase filled with drug and wanted. So she manages to
get away from him. And there's another woman. She was the only other
victim we test fight at the first trial, and she worked for his agent
at William Morris and she got fired after Cosby did this to her. But
she says he was coaching her for acting. And he invites her to the
Beverly Hills. Might have one of the big hotels there. They're supposed to
have lunch. But then when she gets there, says, mister Cosby wants
you to go to the bungalow. She goes to the bungalow. He opens
that the doors wearing his white robe. Then he says to her, here,
take this, and she says, I don't want to. He's his
take it. Remember he's the most important client at William Worth's. He had
his own private telephone line to her boss. That's how important he was.
So she takes it and she puts it under her tongue and he says lift
your tongue up. He knew she was trying to hide it under her tongue,
so she swallows it, and then she goes runs to the bathroom and
she goes in there and there's prescription pillbottles everywhere. Right, Yeah, he
seemed to take it with him wherever he went. You're listening to Mind over
Murder. We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back
here at Mind over Murder. This period between two thousand five and two fourteen.
Talk to us about that. You're beyond an early adopter. You knew
more about what was going on with Cosby as a journalist than I think probably
anyone did. Yet the story doesn't really explode until nine years later. What's
happening for you as you're moving forward in trying to advance this story and get
to the bottom of Cosby's criminal serial rapes across the country. It's interesting because
I was working for, as I said, the Philadelphia Daily News at the
time, and I have said this over and over again in my interviews in
the last few years, that there was no other news organization in the country
that would have allowed me to pursue this story. In two thousand and five
the way the Daily News did. And I know that for a fact because
even when I was doing the podcast with the La Times and the horizog was
great, but the La Times they were freaking out about the podcast at the
very last minute, and they wanted to take some of the women out.
And I'm like, wait a second, he's convicted. And I said,
you have written stories about every one of these women. Why are you right
now weight sixteen survivors in the podcast because it's on one place, I said,
but you wrote this story about and this is how I Thinkazule values For
his podcast. He wrote a story the fifty year history of Cosby's career juxtaposed
with all the allegations against him. So you had him all one story.
And I sent it to them like, oh yeah, so that's I think
that everybody was scared of being sued. They were scared of losing access to
him. Marty Singer, his attorney at the time, was calling me nearly
everyday threatening to sue me. They were sending threatening letters to my newspaper,
threatening to sue us, and my reporting caught the eye People Magazine. Ironically,
I say ironically, because then they backed off the story too, but
they came to me and wanted me to freelance for them because they were thinking
about doing a cover story. My bosses were fine with me working for them
as long as they got it first. So I started freelancing for them,
and it was a really disillusioning experience for me. I was going on all
these talk shows and I was getting beaten up by the co hosts and everything
I was. A negative story was written about me and the Philly Weekly,
and they quoted these journalism experts is saying the cover story I did onto Mark
Greene shouldn't have been a cover story that he said. She said that it's
stationalistic. I was just being ripped to shreds everywhere. And then the DA
was threatening to have me arrested for my stories. Wow, so Bruce Caster,
yes, you just tell people you could have be arrested for my stories.
It was not like I was ever covered in glory in this. I
don't think I've everyone. It's funny watching all these other people who come into
the story ten years later. Now they're winning Enknies and doing all this,
and I'm like, not me, not me, which is fine, that's
not obviously not why I did it, but it was really hard, so
I ended up doing other stories for people, and then my newspaper once again
went through another series of it was it was going to be layoffs for buyouts,
and they were there one of twenty five people to leave my news room.
I can barely do my job now. I was getting very burnt out
and the workload was incredible, so I decided to take it because I could
freelance for people. It was a very steady freelance work, so I took
out. It was like a year's salary, and I thought, well,
like that Cosby book. And I quickly realized that book is never going to
get published. Even the agents I was talking to were reluctant because there's a
husband and wife team. The wife was a Cosby fan. I was like,
you know, judging by what I just saw and all the pressure they
put on my newspaper not to run these stories, I don't think this story
wouldever, this book would ever get published. And years later, in two
thousand, gosh, I didn't know a couple of years earlier, Janice Dickinson
it had put in her memoir about Bill Cosby drugging and rape in her and
Juda Threegan had her take it out because it's not She said, it's not
that we couldn't because Cosby was known as being very litigious in the publishing industry.
And she said, it's not that we couldn't have won that lawsuit,
but we would have spent millions fighting it. So I stopped covering it for
people while I was working on a book proposal, and then I decided not
to do the book, and people ended up putting me on staff in the
interim. All of a sudden, story hadn't run at people like the one
we've been working on. And then after Andreas settled her lawsuit, Andrea Constant
filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby after the DA decided not to criminally charge him
to November two thousand and six, she settled it. I went to my
editors, couldn't we run this story now? If these women are brave enough
to have their names and photos be used, can't you be brave enough to
run it? So they were still so worried about being sued by Cosby,
but they ultimately ran up, but they did not put it on the cover.
And they do a weekly press release where they tout all their exclusives,
and it was not included there. So they did this very low key media
strategy. Because of course, the other thing with celebrity magazines and news organizations
in general is that the agency, like Bill Cosby's reps that William Morris,
also represent all these other celebrities, so you take them off and you can
lose access to all these other people. I was waiting for that word access,
because that's these magazines are all about. Yeah, I packed up after
that. I was like, Okay, the story's over. Andrea can't talk.
She signed an NBA with her lawsuit. But I just couldn't get rid
of the files. I packed them all up in a waterproof box and I
put them in my basement, and I thought, someday this may come back,
maybe there will be a new victim. I certainly didn't think it would
be Andrea's case coming back. I thought that was over, but I was
just like, I just can't get rid of all this. And then October
twenty fourteen, Hannibal Burrus, this young black rising comedian, comes to Philly
and does a routine and starts talking about Bill Cosby being a rapist and his
routine, and there's a phillymag reporter in the audience who starts recording it on
his iPhone. He writes a story about it the next day for phillymag dot
com with the video, and the next two days it just exploded and went
viral, and that's what brought it all to the forefront. The difference was
there was no social media in two thousand and five. My stories were going
out in the night ride or wire which was like a wire service back then,
and that was driving couseies people crazy because when flee when they called the
yell at me, they were telling me that because it was popping up in
places all over the country. So there was no social media in two thousand
and five. The only thing out there was Facebook, and it was just
for college students. But when phillymag dot com did a story in October twenty
fourteen, it exploded on social media because there was a video too. So
he did his story. Someone saw it on Facebook. Over They tracked this
in the book because it was interesting to Mede and realized till I was doing
the book how it all unfolded. The reporter put it on his Facebook page.
Someone from I think BuzzFeed or Gawker saw it on Monday, and then
they did something, and then someone else did something, and by the time
Hannibal Burrows shows up that Wednesday for his interview with Howard Stern, it's just
it's exploded. It's all over Twitter, it's everywhere, and that's what really
made this thing expose. And then Cosby's people tried to combat the social media
stuff by doing a meme contest, and instead people start making all these means
about Cosby drugging women, so they had to take it down the same day.
I loved reading about that. That was great. And also there were
all these news organizations that were online news organizations like Gawker and so forth.
It didn't exist in two thousand and five, really BuzzFeed, and they were
not afraid to take on Bill Cosby, where the mainstream media was still very
reluctant to write anything. You should watch that Associated Press interview where he just
basically tells them it took them two weeks to release it in IF number two
thousand and fourteen, where he basically like, we're going to call so and
so in LA and he tells his handler call them and let them know that
you guys shouldn't use this, so you can see how much he controlled them
in that, and that's what I was up against. Two. I was
reading all the stories when I was doing my book, I'm like, wow,
that Associated Press back in two thousand and five, which they did take
up for it later because they failed to unseal emotion and injury lawsuit that had
the deposition excerpts that led to this whole thing really exploding the following summer.
But back then they were his toty. I mean, their stories were very
much pro Cosby, and it was very disillusioning for me because I thought the
media was who I worked for at the time. I didn't realize that the
media is supposed to not be able to be pressured by powerful people, were
supposed to take them on and not be afraid to take them down if need
be, And it's just not that way anymore. You talked about the concept
of trading up when you talked about the National Enquirer and how Cosby would say,
I'll give you an exclusive interview if you don't run this story. I'd
heard of the phenomenon before, but I didn't realize how willingly so many members
of the press just jumped into it, were like, yeah, okay,
we will not run this story about absolutely heinous behavior in exchange for an exclusive
interview with Cosby. There were times when I was reading your book then my
job just dropped. I was like, I can't believe, except I can,
but I don't want to believe that the media would have behaved in this
way. And it wasn't just the National Choir, it was ABC. Like,
the only story that ABC did about Cosby during that time period when the
investigation was going on was one of that said, oh him. It was
from a source close to Cosby saying his the Andreas stories line up, except
that he says it was consensual and she says it wasn't. And then Lo
and befold they get the first TV sit down with him a couple months later,
and they get accessed he makes it's even crazier. This is when he
was going around the country, going into inner cities and lecturing black people about
how to behave Yes, I remember in these town halls and you, as
a journalist, you couldn't get in unless you were invited. And an ABC
got into it and they got exit. They did a nightline segment on it
all of this, and that's how it started out with me with his handlers.
First it was, oh, we got to get you into one of
these town halls. First they tried to carrot and then they try to stick,
and when that offer slowly went away as my stories got more aggressive.
But that is how they started out, Oh we got to get you into
one of these town halls. And of course journalists were champing at the bit
to get into these town halls. It was very controversial and everything that was
going on at the time. One of the bookers for one of the TV
shows I was on is the one who told me about trading up, because
he said that they were getting a lot of pressure from Cosby's people not to
have me on these shows talking about my stories, and pretty soon I wasn't
on them anymore. And it took a viral video of a stand up comedian
brave enough to do a routine about Cosby being a rapist nine years after the
fact, in a changed media environment to break this story wide open, something
that you'd been working on for a decade. Yes, and a blackmail.
I think that might have been important because Barbara Bowman, one of the victims
we spoke to back. She was one of the original twelve Jane Does and
Andrea Constant civil suit, one of the victims, and she had been in
Our People's Story in two thousand and six, and she wrote an off ed
for the Washington Post like, why did it take a man for people to
believe? Yeah? Isn't that sad? Yeah? I know. And even
look at this like docuseries that Showtime just did, like we have been trying
to do one too, and nobody will do it. But now that a
man wanted to do a docuseries, and I think race because I think that
Hollywood is still very reluctant to do anything attacking him, especially after George Floyd.
That. I don't think it's a coincidence that's how that project went forward.
It's just really sad. Did they ever threaten you directly or indirectly during
this time when you were carrying this spanner? You were right the entire time
and these women were telling the truth. Did they ever communicate with you directly
or indirectly in any threatening way back in two thousand and five, Yeah,
in that time frame, you were working this story before anybody else was,
and so you're standing out there alone with these women who were his victims.
How was it communicated to you, for example, when you didn't get bookings
television bookings that you were expecting to get, and like, how was that
characterized? Oh, honestly, could have cared less about the TV bookings that
I went on there too, Just as I told Marty, like I told
you, Singer Cosby's attorney was calling me near Labor day, screaming at me
and threatening me. And so you were on TV again last night. It
was making him crazy. I bet you really enjoyed that. And I'm like,
oh, yeah, Marty, I love working twelve hour days and I
live an hour from Philly and then sticking around another couple hours to get five
minutes on a show and then drive another hour home, and I don't get
paid for it. Yeah, Marty, it's just a really fun I thinking
ann getting nailed it by you every day. And they were. He was
also sending threatening letters to my newspaper, threatening to sue us. And like
I said, Bruce Caster, the DA was telling other reporters he could have
me arrested for my stories. Now, it was very hard, but I
believed in my reporting. I believe the women, so I didn't really care,
but it was not fun. Now that you've know that, you've brought
up Bruce Caster, let's go ahead and get into his role in Cosby's conviction
being overturned, which I think said shock waves through everybody. What is the
deal that he made that eventually led to Cosby's conviction being overturned? Can you
explain for our listeners. Let me first say that there's no evidence that there
was any such deal made. I'm convinced it's something that he came up with
ten years later when the case exploded again back in two thousand and five,
when in February, when Castor decided not to charge Cosby. Now let me
tell you first, Bruce Caster is a person who DA who always held a
press conference at a drop of the hat for everything. And the only time
he held a press conference during this was after they interviewed Cosby, and it
was very much clear that he was not going to be charging Cosby from the
tone of his comments, which is what brought forth Tomorrow Green, the second
accuser, because she heard it and I used to work for a DA.
That's DA speak for I'm not going to charge him. So when it came
time to announce he was not going to charge him. He wrote a press
release and released it. But what was unusual is that he wrote it himself.
That was the only thing that was unusual. But it was still weird.
But we got it. And he didn't tell Andrew's attorneys beforehand. Andrew
didn't know. They were blindsided when the media just showed up. Ten years
later, Bruce Caster, after this case explodes again the media and then after
the DA who was the current DA, who was his first assistant back in
two thousand and five, Risa Furman. She was Bruce Castor's first assistant back
in two thousand and five. So she reopens the case. Now do you
think she would have reopened that case if she had known there was a non
prosecute, been aware that Castor was saying there was a non prosecution a deal
back in two thousand and five. Oh hell, why would she have reopened
that case? But she was running for judge that same year, so she
hasn't really never spoken publicly about this. So she reopens it, and then
a month or two later, when it breaks the news, then all of
a sudden, Bruce Casters saying, Russa, don't you remember when I told
you back in two thousand and five, we agreed never to prosecute Bill Cosby
on this and she's no, Bruce, I don't remember that. And you
document everything, where's a document? A document? Was the press relief?
It doesn't make any sense. And in Pennsylvania no other states, you have
to have an agreement to prosecute. It has to be a written agreement,
has to be signed off on by a judge. You don't have the power
as a district attorney to make that offer yourself, but he didn't. Anyway,
it's an existent So that's where that all came from. The trial judge
held a very long hearing on this very issue. Bruce cast testified for several
hours, so did Andrew's attorneys testified, and the judge ended up finding him
not credible, and the one attorney of Cosmus who was still alive, not
credible. That's where those issues are supposed to be dealt with at that level,
because the pensility to Supreme Court isn't sitting in a courtroom listening to all
the evidence. You can't determine credibility through paper. They'll leave. The trial
judge can do that. So basically the pensilian Supreme Court overstepped with that decision.
I wrote a long piece on it on my sub stack about how there's
a lot of things. The one thing I can tell you about the decision
it was not based on the law. I don't know what kind of deal
was cut. I don't know something, but there was some kind of deal
cut because there's that decision was not based on the law. There was a
very weird quote from Bruce Caster where he said he was the sovereign Minister of
Justice. I think that's the sovereign. Yes. I sat in that hearing
and we were all just going, aren't you kidding me? Yes, he
said that he as the sovereign of Montgomery County, he had the power to
make this deal. Yeah. I remember thinking how ludicrous this was. Yes,
and that's why he was found not credible, because the judge was just
and Yeah, and that's why he was found not credible. The judge did
not believe him. And he also said that he told Andrew. He told
Riesa to tell Andrew Andrew. He said that Andrew's attorneys had signed off on
it, and they got on the stand and said, no, we didn't,
we did not sign off on this. Honestly, I was surprised he
didn't get charged with perjury. So in the end, how is it that
Cosby's conviction was overturned and he was released from prison? How does that happen?
I wish I could tell you, but all I can tell you I
don't know what happened with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. I watched the oral arguments
hearing and at one point one of the justices actually walked away and shut their
camera off for ten minutes after they asked one of the Montgomery County prosecutors a
question, and the tone was so hostile, and they're all pretty old.
I said, one thing I'm thinking is they're all Bill Cosby fans, Like
they're all fans of the Cosby Show. They're in that age group or maybe
even further back to like his albums and stuff. Because there's just there was
zero that was not based on the law. They overstepped. They really overstepped
with that decision, and the only way to undo it it would be to
go to the US Supreme Court, and they declined to hear it. And
I understand that it is it's got to be an issue that applies to other
cases and This is just one that is again, it's not based on the
law. So I don't know why they did it, but there is someday,
I swear about it, I will find out. Because there it was
not based on the law. There was some kind of sweetheart deal cut.
I don't know what it was, but that's what happened. We do know
here that in the late part of June, he was convicted for drugging and
assaulting Shooty, who's back in nineteen seventy five. So what is that going
to mean for him? Is that going to get him back to prison?
No, that was a civil lawsuit. So yeah, so he has to
pay five hundred thousand dollars, but he is also going to appeal that.
But that's the thing with Cousbee. Every time he lost, I think he
was up to lawyers twenty four and twenty five by the time we got to
the Pennsylvanian Supreme Court appeals, because every time he'd lose around he would fire
them and get new ones. He still owes money to some of his previous
attorneys, or he did at one point. There's another Lily Bernard, another
Cosby survivor, just filed a lawsuit against him. Back in October. Because
what's happening is there are several states that have passed what they call look back
laws which give a sexual abuse victim. Some like the one in New Jersey
was for sexual abuse victims. It gave him like a one or two year
window to file a lawsuit against their attackers, no matter how long the goal
it was. So that's how Lily was able. Hers was like in the
nineties, and that's how Lily was able to file it in New Jersey just
last October. Now what's interesting is New York just passed look back law for
a year or so. Stay tuned. I have a feeling there's going to
be some more filed against Cosby based on that lawby and passed, But there's
civil lawsuits. They are not criminals. What some of the Cosby survivors did
after the case broke again in twenty fourteen is they got the statute of limitations
laws extended or eliminated for criminal cases. It got eliminated in California, it
extended in Nevada, and it got extended in Colorado. They did that and
it didn't benefit them. It was not retroactive, but at least it's done.
If he's done anything more recently. There's possibilities that he if victims come
forward, But why would they, Why would they? Look at what just
happened, look at how poor Andrea was dragged through the mud. I write
about this in the book. First of all, I think predators usually choose
victims they think will be believed. They choose them from unequal power status,
or lower income level, or just there's or a vulnerability. But then tomorrow
Green every bad thing she had ever done since it happened got leaked to the
media, and the media ran with it. And I said, one of
the experts I spoke was, said, that's why rape shieldballs were created to
protect this from happening in court. What happens now is defense attorneys just go
to the media. And I said. The ironic part, though, so
you have to beat the perfect victim to be able to be believed. The
ironic part is Andrea Constan was that perfect victim. She had no skeletons in
her closet. So the COSME team made up lies about her in two thousand
and five, and the media ran with it. They ended up running her
name and photo without her permission, which does not happen with sexual abuse six
victims. So there's a double standard, and that's what's so sad in the
media today. They will break someone like Andrew Constant over the coals because they
know she doesn't have the means to sue them, but they will not take
on someone like Bill Cosby because they're terrified of being sued. This was a
rough book to read, Nikki, It really was. It's beautifully written.
I enjoyed reading it because it gave me a lot more insight into Cosby and
his crimes, but it was a rough read. It made me infuriated reading
these awful attacks on Andrea and all the other women, and how Cosby's lawyers
raked them over the coals. This could not have been easy for you to
live with. How did you live with this from two thousand and five till
now? How do you have the emotional fortitude to deal with this? I
don't think that I could have. I think it was somewhat easier in two
fourteen when all the other media suddenly jumped on the bandwagon and I wasn't alone
anymore, But that brought its own set of problems. It was funny,
actually, just a so typical to media because of course they were other journals
south or town And like I tried to warn people about Cosby back in two
thousand and seven, I like you now he didn't or if you did,
so what I did? All this in two thousand and five, I mean,
there was the Philly Mag reporter, another Philly Mag reporter, Bob Huber,
who wrote a story where he actually got into one of Cosby's town halls.
So actually he took that carre at at first, but then included stuff
about the victims. But he lifted from my daily news stories for his Philly
Mag story and didn't attribute it, and then they ended up having to run
a correction about it after I waste hell about it. I'm sorry for my
language. In a way, it was glad to see that the victims were
being treated so well. But then the other media come in and now then
they start winning awards for their coverage. They won Emmys, and you just
have to laugh at some point, and so, yeah, story, but
I was glad that it was getting the attention it deserved. It was That's
what I thought would happen in two thousand and five, and I'd seen it
happen with other stories. There would be these eyebrokes and stories and all the
other media would join it become this big thing. It would put pressure on
the DA to do something, and so I was glad to see it happen.
In a decade later, it led more and more victims to come forward,
and they kept the pressure on and then the AP came in and they
filed a motion to get and I actually did talk to people like, hey,
let's follow emotion to see if we can get those documents unsealed. Now
they weren't interested. It's not how People magazine operates, because that's what we
would have done. If I was at the Daily News, we would have
been going to court to get the same thing the Associated Press did. So
I'm glad that they did that, because that's what blew this open even more,
and reopening Andrea's case was because there were his own admissions about doing this
to women, or at least about giving drugs to womeny one Day's sexable.
I'm glad you can see the positive. In other words, that media pile
on it probably did have some benefit. Even though you had to say to
yourself, where have you guys been for the last nine years? And then
all these stories are breaking in October fourteen, and I'm like, it's like
deja vu all over. I reported all of this ten years ago, Yeah,
nobody cared, and now it's oh my god, it was surreal.
It was surreal, but again for their sake, I was glad that they
were finally being heard. What's next for you? Now? I am working
on a few different projects. I have some book writing projects I'm doing,
and so just nothing I can really talk about. But I haven't given up
onstating. So will this be in the true crime genre or elsewhere both.
I've got a couple of different things going and I'm developing some podcasts too,
So trying to just a lot of Yeah, I work for an agency where
I write books for an agency. And there's another one I've been working on
a proposal for that is true crime. That's very explosive, but it just
needs more work. It needs more investigating before I'll put my name on it.
But it's another explosive one. It's another one where there's the good cops
who are doing their best to get the truth out and then they're bas again
with the corners and the metal go examiners. Ruling these is undetermined, which
essentially means nothing gets done and these are murders. Oh okay, yeah,
well so lots more to look forward to from you in the coming months and
years. So the book is called Chasing Cosby the Done follow America's Dad.
Where can we find it wherever you buy books, your local bookstore, you
can ask for Amazon. Just it's available wherever you buy books. Excellent.
And then your other book, which we have talked about previous to this on
the podcast, is Victim f And that was with Aaron Quinn and Denise Huskins.
Correct, yes, I co authored with them. Yes, that one
was mine. I was crazy. I literally sat and read it for five
straight hours, did not move, did not put it down, and just
sat there and read it in one fell swoop. It is amazing. We
would love to have you back on the pod to talk about that one if
you're willing. Oh, of course, I'd love to. I think that's
where the phrase unput down a bowl comes. So, I mean it's like
one of these things you're like, truth is stranger than fiction the more,
especially knowing Aaron and Denise and the type of people they are and what incredible,
extraordinary people they are that this happened to them is just mind boggling.
It really gives you pause about what chances the average person have with the police
in a situation like this, if it can happen. That Yeah, a
most amazing, mind boggling story. And we'd love to have you back to
talk about it. Okay, I'd love to do it. Well, it's
going to do it for this episode of mind Over Murder with Nikki Egan.
Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Mind
Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive
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five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder. My My, My,