Casandra “Cassie” Ventura ended her exhausting, explicit and partly chaotic cross-interpretation in the trial against her ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday afternoon (May 16) for sex trade and organized crime. She was released by the judge after she had been on the witness for four days and was interviewed on both sides.
The singer, who is eighth month pregnant, wore a pinstripe suit and was asked about the end of her relationship with Combs in 2018. Defender Anna Estevao tried to present Ventura as an offended ex-girlfriend and not as a victim of sex trade. Although Ventura had previously stated that she was sometimes jealous of Combs’ ex-girlfriend Kim Porter, the mother of his three children, Estevao came back to this topic. She concentrated on an SMS that Ventura sent to Combs shortly after Porter’s death. “You wrote that Kim was your soul mate. What were the eleven years?”, Ventura wrote after visiting Porter’s funeral service in Georgia. Ventura admitted that she felt injured by the post, but denied that she had left the funeral service without saying goodbye to Sean Combs. The last time the funeral service was that they saw themselves before the process.
Cassie Ventura does not want to take revenge on Sean Combs
Cassie Ventura also rejected the claim that she wanted revenge. “I don’t hate him … I have love for the past and what was,” she said. Ventura also rejected every hint that she sued Combs in November 2023 for financial reasons. She further explained that she had canceled her plans for a music tour because she received a severance payment of $ 20 million from Combs, but because she felt overwhelmed by the very public complaint.
When Estevao ended the cross -interpretation unexpectedly early, the prosecutors took over again and, according to media reports, gave Ventura another opportunity to explain the dynamics of their turbulent relationship with Combs. Ventura said that the unpredictable demands of the music mogul had determined her life and often all independent plans that she made for herself, so that it remained dependent on him.
Ventura said Combs expected that she was available to him on call, and she feared consequences if she resisted. She remembered that Combs played an explicit video of her on one of his devices during a transatlantic flight to publish it. She also remembered that he had become violent not only for her, but also other people.
She also said: If Combs signaled that he was “in the mood” for a “freak-off”, she had the feeling that she had no choice. The “New York Times” reported that she said that all work plans should “take a back seat”. At one point, Ventura is said to have said that she was “basically a sex worker”. The defense immediately appealed and the judge instructed the jury to ignore the remark.
A “bad dose MDMA”
At the beginning of the day, Estevao made it where she stopped on Thursday (May 15th), and interviewed Ventura about the notorious incident in the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles on March 5, 2016. The jury saw surveillance videos on which Combs Ventura packs, steps and drags through the corridor. Estevao later indicated that Ventura and Combs had consumed “a bad dose of MDMA”, which led to the violent attack.
In her first questions on Friday, Estevao Ventura asked if she had previously told the investigators that Sean Combs had a blackout that day. Ventura said he was drunk. The lawyer then had Ventura read a text message that she had sent Combs a few days later, on March 10, 2016: “If you go wrong, you always want to show me that you have the power and you are striking me. I am not a doll, I was a child,” was the news that was read in court.
Further incidents
Cassie Ventura also said about an incident that had occurred a few months later, in August 2016. She told the jury that Sean Combs had snatched her cell phone in the car and had run away on a large road in Los Angeles. She said Combs found that she was with a professional football player and called her cell phone the man who was not identified in court. Ventura said her mother called the police because of the incident.
Estevao later interviewed Ventura an audio recording in which she confronted a DJ after he had said that he had seen an explicit video from Ventura. Ventura confirmed that she feared that a male escort that was identified as Jonathan Oddi in court filmed it during a “freak-off”. The audio recording hears how Ventura threatens the DJ and says: “I will kill you.” She was afraid that the video would be released, she previously told the jury.
Ventura’s mention of ODDI immediately made headlines. He was arrested in May 2018 because he had been against President Trump and shot police officers in the National Doral Golf Club of Trump in Miami. At the time, he claimed to have a connection to Combs and described himself as “sex slave”, but the allegations were not given little attention at the time.
This is accused Diddy
The 55-year-old Combs is on trial because between 2009 and 2024 he is said to have sexually exploited Ventura and another woman. Further allegations are: organized crime since 2004 and compulsion to prostitution. The musician does not guilty and has to expect a prison sentence between 15 years and lifelong in a conviction. The negotiation on Thursday was also slow and herself.
Estevao found that Combs and Ventura had fallen in love quickly and deeply and had exchanged hundreds of love messages. But in the first few months of her relationship in 2007, emails show that Ventura tried to express her concern about Combs’ treatment. “I never seem to make the right decisions,” she wrote. “I hope that I can just learn what you want from a woman and can give you that.”
Ventura willingly admitted that she was very dependent on the option and was jealous of Combs’ relationships with other women, including Porter, especially at the beginning. She said she had done everything to make Combs happy, including “freak-offs”. Combs’ lawyers presented several text messages in which Ventura agreed to take part in sexual acts described by her as “humiliating” and ‘disgusting’, including a thread from 2009, in which Ventura wrote: “I am always ready for freak-offs, Lolol” and “I just want it to be uncontrollable”.
Cassie Ventura is said to have participated in several “freak-offs”
During her statement at the beginning of the week, Cassie Ventura said that she took part in hundreds of “freak-offs” and claimed that Combs had often become violent. She remembered that she once had the feeling of suffocating when a male escort urinated in her mouth. She said that because of the trauma, she had suicidal thoughts from her relationship with Combs after the separation.
On Thursday, Combs showed himself very lively and looked a bit frustrated at the slow pace with which his lawyer interviewed Ventura, and handed several notes to his legal team. He seemed more satisfied when Estevao read the entire SMS chain, which led to the “freak-off” before Combs could be seen on the security shots as he attacked Ventura in the hotel hall. He nodded when Estevao read a message from Ventura, in the status: “Baby, I would like to have one so much [Freak-Off]but I don’t want to ruin myself. What should I do? “
Ventura, the main witness of the public prosecutor’s office of the Southern District of New York, worked frustrated and only replied with “yes” or “no” to confirm the authenticity of text messages – but without having the opportunity to provide further background. In this news exchange from March 2016, Combs Ventura repeated “What is your plan?” And was upset that Ventura did not answer him immediately. Ventura tried to explain that Combs had made it clear that he wanted a “freak-off” and she tried to appease him. In an earlier statement, she said that Combs was unpredictable and feared that he could do something before the premiere of her film “The Perfect Match” in 2016.
An important witness to the public prosecutor
The public prosecutor interviewed Ventura for a day and a half, and this week there were considerable discussions about how much time the defense would have for the cross -life. Combs’ lawyer Marc Agnifilo told the court that they might need until Monday, whereby the public prosecutor pointed out that Ventura, who is eighth month pregnant, could get contractions at any moment.
Judge Arun Subramanian Agnifilo asked on Thursday. “In which universe do you live that you didn’t know that this witness should be heard this week?” In a letter to the judge submitted overnight, the prosecutors accused the defense of moving Ventura’s statement to next week in order to be able to check their minutes over the weekend, “or risk a failure if the witness gets blow”. They said that the alleged “inefficiency of the cross -question” on Thursday “allows the defendant to achieve exactly this result”.
This article was translated and adjusted by Kristina Baum from English. You can find the original here.