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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with Your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening, the definitive account of Bill Cosby's transition from revered father figure to convicted criminal.
Bill Cosby's decades long career as a sweater wearing, wholesome TV dad came to a swift and stunning end on April twenty sixth, twenty eighteen, when he was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constant. The mounting allegations against Bill Cosby, more than sixty women have come forward to accuse him of similar crimes, and his ultimate conviction were a shock to Americans who wanted to cleave to their
image of Cosby as a pudding pop hero. Award winning journalist and former People Magazine senior writer Nikki Wizency Egan was the first reporter to dig into the story when Constant went to police in two thousand and five. Other news organizations looked away, but Egan doggedly investigated the case, developing ties with entrench sources and discovering incriminating details that
would ultimately come to influence the prosecution. In her debut book, Chasing Cosby, Egan shares her first time account of Cosby's thirteen year run from justice. She tells us that's how Cosby planned and executed his crimes, and how Hollywood alliances and law enforcement knew what Cosby was doing but did
nothing to stop him. A veteran crime reporter, Egan also explores the cultural and social issues that influence the case, delving into the psychological calculations of a serial predator and into the psyche of a nation that fervently wanted to put their faith in the innocence of America's Dad.
Rich in character and rife with dramatic revelations about popular culture media power in our criminal system, Egan's account will inform and fascinate readers with its candid telling of humanity's most enduring tale, the rise and fall of a cultural icon. The book they were featuring this evening is Chasing Cosby, the Downfall of America's Dad, with my special guest journalist
and author Nicole Wise and see Egan. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview Nicole Wise and c.
Egan, thanks for having me on.
Thank you very much. Incredible timely story and even though this story is not about murder, the audience will certainly certainly appreciate this. Let's talk about as you write in the book January thirteen, two thousand and five, tell us about Andrea Constant and how you open the book about her experience with Bill Cosby. Tell us about January thirteen, two thousand and five. In that story.
Sure, that morning she woke up from yet another nightmare and she was sobbing. It was a nightmare where she dreamed that she was seeing a woman getting sexually assaulted because she hadn't come forward about what had happened to her. She had been having it over the last year and had woken up screaming sometimes from her sleep. Her parents could hear her from their bedroom. So this morning when it happened, she just woke up and she called her mom.
Her mom was on her way to work and she called her and she blurted out, I have PTSD, Mom, I think I have PTSD. And then Bill Cosby drugged and raped me. And it was just a shock, like her mother knew something was wrong with her daughter. She had come home, she had quit her job in Philadelphia and come home to enroll a massage school to be in Messuth like her father. But she wasn't herself when she came home that previous April.
She was withdrawn, she lost.
Weight, she didn't want to spend time with her family. She seemed depressed, and she was having these nightmares. So her mother, you know, later that day, when her mother got home from work, they called police and reported the crime, and that set off this whole tidal wave of events that led to ultimately his conviction.
You talk about them calling the family, calling police, but they were living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and they called them to Durham Reachild Police department at that time. Tell us what else she did other than call the police. Who else did she also call?
Well?
She because yeah, she was Canadian. She wasn't familiar with how the criminal justice system worked in the US and her her brother in law is a cop in Canada, and that he had told her you should look around for a lawyer to represent you. She didn't know if
she would need a lawyer to actually file charges. I mean, she just really didn't know how the system worked, so she started calling around in the meantime to get recommendations for lawyers in the Philadelphia area and then but didn't actually speak to them anyone before they called the police. And then her mother also was so worried about when
she found out that her daughter had been drugged. She wanted to know what Bill Cosby had given her daughter because of the way her daughter's behavior had changed, she was worried that there was some lasting impact that was part of the reason that her daughter had been herself. So she asked Andrea for the phone number to call him. And Andrea had an for his answer and service. It's the one she always used, and her mother know she was scared, like they were both scared in a way
because they were scared they were book. Cosby's one of the most powerful people in this country in the entertainment world, and they were both nervous and scared about confronting them. But Andrea's mothers was overcome by her fear for her daughter. She had to know what he had given her daughter, so she called That was a Thursday, but Cosby didn't
end up calling her back until Sunday. That Sunday, and in the meantime, they went to police, but because it happened outside the Philadelphia area and not in Toronto, the Durham police referred to Philly erroneously at first, and then a few days later it went to the correct police in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, which is just outside Philly, which is where Cosby owns a home.
Now you talk about a police source tipped off Harvey Hairston, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia's Channel ten, the NBC affiliate, and the allegations you right broke in Channel tens five PM newscast on January twentieth, two thousand and five. Tell us what you learned and how you learned that information, and what was your capacity? Where were you working at that time and what capacity.
Sure?
I was working at the Philadelphia Daily News at the time. I was a crime investigative writer, and I had spent the last two years digging into sexual misconduct among the Pennsylvania State Police. I always did investigative stories while also working the crime beat, so that's why it was assigned to me. My boss had always said, if you want to get ahead on a story, give it to VICKI. So they gave it to me, and it was a
shock because I was a fan of Cosby. I grew up watching Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids on Saturday mornings with my brother. I loved the Cosby Show. I truly thought Bill Cosby was Cliff Huxtable. So my initial reaction was not the cause I just you know, it wasn't something I wanted to believe either, but I had to put my personal feelings aside just look into this
and see what this was all about. And of course, the biggest question, because we knew who Cosby was or who we thought he was, was who was this woman Because her name wasn't being released. All I knew was she had worked at Temple University, and Cosby was on the board of trustees there as well, and had not
graduated but been given an honorary degree. So I had some sources at Temple who ended up telling me who she was, though we didn't use her name until we had permission to use it a month or so later, and her reputation was fantastic there. She was director of operations for the women's basketball team. Don Staley had recruited her for that job. She was the coach and Don
Staley was also very close with Cosby. She was one of the top five and then I did a clip search on her name to see what else I could find out about her, and she was one of the top five basketball women's basketball players in Canada. She was recruited by fifty to sixty colleges in the United States to play for them because she was so good, and
she eventually chose the University of Arizona. She dreamed of playing for the WNBA one day, and after college, she went and played in Europe for a while, and then she finally came back to Canada and she started realizing her dreams of playing in the WNBA weren't going to happen. I mean, she used her own money to go to tryouts in various cities as well. So that's when Don Staley came to her and recruited her for this position at Temple, and it was a way for her to
still be in the basketball world. So that's why she took that job, and that's how she met Cosby. About a year into the job, he was at a Temple women's basketball game. He was a big supporter of the team. He used to make commercials for comcast about the team, and he would show up at games and a donor who was at the game introduced Cosby to Andrea and what was And then the next day or a couple
days later, he started calling her about temple business. But he was the one who pursued this what she viewed as a mentorship, although he would later say in his deposition in her case that he had his eye on her romantically from day one. From the moment he better, she thought he was just of grandfather figure. I mean, he was just her mentor. He was like ten years older than her own father. And so you know, he's
calling her, asking her questions about the team. They become friendly, and you know, he pursued this relationship that was not her and she certainly wasn't in a position to say no because he was, you know, on the board of trustees at her employer. He was close with her boss, and she really, you know, had no problem with that. So that's what happened, and that's what was their relationship for the next fourteen months.
You right. That's interesting too that what you find out later is interesting in this mix that actually Andrea is gay and not heterosexual.
Yeah, I was working on a profile of her to run when I worked on it in between you know, the stories that were breaking on this, because in the midst of this, I got an exclusive with a second accuser who came forward, Tomar Green. So yes, as I was interviewing former teammates and so forth, I discovered that they said you know that, don't you? And I said, no, actually I didn't. So I called one of her attorneys and I said, what do you you know?
Is this true?
And you know off the record there and I can say this now because she has since had.
It made public.
But they said yes. They said, well, why don't you want it to know? Because by that point, someone from Cosby's team had leaked or someone in the prosecution had leaked to a local to ABC News that Cosby what had said that the relationship was consensual, that the account she gave of that night and the account he gave up that night about the night this happened were completely matched up, except that she said it was he said
it was consensual, and she said it wasn't. And so I said to her, you know, if people know this, then they could say, you know, how can this be consensual? Because I was kind of amazed at the backlash as soon as I started reporting on this story from from the other media, from against me, against her, like nobody wanted to hear this. And Andrew's attorney said, there's no point in doing that because cosby people will just find some guy she dated in high school to say she's not really gay, and.
She was exactly right.
Those were exactly the type of tactics they were using, except it was worse. They were actually making up lies about her and leaking it to the media, and the media was running with it. So I totally understood. And it wasn't until a decade later after the case popped up again and there was a new court filing that Andrea's attorneys put in that they finally revealed that fact that she was gay, And at that point I was just still so surprised they did it, even though it
was in a public court filing. Even though I knew that it was that they it was okay.
To reveal it.
Then if they put it in there, I still was called to the lawyer to make sure it was okay to say it, because you know, it had been so closely held, such a closely held secret for a decade and I just wanted to make sure it was okay for me to use it. I mean, that's just the way I approached sensitive subjects in my stories.
Right now, Andrea hired Dolores Trumiani and bb kidits former prosecutor and law partners in Devin right outside of Philadelphia. What was their experience that they brought to this case.
Oh, they were both seasoned prosecutors. They had been sex crimes prosecutors. Dolores had been a homicide prosecutor. She had prosecuted the most notorious band of criminals in this area, the Johnston Brothers that became the subject of the Sean Penn movie At Close Range. I mean, they're both very fearless, tough prosecutors, and they just were not afraid to take this case from the beginning. I mean, they just believed Andrea as soon as she came to them, and they
had no problem. In fact that Lauris has said that she's always felt that she could have gotten a conviction on this case, even in two thousand and five, with the evidence that was there.
You talk about the Associated Press's first story initial media response. Tell us what you read and your reaction to the coverage. Or take on it.
I mean, sure, you know, I had kept all of my notes and everything from two thousand and five, even after this Andrea started her lawsuit, because I packed it up in a box and a waterproof box and put it in my basement in case this bubbled up again, in case, you know, some new accuser came forward. So I was looking through all of those old stories and I knew, I knew the other media the coverage had
been bad, but and you know, very anti Andrea. But I hadn't realized how bad until I started doing the research for this book last summer. So yeah, I found that the first story the AP did lead led with, you know, Cosby's lawyer calling these charges bizarre and preposterous. And the lead on my first story that I wrote about the scandal breaking was just that, you know, very very neutral. You know, he Bill Cosby has been accused of you know, drugging and sexually assaulting a former Temple
employee at his Cheltenham mansion. Police say, you know, it was very you know, down the middle. And then of course I had his lawyer's response in there, but they basically led with Cosby, you know, just saying that this
is bizarre and preposterous. And you know, their favoritism toward him continued well up into when this scandal rebroke in twenty fourteen, because they there was an there was an interview where they had interviewed him and asked him questions about this, and they didn't release the video of and he was trying to get them to not release it, and they held onto it for two weeks and he was like Calso and so in la and talked to them,
and then they finally released a video two weeks later. Now, subsequent to that, they also went to court to try to get the deposition unsealed. And they have certainly painted themselves as the savior in this case, and they did. You know, getting these documents partially unsealed was key, but they were a long time coming to that point of view.
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You write about Bruce Lcaster, Junior at the Montgomery County District's Attorney and his prosecution of this or tell us about Bruce Caster and the press release that he issues and what he has to say.
Sure, you know, I it's another thing I was surprised about because I'd done Bruce Caster for years there. He loved to hold press conferences at a drop.
Of a hat.
He loved high profile cases, he loved being on TV. And I thought, what a natural one for him to go him onto And he wasn't scared of tough cases. I mean, I had seen him get murder convictions where they didn't even have a murder weapon. In one case, all they had was the imprint of a weapon in a holster, and he was able to get a murder conviction.
I had his office had prosecuted this a state trooper who was sexually assaulting teenagers and women for decades or for years in the Philadelphia suburbs, and all of them, you know, did not report to a police immediate they, like Andrea, it was delayed reporting. It's the norm in these cases. It's not normal. The norm is not for sexual sult victims to go to the police right away. In fact, the majority of them go to police. So I knew that he had handled cases like this, and
he understood that. But from the get go, it just seemed to me that he wanted nothing to do with this case.
He didn't.
It was four days before he even issued a press release that he didn't have a press conference. And in that press release, which was just four short paragraphs and it was released to just the reporters who worked out of the courthouse in Northtown, Pennsylvania, where his office was, it wasn't released to all of the media. He released it to them first and then the rest of the media the next day, and it almost like sounded like he was saying he might charge Andrea with a crime.
So it was really shocking.
And then after they interviewed Cosby hed he did hold a press conference and the comments he made it made, you know, were very important because the way they were interpretated, interpreted by at least one woman, was that, you know, he had no intension of prosecuting this case. Calipn Your
Turn of Tomorrow. Green heard excerpts of it in California and she listened to it and she's like, that's you know, I'm listening to what he's saying, and he's basically describing the case as weak, which which is day DA speak
for I'm not going to be filing charges. So she decided to come forward with her own story the f Cosby trying to do the same thing to her or doing the same thing to her thirty years prior, because she said, I could tell they didn't believe this woman, and I realize having it done to me doesn't prove he did it to her, but they need to know that, you know, the other he has done this to other women.
Tell us more as you write in the book about Tomorrow Green and why she is just the perfect person to come forward second and have her story public.
Sure she she immediately, you know, she contacted me, and she had contact law enforcement to tell her story and Andrea's attorneys, and then she reached out to me to give me the first interview. And she wanted her name to be used. She wanted her face to be used. She because she said, no, one's going to believe me if I'm an anonymous source. And She's like, I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I'm a lawyer, you know I so hopefully, you know, people will believe me because I'm basically respectable person.
And so she told me her story and I confirmed it with that she had told people other people shortly after it happened. I spoke with them, and she told me, you know, some other things that had happened to her, like she'd had a duy and all that, but it wasn't relevant to what we were talking about for the story,
so it wasn't in there. And I went to cause these people for reaction, and they, of course, as I later found out, works and their attorneys were sending letters threatening to sue us, but my paper refused to back down, as did I, and so she did it and it was just kind of exploded. And two days later that well, that morning when it ran out, my phone was written.
By the time I came in, it was Today's show producer trying to reach her to see if they could get her on, and I reached out to tomorrow later and she said it was fine to give them her information. And she went on and was interviewed by Matt Lower, which is really interesting considering what happened so many years later, right, And it was an awful interview. I mean, he couldn't hide his skepticism, he couldn't hide his arrogance. You know, it was it was very clear, you know, he just
it was like a very pro Cosby interview. And you know I experienced the same thing when I went on Dan Abrams Show and MSNBC that night. It was very clear how skeptical he was of me. I mean, I just I was really shocked by the way the media
reacted to this story. So, yes, if you put her on the show, But then the coverage quickly died down because Cosby's people were able to control the media, and ap again waited a day and a half to do a story on tomorrow and then led with this some of the dirt Cosby's people had dug up on her in their story.
Tell us who tell our audience who Marty Singer is and the kinds of things that he was saying to you.
Sure Marty Singer was? Is this celebrity attorney he's He's represented some of the most you know, powerful celebrities in Hollywood usually when they end up in trouble whatever, they go to him and what he tries to do. Although I did not know this at the time, he didn't later did an interview with The New York Times where he said, basically, his strategy is to kill stories before
they ever run. He doesn't have to sue and doesn't like to sue because defamation cases are hard to win and you don't win a lot of money.
So what he does is he tries to.
Make them never run, and he's very good at it. He does it by you know, threatening to sue basically. I mean, even my editor at the time said the letters that were sent to them were some of the most strongly worded he had ever seen, and if you google around, you'll see some of the other ones he sent because once this rebroken twenty fourteen, some of the
news agencies just started printing them. And then the La Times did a story I think after that, where they printed excerpts of one he sent to them about another similar story they were working on. So it was I've never in my life experienced anything like it. It was it was. It was very intimidating. He was very intimidating, and there was.
Just no like.
I'd done a lot of tough stories. I've been covering cops in Philly, for God's sake, I'd been covering, you know, police corruption in the Pennsylvania State Police. I'd been threatened before. I'd been you know, I'd had it happen all the time. I was at a press conference with the Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner and the governor and I asked the State Police commissioner a question and he almost lunged toward me,
and the governor had to hold him back. So I'm you know, I can handle it, but this was like nothing I had ever experienced. And then on top of it all, I had the media piling on.
Top of me.
Too so, but it just you know, I trusted my reporting and I wasn't going to back down if they sued.
They sued, but.
They had no grounds for it. And little did I know, that's not even their strategy, you know, Like I said, I didn't find out till a few years later when I saw the New York Times story that his strategy is just to kill these stories, not to actually sue.
You talked about also the threats or offers of future stories. Tell us a little bit about what you found out in how things work in the media that you were surprised about in terms of trading up or offers of future stories.
Tell us about that. Yeah, this was my first interaction really with the national media, and I was being asked to be on a lot of TV shows like The Nightshaw was like greta ancestor and had her show then, and of course Dan Abrams and the bookers were telling me that they were getting a lot of fleck from Cosby's people for having me on these shows. And that's where I first learned the phrase trading up, where basically you back off of one story in order to get
a better one. And in fact, soon I wasn't being asked to be on those shows anymore, and like ABC, which never covered the allegations at the time, except for the one story they did saying, you know, Cosby says this was consensual, which was.
A pro Cosby story.
Sure enough, a couple months later, you know, after castor the DA had decided not to charge Cosby, they got an exclusive interview with him and they were allowed access into one of his town halls. In these town halls he was holding across the country within inner cities and kind of lecturing black people about how to behave, and the media wasn't just allowed to go to it. You
had to be invited into it. And in fact, when I first started covering the story, his spokesman told me, oh, we've got to get you into one of these town halls. Well that offer quickly went away after my stories, you know, became more aggressive. But yeah, so that's how I learned that phrase. And it was it was really disillusioning, to say the least. I mean, I'd never experienced that in local journalism. But I also worked for a newspaper that was just wasn't afraid of anybody, So that was that
was a big plus. As you read and as far as trading up went, and then I found out I'm sorry. And then Beth Ferry or another accuser, had come forward to the National Inquirer and had told them her story, and they'd had her take a live detector task she passed, and then they took it to Cosby, and Cosby they agreed to kill that story in exchange for Cosby giving
them an exclusive interview, which he did. So that is a very classic case of trading up, backing off of one story in order to get another better one.
Incredible. You write that a steady stream of accusers gave statements to Andrea's attorneys, who then turned their infoover to detectives. You didn't know what each accuser had said. That knowledge came later, and you were receiving many tips and emails and letters, falling up on each as much as you could. And then suddenly, February seventeen, two thousand and five, what happened, four weeks after this case has been opened. What happens?
It was a Thursday, five forty five pm. Get a press release, and it's from Bruce Gaster and it was you know, as he later testified about this, it was very unusual, not only for him to write his own press release, but for him not to even hold a
press conference to announce his decision. But he anyway. In this press release, he announced he was not going to be filing charges against Cosby, and he listed why even though you know, I found out a decade later that his detectives were still in the middle of their investigation. When and they were in the Cheltenham Police Commission chief, none of them knew he was going to do this.
They were working hand in hand with Castors detectives on this case, and even Caster's own detectives, like, none of them knew he was gonna just not decide not to prosecute. They were blindsided by it, and Andrea's attorneys were blindsided by it too, because they hadn't bothered to let them know. They found out when a local TV reporter shows up
at their office shortly before six pm with it. And Castor later said that he had sent them the press release, but you know they're supposed to call, you know, you're not supposed to just do something like that. And it was very traumatic for Andrea because she was out with her sister and they couldn't reach her, and you know, the media had gathered outside her home. Again, they had been almost there were days where there's some days her parents couldn't even go to work because there was so
much media outside their home. Because another thing that had happened that had violated the normal of this these sexual assault cases is her name had been leaked into the media and the media was using her name and image and that was not the norm. And that happened in a very carefully constructed way. So she had to sneak into her own home later that night after finding this out. So she was just and and you know, again there was like us in that press release, Caster wrote, there was,
you know, a nasty statement about Andrea. There was much in here that that could be used to show both sides in a bad light. And it's like who does that too?
You know?
And get as I said, BB and Dolores are former sex crimes prosecutors, former prosecutors, they had never seen anything like it. They'd never seen a DA disparage a victim that way. And the ironic part is like, you know, Andrea did not have any skeletons in her closet. They you know, as I write about in the book, you Know. That's often the tactic that defense attorneys use and they
is to disparage the victim. They find like some traffic tickets she got or something they did wrong, to show she's not credible, something that has nothing to do with the sexual assault case, and they use that against them and great shield laws that prevented them from doing that in court, so now they just take it to the media.
And what they had leaked was that Andrea had had gone to police, had gone to Cosby and tried to get Andrew, and her mother gone to Cosby before they went to police and tried to get money out of him, which was not true. That there was a phone call that was that Andreid's mom recorded that they called a classic shakedown, which was the mom trying to get money out of Cosby. Not true. Turns out that phone call actually is him offering this educational trust and them not
taking them up on it. But the media just ran with it. So the and Know caster kept calling this phone call in a legal wiretap, even though he'd had his first assistant DA researched the issue, and that phone call that that Andrew's mom recorded was legal, and in fact it was useless evidence. In both trials, So that's what he's talking about. Much that could be made. Oh and the fact that she made disposedly inconcier and statements, she had dates mixed up and so forth. But you know,
she was drugged and her memory was foggy. And that is also that happens with sexual assault victims. Their memory sometimes comes back in pieces. It's not linear. You know, it's because of the trauma and because of the drugs. And so he made a lot about her inconsistent statements. She was always consistent about what she said happened that night. She was just fuzzy on some of the timing and the details because of being drugged and because of the trauma.
You write about November eighth, two thousand and six, and the civil lawsuit tell us this is one of the most I guess, disturbing parts of this book. How did Cosby conduct himself at that deposition?
It was bad.
Miller's ended up later testifying on it. He was, you know, he was rude, he was he stormed out a couple of times. They had to have judge inter seed they I mean, that's why I ended up being done over four days, over a six month period. And the judge had to, you know, force them to answer certain questions Andrea when when she was being questioned.
They were hostile to her.
It was, it was And the contents of the deposition when you read it are just it's just creepy. I mean, I saw at the second trial when some of the excerpts were being read, there were two African American gentlemen who were alternate ors sitting where I could see them, and they're read They're watching the words being read on the screen and their look on their faces.
Is like, what the hell like it.
Is just it reads like soft porn. Some of it. It's his description of what he said happened with him and Andrea, and it is just disgusting, you know. So so yeah, yeah, his behavior, but he's he's a man who's used to getting his way. He had never his nothing had ever gotten this far with him. Because I think that he was able to resolve these cases, but with these like the edged location trust that he offered Andrea.
There was another woman who came forward in two thousand in New York City and said he had tried something similar with her, and then the next thing, you know, she's never spoken and In the deposition he talks about that case. I put a lot of it in the book and this last conversation they had, and you know it was after that that you know didn't hear from it.
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Eighteen plus from her again. So my guess is she got some kind of educational trust. But it was interesting to me too, is you know this drug things part of the pattern. And in the deposition, he says she asked him what did you give me? And that was eye opening to me because don't think anyone else caught that, because there had never been an allegation that he had drugged her as well that in the reports in the local papers when this happened.
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or Google Play. That's Friends Without the are Best Fiends play today now, Nicole, we were talking about what happens next after her civil lawsuit. You talked about the Jane does coming forward, and you spoke to Barbara Bowman and there was a staff reduction at Daily News, and so now you are working for People Magazine freelancing for them. Tell us what happens next and your conversation with Barbara Bowman and what you learn.
Sure I had, actually, yeah, I had.
People Magazine had come to me to freelance about the case. You know, because of my coverage of the Cosby case. They were actually pursuing one of the few print organizations that was actually pursuing it back then, although nothing ultimately ran. So I'd been freelancing for them, and yeah, I took a voluntary buiout at the Daily News to just freelance, and then I got put in staff at people, So yeah,
we did. And then Andrea settled her lawsuits. So when that happened, I went to the editors and I was like, can we run that story?
Now?
We've been talking to the accusers for like a year and a half and you know, already had run yet, and so they were very afraid of being sued as well. So I didn't actually interview Barbara Bowman, but another one of our staffers did because we were broken up by geography then and Barbara lived in Arizona, so someone out in the Midwest interviewer. But anyway, Yeah, she talked about being a teenager and she was Jane Doe number seven, and she talked about being a teenager and Cosby dragging
her and sexually assaulting her and so on. It was a horrifying story, and she she had only told her story at that point. The only other news organization was Philly mag I had interviewed another Jane Doe in two thousand and five, Beth Farrier. She was Jane Doe number five and she's the one who had given her, you know, interview to the National Choir that they that they they killed and didn't tell her in order to get Cosby's interview. So we included her and Beth and Tamara in the story.
We did, and finally because they figured, you know, since the lawsuit was settled, as I said to them, if these women are brave enough to have their photo names, you shouldn't we be brave enough to publish their story. So we did run it, but they made a decision, you know, not to put it on the cover, or not to put it in the weekly press release that listed exclusives, and just just a very low key media strategy.
And you know, people was always very secretive about this, so I don't know exactly what was going on, but I do get to sense. I'm sure they were getting the same type of threats to be ensued by Marty Singer.
So there was no reaction once it ran, and you know, honestly, there wasn't anything new in it, like Barbara, like I said, Barbara Bowman had already told her story to Philly mag Beth Barryhood and Tamara Green had spoken to me in two thousand and five, but still it was out there, you know, and it was an a national publication, but there was nothing. There was no reaction whatsoever. And that's it, you know. I just thought, that's it, it's over.
Yeah, and you put your notes away, you say, put them up, bundle them up and put them in the basement.
Yep.
I had all, you know, hundreds and maybe thousands of pages of court documents and notes and interviews, but I just couldn't throw them away. I just thought, you know, let me just keep these just in case there might be you know, this story's over, Andrea can't talk. That's over, but maybe some other women might come forward and someday, So yeah, I just put it all in my basement in a waterproof box, and kind of, you know, forgot about it for the next eight years.
You fast forward to October twenty fourteen, and you describe Cosby in a career resurgence, a biography has been written where they don't mention the civil suit whatsoever. And then came Hannibal Buris, a comedian, not well known comedian, tell us how this happens and what he says and what this sets off? The firestorm it sets off?
Yeah again it's, you know, researching the book last summer. I knew all that was happening at the time, but I really didn't realize how completely random it was for that Filly mag reporter to be at Hannibal Buris's show that night. His name is Dan na Quaid, and he just at the last minute, his friend said, I have a ticket to go see Hannibal Burst. Do you want
to go? Literally last minute, So he decided to go, and he went, and he's sitting there kind of fiddling with his iPhone, and all of a sudden, he hears the name Birthday, the name Bill Cosby, so his ears perk up and he thought, okay, Bill Cosby, we're in Philly, this might be a little item for me. So he
picks up his iPhone and starts filming it. And it was this routine that apparently birth had been doing on and off for months, for about six months, where he's talking about Bill Cosby lecturing black people about how to behave but you know, meanwhile, he's a rapist. You know, I don't drug, you know, so stop lecturing me. And he does this whole thing about that, and he says, if you don't believe me, Google Bill Cobbs Cosby rapist
and you'll see it. So the next day, it was a Friday, around four pm, Dan does a story and they put it up on the video, up on the website, and over the weekend, then a BuzzFeed reporter sees it on Facebook and she thinks, okay. On Monday, she's like, okay, they don't reach out for common I'll reach out to both sides for comment and do an aggregated story. So she does that, and then Gawker, which had just written about the scandal in February with absolutely no reaction, is
interested in it, so they do an aggregated piece. And then the Daily Mail, which is you know, probably picks up stories from everywhere, does a piece and it just goes It just goes crazy on Twitter, and that, you know, to me, that was the biggest difference between two thousand and five and twenty fourteen was social media because in two thousand and five Cosby could control the media except for me. But there was no social media like Facebook was in It was still just for college students. There
was no Twitter, no snapchat. News agencies didn't really have good websites, so nothing could go viral. But in twenty fourteen, of course, there was Twitter, and that's where it really went crazy. And in addition, a bunch of online news organizations had sprung up and they just weren't afraid of Cosby at all, and they just started writing stories. And then Barbara Bowman came forward again into The Daily Mail and she's basically like, I tried to tell this story
ten years ago and nobody would listen. But she goes the rounds and she's on CNN and she writes an op ed for the Washington Post. And then the first new accuser comes forward in November twenty fourteen, and Joan Tarshis, and she's at this point, you know, I'm just watching it go and this is deja vu all over again. I reported all of this in two thousand and five and nobody cared. I mean I had like thirty or some stories from back then.
So.
We were just watching it to see what would happen. And then when Joan Tarshes came forward and when Cosby start canceling appearances, you know, we kind of jump back in again, and you know, it was just astonishing to watch unfold.
Not only did you talk about Joan Tarshi coming forward and her experience in the seventies with Bill Cosby. But also very interesting a black woman named Julo Allison that was a model. Why was she hesitant to come forward? What was the issue that she was wrestling with?
It's the same issue that Beverly Johnson, the model that she was the first African American woman on the cover of Vogue, and she and she he drugged her and attempted, you know, but she was able to escape. They that they both struggled with. Beverly ended up writing an essay for Vanity Fair about it because of the bringing, you know do They didn't want to bring down a black man. They thought African American men have enough problems. He's an icon in our community, you know, I don't you know?
Is it right of me to do this?
And in the end they both decided, yes, we have to come forward because the other women who had come forward were being eviscerated by Cosby's people. And although the media was on board this time in two thousand and five, and media was jumping on board to disparage these women as well, but that had changed in twenty fourteen, and all of a sudden, the media was on board but they figured, you know, he's not your typical African American defendant.
He's wealthy, powerful, privilege, you know, everything that most African American defendants are. So they and they really felt like they needed to tell their experience to for these other women who had come forward who weren't being believed.
So what happens next.
So it continues, you know, to unfold the ap The Associated Press decides to file a motion to try to get some of the court documents unsealed from the from the two thousand and five case. And because they figured, you know, Kazbi was having pretty much every document sealed back then, it was requesting that and the judge was agreed. So there were motions that had excerpts from various depositions
in those filings that had all been sealed. So they and it took until almost July before because Cosy's people were fighting it for the judge to eventually rule that, yes,
these depths, that these documents can be unsealed. And his rationale was very interesting because you know, Cosby had started his whole town hall crusade around the country with this pound what was now known as the Pound Cakes Beach in DC and May of two thousand and four, and which again he was chastising black people, making fun of their crazy names and for having their pants hanging around
around their ankles and all of this. So anyway, and then had gone on, even after being accused by Andrea, to write a book with album Fussant about, you know, lecturing black.
People how to behave.
Basically it was called to Blame the Poor tour. That's what one critic called his town halls in two and four. In two thousand and five, so the judge ruled basically that Cosby had Normally these documents would not be public because you have the right to privacy. That he ruled that Cosby had basically narrowed his right to privacy by lecturing and publicly scolding people about these ethical and moral issues, and so therefore he had narrowed his own right to privacy.
So therefore these documents could be unfiled.
Let's talk about his eventual arrest. You say you were caught by surprise to tell us about that.
Sure, you know.
It was boy, it was nearly well, it was explosive when when those excerpts got released, and then through this legal loophole, the new York Times got the whole deposition and wrote a really good story about it. And in it, you know, Cosby is admitting to giving queludes to women he wanted to have sex with. I mean, it was really shocking to people, and it forced some of his supporters.
To walk back their support.
Because you have to remember, back then, he was he even as Burr said, he had a teflon image. He was mister family man. He'd written best selling books about being a dad and about his childhood. You know, he just no whisper of any using any drugs. I mean, he was about as clean cut as you could get, except for you know, the one affair he admitted to having with you know, Autumn Jackson, his mother, so the whole other scandal where he got her arrested for extortion
in blackmail. So anyway, it was really shocking for him to be admitting that, and he said he had seven prescriptions for coyludes. This is all in the deposition. So all of this causes the DA and the new DA in Montgomery County, it's a different DA who was Breus Castro's first assistant back then to reopen the case. And then phill Enquire had a story about that like that September.
And yeah, I was, I was surprised, like that was. I thought maybe there would be other cases that.
Would come up, but I certainly did not expect Andrea's case to come back. It just I thought the statutal limitations would have passed a long time ago. But it turned out that with what she had said happened to her, which was digital penetration, which is it's it's a crime called aggravated indecent assault, and the statutal limitations on that is twelve years, which was going to be up the
following January. Like there was a very short window of time for them to act on this, so you know, they actually the first assistant, Kevin Steele, you know, his boss, told him, let's look into reopening this, and he went to Andrew's attorneys and it's like, are she going to
cooperate if we reopened this? And Deloris and that she was shocked too, like she really didn't see that one coming either, And she had long talks with Andrew about it because Andrew had been treated so terribly by Castor they were you know, that was would she even be willing to put herself through that again, but Andrew agreed because it was a different DA and she really had felt, as it came out later in her testimony, that you know,
it is bad that the justice had been had. Yes, she'd gotten a settlement of the lawsuit, but that's not justice, that's a that's a totally different thing. But Castor in the meantime, had decided to run for office to get his old job back. He had decided to run for DA. So he was up against Steel that fall, and the Cosby case came up in the ads, and but Kevin
Steele ended up winning. And actually, but what happened was that Bruce Caster made more disparaging comments about Andrea he put on his public Facebook page about her inconsistent statements and a lot of things to the point where Andrew's at turn. He sent the letter saying basically, publicly apologize or you know, retract those statements, or we will sue you for defamation. And he refused to do it, and in fact made more comments to the Philadelphia in Choir
that we're disparaging about her. So the week before the election, Andrea filed a defamation lawsuit against him, and then Kevin Steel won, and then you know Cosby was arrested on December thirtieth.
Yes, take us to the trial itself and Andrea's testimony and also her mother, Jianna's testimony. Tell us a little bit about, as you write in the book, a little bit about the beginning of this trial and the testimony of Andrea Injianna.
Okay, at this point, you know sixty four women, by my account, had where sixty three had come forward to say Cosby had done or attempted to do similar things to them as to what he did to Andrea. But did judge only allowed one of them.
To testify at this first trial.
The prosecution had asked for thirteen to be able to testify. They're called so called prior bad act witnesses. None of them have gone to police or there were no convictions, but they're used to show a pattern of behavior. And it's up to a judge whether it's allowed in and they have to weigh it's a probe of value versus its prejudicial value, because it can be very prejudicial to a defendant. And in the end, the judge, without explaining why I allowed one.
To testify and her story was pretty.
Horrifying, and and so Andrey and Giann are told theres so and you know, it was the first time you heard from her mouth, like it was the first time we saw Andrea speak about it. She had never spoken publicly. Even at the preliminary hearing. They just read her statements a detective did. They did not have her testimony, so it was very powerful to hear her speak for the first time. And you know, she has a very she's kind of a soft voice, but it's firm. She's a
very calm, gentle person. That's kind of the impression you get from her.
Very polite.
I mean, she called Cosby mister Cosby even in her statements when she's talking about him. But she got very and she's not an emotional person, at least outwardly, but she got very emotional as she started talking about the night this happened and telling what happened to her, and she seemed to.
Fight off tears.
And her mother, you know, Gianna is just this fierce mama bear. You know, she's the mom we all want to have.
Because she just had her daughter's back.
And some of these you know, some of the women were not that fortunate when they tried to tell their parents about what happened to them or their mom. The mom did not want to hear it, or the mom did not want to believe it. So, you know, she told her story and they played the tape, and you know, she said that Cosby in the first conversation she had with him, which was several which was like two and a half hours long, Cosby apologized to her and to Andrea and that he admitted he was a sick person.
And but what was kind of gross is he also said to Andrew was on the phone. He goes, tell her you had an orgasm, Tell mom, Tell your mom you had orgasm. And he kept calling Andrew's mom mom, and it was just so gross, you know, and Andrey ends up hanging up the phone. He's trying to tell her, trying to convince her mom this was consensual. But her mom also was going, why didn't you call nine one one? How did you know she was going to wake up? And this becomes a theme, an undercurrent theme in my
book because that point it's important to raise. It is very dangerous to drug someone without their knowledge or consent. You don't know what they have in their system, you don't know if they could be allergic. To it, you don't know, and to drug someone without their consent is very dangerous and you know, who knows what could have
happened if so. You know, also, some of these women drove afterward, like Tamar Green and Becky Cooper, another Jane Doe, and they're not sure how they were able to even drive after taking whatever drug it was that he slipped into their drinks that he gave them. So yeah, that becomes an undercurrent here too. You know what, what why didn't you call that? How did you know they were going to wake up? And it's very keep saying it, but it is an important point to make. It's very
dangerous to do this to someone. I didn't find out I was allergic to demrol until I got surgery for a dog bite many years ago. And when they put demroll on me when I was coming out of the surgery, I broke out and hived all over my body and they had to quickly do an antidote or I would have died. I mean, how do you know someone wouldn't have that reaction to whatever it is he's putting into their drinks. So yeah, that's what That's why Gianna was
so worried. Too, and that's why she really wanted to know what he had given her. And he had told her he was going to be gone up to He said he was going upstairs to look at his prescription bottles and he'd come down and tell her what it was. Then he comes back down and says, oh, I can't read it. I will write it down on a piece of paper and I will send it to you. So in the second phone call that Andrew that Gianna taped, she's trying to get out of him what did you
give my daughter? And she's like did you She's like, did you send that to me? Are you going to send it to me? He's like no, no, no, and he tries to switch the subject, like, let's talk He said, Andrew wants to go back to school. Let's talk about some kind of educational trust. I'm willing to pay for that if she gets certain grades. And Gianna just ignores it. She just keeps pressing them, what did you give my daughter? What did you give my daughter? And he won't answer it.
And then after they get off the phone, and next thing you know, like Marty Singer's calling and he's trying to get them to agree to come to Miami where to see him, you know, to meet with him in Miami so they can discuss this educational trust. And of course, you know, they don't agree to that, but then Marty Singer calls to set it up, and then someone from his agent, from William Morris calls to talk about it.
And you know, of course, by this time, Indura was already represented by Dolores and bebe in no way in hell were they going to let her go to Miami, they thought, and that Delors testified to this many years later that they thought that he was setting her up, just like with Autumn Jackson, where she had come to New York and all of a sudden she's arrested for bribery and extortion. They thought, anyway, that whole trip was just to set her up for her to be arrested like Autumn Jackson was.
You have a scene in here where prosecutor fed and talks about the drugging of a woman and Cosby's behavior at court at trial, tell us what he was doing that prompted her to fly and into a rage in.
Her Yeah, yeah, it was her. It was this well.
Throughout the first trial, he was coming in and out doing Hey, Hey, Hey, fat Albert to the crowds. And I was sitting in the hall once when he did this whole common routine because one of the sheriffs was telling people not to pull out their cell phones when he was going by because they didn't want them snapping pictures of them. And I guess someone he looked like
someone was, so he went hey. And Cosby was being walked with Andrew White, a spokesperson, and he cowers down, does this whole dramatic thing, you know, like he's, oh, oh my god, I won't do anything. So he was clowning around a lot, and he was laughing or smiling
during testimony. And then in the closing arguments of the second trial, Chris then was giving her very emotional, passionate closing argument and she looks over and she sees Cosby, which she thinks he's laughing, and she flies across the room and she goes, sexual assault isn't funny. Drugging and sexual assaulting a woe without her consent isn't funny, and she just kind of blasts them, and it was. It was a very powerful moment.
You talk about as opposed to the first trial, the second trial had the other accusers to testify tell us about that testimony in the second trial.
Sure, so there was a mistrial after fifty two hours of deliberations for the first trial in June of twenty seventeen, and then in between Cosby.
Has cycled through a lot of lawyers.
So then the second trial was supposed to be in November, but it got pushed back to the next April because Cosby switched attorneys again. I mean, he's had like twenty four to twenty five attorneys throughout this. So in the meantime, the me too movement had sprung up, not that it has anything to do with the case, but it did.
And then this time the prosecution asked for nineteen women to be able to testify, and the judge and there had been a ruling on one of a certain court case that clearly made the judge feel more comfortable allowing five women to testify this time. So that's what happened is five other accusers were allowed to testify, and the prosecution used a different strategy the second time. They put the sexual assault expert on first, because they had, you know,
talked to the jurors from the first trial. They had looked at their own strategies, and they knew, you know, obviously if they got a mistrial, they needed to do
it better this second time. And they really did so because in the first trial, they put their sexual assault expert on much later in the trial, and well after the other women had testified, after Andrew had testified, after you know, everyone had testified, and so it seemed clear that those jurors struggled with they didn't understand certain rape victims behaviors. So they put the sexual assault expert on person. It was a different one this time, and basically she
went through and debunked rape myth after rape myths. She was an excellent witness. She's actually been hired by the prosecution in the Harvey Weinstein case now.
Too for that trial.
And she just you know, said, it is the norm for you know, rape victims to delay reporting, that it's not even it's the norm for them not to go to police, That it is the most underreported violent crime. That eighty five percent of sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows only fifteen percent, or strangers. That in those cases it's the norm for them to sometimes keep in touch with them they're trying to make sense
of them. It's the norm to not fight back. Just all of this victim behavior that might not make sense to a person who didn't know someone who had been sexually assaulted. That they have inconsistencies in their stories because memory comes back to them in patches. It's not a linear thing that they at first sometimes can't even tell
it literally linearly, and especially when there's drugs involved. So all of these things that were being used to criticize Andrea in the first trial, she was explaining from the beginning and at the very beginning of the trial, and then it was you know, one, two, three, four, five, the five women and then Andrea and also you know, Cosby had seven attorneys at this second trial, and they adopted this aggress They were even more aggressive than Brian
mcmonagall wasn't the first one, and like Mezziro, who had gotten Michael Jackson successfully acquitted of molestation charges, was the attorney and he was very aggressive with all of the women. In fact, at one point, Janie Baker Kinney is being questioned by him and she looks at him and she goes, are you rolling your eyes at me? And he says yes,
I am I mean. And Judith Reagan of who was there to support model Janie Dickinson's story about why she didn't include the rape in her two thousand and two memoir, she was so furious by the time she got I have to stand about the way they treated her that her rep called me afterward and I ended up writing doing a separate interviewing story with her for The Daily Beast because she just was just so mad about the disrespectful,
condescending tone they'd us. And then one of the other women, shy Lan who Lasha, who was just fifteen when she met Cosby in seventeen when this happened. She's sobbing throughout her entire testimony, and she at the end she looks over at Cosby and goes and she screams, you remember, don't you misster Cosby? And he just smiled. You know,
it was very very powerful testimony. So then Andrea him, and then her mother, and you know, I interviewed the jury four person in one of the jurors for this story, and you know, I really think that was just a very smart strategy by them. But in the end, you know, you can convict in Pennsylvania in a sexual sault case if you find the victim credible, and they did. They found the victim credible. Cosby put up a number of
his own witnesses. This time. He didn't put up any in the first trial, one of whom was a woman who said she worked with Andrew at Temple University and had shared a room with her on a basketball trip and about a year before Andrea went to police and that Andrea said she was going to set up someone high profile. And Andrea testified that she never shared a room when she traveled with women's basketball team, and she
didn't remember this conversation. And then and then I just kept waiting for the smoking gun because the defense had made a big deal Andrew White at the fact that the judge hadn't allowed this woman, Barbara Jackson, to testify at the first trial, so I figured, and then so he allowed her in at the second. But so I was waiting for the smoking gun, right, there must be proof if they shared a room together. There's got to be hotel records, because this is a Temple university.
Yeah.
So not only did they not have that, the prosecution went back and found records, and they found records for her travel with a team in February two thousand and three, but not in February two thousand and four when she said she traveled with them. And so the jurors when they were discussing all this while they were deliberating, some of them believed Margot, some didn't. So that's why one of the things they asked to be read back to
them was her testimony. And once they heard her testimony again, they all agreed that she you know, they found her not credible. They sort of put a check mark back by her note you know, she's not credible. And while they found Andrea credible and they said she wouldn't look at them, that Margot never looked at them either while she was testifying, which is, you know, not good.
You also talk about Jennie Dickinson. Why the details of her assault were not included in the in her biography was because of the publisher, right, Is that correct?
Exactly?
And that's why Judith Reagan was there as a supporting witness and her ghost writer I spoke with as well. He also said the same thing, but they basically had she wanted it in the version of it that Judith had to tell her, No, we can't. You know, our legal won't allow it Cosby's known as being very litigious. So they had they took it out and they had it portrayed very differently in the memoir, which is what
janus and they said. Janie was very upset at the time, like she really wanted to include it in the book, and she was really emotional and distraught over the decision not to include it, but that they you know, because and then of course she got hammered about that by Mezzaro when she was cross examined.
The details of her civil suit were revealed at the second trial as well, and they were allowed.
Why was that, Yes, it was for the first time we became a We found out how much she got in her settlement, and it was three point three eight million, which the prosecution revealed. You know, the defense wanted in because a key part of their strategy was to say that, you know, Andrea was a con artist, that she just wanted money and so she made up these allegations and
so forth. But you know, the flaw in that argument, in my view, is that it didn't it doesn't make sense to use that strategy all these years later, because she got her money in two thousand and six. So if she if that is why, you know, she made up these allegations, then why is she here and why is she subjecting herself to not one trial but too you know, the logic and it was kind of flawed, but that was the strategy he had used in the Michael Jackson case that was very successful. So that that's
why they wanted it in. But you know, it also favored the prosecution because it shows that this was just not you know, nuisance money. This wasn't one hundred thousand dollars keep your mouth shut money. This was a lot of money to give to somebody if you say you
didn't do anything. And then in the charging you know, in the affidavit when Cosby was arrested, they also you know, pointed out that, you know, people don't give this innocent people don't a lot of times don't give this amount of money either, you know, Right, So it was it was it was powerful to learn the amount, and it was, but it was it was a double edged sword. It could either work for or against the prosecution.
What was your sense of the trial and its outcome? When the jury went to deliberation at the end of the trial, what was your sense, Not that you would you could say for certain, but what was your sense on how the case had been prosecuted and how the jury had responded to that information? From everything you saw and heard, what did you think?
I thought? You know, this jury, this was the first jury, was from Allegheny County, which is around Pittsburgh, because Cosby had wanted an out of town jury, and it's just a less affluent area, you know, more high school educated and stuff. Not to disparage it, and I have family from there. But Cosby agreed not to ask for an out oftown jury for a second trial in order to get the delay he got, you know, so he could
get his new attorneys up to speed. So it was a Montgomery County jury, which is right outside of Philly, and it's the wealthiest county in Pennsylvania. I mean a jury four person is vice president of cybersecurity for an international emergency management firm. Another one worked for OSHA, another one was president of a bank. I mean, it was a very sophisticated jury because this is tough stuff. You know, I had never really thought about this before. But no
one tells a jury how to deliberate. I mean they're given guidelines, the judgisms and instructions, but no one says, you go back in the room, you sit down, you all talk, you know, you take a vote. Once they're in the room. It's up to them about how they do it. So I totally understand why the first jury, you know, had it was so contentious. In fact, it was like there was screaming and yelling coming from there. Apparently one juror punched a wall in the first tile.
Another one who had quit smoking took up smoking again. It was it was a very emotional, contentious jury, and I have a feeling they voted more than once based on some of.
The interviews I saw.
But this one was they were very methodical and they kind of struck me from the get go. Like the Sandusky jury in the Jerry Sandusky case, I had covered that case, and that jury was very thoughtful and methodical. They had ten victims and ten sets of charges to go through, and they took like twelve fourteen hours, but they did it and their decisions made sense. I mean, they the two the only two charges he wasn't convicted of where the were for the ones where the one
victim didn't testify so I got that sense. So I thought, okay, maybe a conviction on one count, but there were three counts, but it was just so hard to tell. It's you know, again, it's a tough thing to be a juror, and it's a tough thing to convict an eighty one year old man.
And you know, the Cosby's team had done their best to disparage the women who came forward, and it seemed to backfire a little bit because I during closing arguments, I actually saw a couple of the jurors wins during Cosby's defense team's closing arguments, so I, you know, I guess I was thinking maybe maybe a conviction on one. I was completely shocked when it was a conviction on all three and they didn't do that.
I thought that a tribute.
No, no, I mean, it was like twelve fourteen hours. They asked to have read back Margot Jackson's testimony, and then they wanted to rehear some of cosby deposition testimony, and that was it. While the first jury, you know, basically had the whole trial read back to them, and I had seen this jury. They were all taking copious notes, which they're allowed to do. During the trial too, so
they and they're set. You know, these were sequestered jurors too, and they were sequestered much longer than the other jury because this went on for two and a half almost three weeks. Well, the first trial was over in a week. In fact, the deliberations almost lasted longer than the trial did. So, but they were very methodical about the way they went about it, and it showed and they you know, they talked through everything and if they disagreed, you know, they
went back in to hear it. It sounded like a really good It's like the jury pool you wish you'd get if anything ever happens to you, whether or not they can FicT you. I mean, they were very thoughtful and very methodical about it. It was not an emotional decision. It was like basically it really revolved when you boil it down to the fact that they believed Andrea. What were the three charge they found her credible?
What were the three charges that he was found guilt?
There were three counts of agg aggregated aggravated indecent assault, one without her consent, one well drugged, one well unconscious.
Now they have to wait for sentencing. What was the sentencing and what was the reaction from the media and from the accusers.
Yeah, I and again, you know, this case continued to surprise me. I knew Cosby was going to do his best to try to stay out of jail while he was I know he's going to appeal his conviction and appeal his sentencing, whatever it was, because that's how he is. He has fought every step of the way on this and I knew he would make a move to be out on bail while doing all these appeals, and that process couldn't start to after sentencing. But you know, he
was sentenced to jail to prison. The judge sentenced him to three to ten years in prison, which was a little above the minimum, and he was to go directly to jail. He tried to get emotion to allow him to stay out on bail, but the judge didn't allow and apparently when it's over a two year sentence, it's the norm not to let someone stay out on bail while they're appealing. And his sentence was three to ten years,
so he's eligible for parole at three years. But that's just you know, the victims have a say in that. First of all, and that's assuming he you know, you have to show remorse and really admit responsibility for what you did. And he's still maintaining that this was a consensual relationship, that it was not sexual assault. So you know, I just don't see him making bail or making.
Parole at three years.
And he's appealing, but these these appeals take years as well, and this judge has a reputation for rarely being overturned on appeal, so it's not a slam dunk that he's going to get a new trial or get a new sentencing. I mean, this judge is very careful and he has a great reputation, and like I said, he rarely gets overturned on appeal. But that's clearly what they're hoping for.
What about the issue of him being designated to sexually violent predator.
Right, that was that was a piece of this as well, and he was designated one in the disorder he was diagnosed with is basically having liking to have sex with sex with an unconscious person, And this just means he has to do mandatory counseling if if he gets out, he's got to make sure his whereabouts are reported to the Pennsylvania State Police, so they can notify the victims.
So it's you know, it has those type of requirements that don't I don't know, mean a lot when he's incarcerated, but certainly mean a lot if he gets out, because he has you know, his face would be on like the Megan's Law website. You know, so people in the area know where he lives, and you know he still has the home in Cheltenham, right outside Philly. I don't he'd have to ask permission if he wanted to go to another state, like where his wife lives up in Massachusetts.
So it's it's just a lot of red tape for him.
What has what's Andrea's life look like? Now? Since this what told us about Andrea?
So she did finish her go to massage school and become a missus. She works a lot with cancer patients for her clients, or people with Parkinson's or people with Seeson, and she you know, she has a very good life. But as she you know, her victim impact statement she's in sorted it end of the record. She did not read it at sentencing, and I don't blame her. I don't know if her reason was, like she didn't want Cosby to see her bear her soul like that, and I wouldn't blame her.
But you know, we all got copies of it. It was really powerful. It was sad.
I mean, you know, her life has been on hold during this time, and she she's not married, she has not you know, I'd gotten a close relationship, She's close with her family and her dogs. But this, you know, really really changed who she was. And I hope now, as I write in there, that you know now that she got this kind of closure and a verdict and sort of like we believe you finally from at least a jury, that she can you know, move on with
her life. And she wants to, I think, help other sexual assault survivors in any way she can and you know, work on things like that in addition to her job as a messus. And she wants to know her life has sort of been on this hold for so many years and hopefully now it's going to be moving forward again.
Yes, absolutely, Now, just before I let you go, obviously there's the Bill Cosby legacy. How much of that Bill Cosby legacy has been tarnished? What has been taken away? Some of the things that tell us just the state of his legacy, I.
Can say, well, I mean you can't. A lot of his you know, awards have been stripped away, a lot of his honorary degrees have been taken from him. He's you know, had a lot of that taken from him. But you can't. You can't take away all the millions he's donated, millions to spell in college, he's donated you know, a lot to a lot of different universities and so forth. You can't take away from him the good he's done.
But you have to counteract that and acknowledge and understand what else he was doing during that during that time period. I mean, it almost became a cover for him that allowed him to continue.
For so long because he was this great guy.
Doing such great things. It's what allows like the Catholic priests to continue doing what they're doing, or in the Boy Scouts, or Jerry Sandusky, you know, the Penn State defensive coach who founded a charity for at risk boys and then preyed upon many of them. They were many of his victims. So you just have to put it in the context of his whole life. Just because he did good things doesn't mean he's a good person, and just because he did bad things doesn't mean he's a
bad person. You have to make your own decisions about what you think about it. And that's why I encourage people to read the book, because you know, you get only get bits and pieces of these stories in the news, and I thought having it all in one place for people to see it and read it and kind of understand it, and it's kind of you can be the pattern was important for people because there are still a lot of people who you know, do not want to
believe these women. And none of the women knew each other. I mean, they would have had to. I don't know how could be a conspiracy when they're all telling childly similar stories that they told other people along the way, long before they came forward publicly, and they didn't know each other. So I don't know how you explain that or all of them lying and why. I mean, it's not exactly a badge of honor to be known as a rape victim in society, and who wants to be
famous for that. They are the only things some of the women have used the platform this gave them for is to get statutal limitations laws eliminated or extended in three different states. But they still you know, you almost still get tired and feathered when you come forward with allegations against this, especially when it's against a powerful, beloved person like Bill Cosby.
Well, it's evidence through your your tenacity on this case and always always the accusers, Amanda, pardon me, Andrea Tamara and all the other twelve accusers, thirteen accusers. I want to applaud you for tenacity on this case and your remarkable book, Chasing Cosby the Downfall of America's Dad. I want to thank you very much, Nicole Yse and z Egan for this again remarkable book, and I want to applaud you for your tenacity sticking to this and this remarkable book as a result.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.
I want to thank you very much and you have a great evening.
Good night, Okay, thanks you too. Bye,