Woman speaks out after alleged homophobic attack at McDonald’s in Illinois

(NEW YORK) — For six hours on Tuesday in a packed Manhattan courtroom, Cassie Ventura testified about how her decade-long relationship turned violent as her then-boyfriend, Sean “Diddy” Combs, seized control of her personal and professional lives and demanded she orchestrate his drug-fueled sex parties known as “freak offs.”

Ventura is the star witness in the federal racketeering and sex-trafficking case against Combs, who faces the possibility of life in prison if he is convicted. Ventura’s 2023 civil lawsuit — which Combs settled with no admission of guilt — prompted federal authorities to begin investigating Combs’ conduct, and he was indicted last September.

Combs has pleaded not guilty and denied the federal charges. His lawyers insist that any sexual conduct was consensual and, though Combs’ lifestyle may not be appropriate for everyone, law enforcement has no right to invade his bedroom and private life. They also insist that any acts of assault show domestic violence, but not coercion or evidence of trafficking.

Ventura testifies about her relationship with Combs turning violent

Ventura testified that her relationship gradually became violent, as Combs allegedly took control of her personal and professional lives.

Combs signed Ventura to his Bad Boy record label in 2006, when she was 19 years old. Though 17 years younger than Combs, Ventura said she wanted to be around the man who helped catapult rap music and urban fashion into the mainstream.

“I wanted to be around Sean for the same reasons as everyone else at the time. He’s just this exciting and entertaining fun guy that just also happened to have my career in his hands.”

As she continued her relationship with Combs, Ventura told jurors, she began to experience “a different side” of the mogul – one that featured fits of rage, violent outbursts and unpredictable mood swings.

“He would bash my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head when I was down,” she said, recounting violent arguments with Combs.

“How frequently was Sean physical with you during your relationship?” prosecutor Emily Johnson asked.

“Too frequently,” Ventura responded, saying she feared triggering his anger.

Ventura added that members of Combs’ security team would “keep an eye” on her and that Combs would incessantly call her if she ignored him. With Combs paying for her apartment, she experienced her “stomach in knots” moments when he would drop by unannounced, not knowing if he was angry.

Ventura recounts ‘Freak Offs’ in detail

Ventura broke down in tears on the witness stand as she testified how she participated in drug-fueled sex parties called “freak offs” or “wild king nights.”

She said she had just turned 22 when Sean Combs first proposed these marathon, drug-addled sex performances with male prostitutes.

She said she originally agreed to participate in order to indulge Combs’ voyeuristic fantasies. Eventually, she told the jury, the orgies “became almost weekly,” oftentimes lasting two or three days, and once going on for four straight days. She testified she was awake the whole time, fueled by ecstasy, molly and cocaine supplied by Combs.

According to Ventura, she participated in the sex parties in every one of Combs’ homes and, most frequently, in hotels in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Ibiza, and Turks and Caicos. She described that Combs carefully directed the freak offs, ordering specific lighting and candles, and insisting that only Johnson & Johnson Baby Oil be used to ensure participants “glistened.”

Combs shook his head as Ventura testified about the use of baby oil, describing at least one party where a baby pool was filled with oil that Combs ordered she immerse herself in while fully clothed.

“It was a mess,” she said.

She testified about another instance when she thought she would choke because Combs and a male sex worker both urinated on her; multiple jurors shook their heads and looked down as she recounted the story.

It did not take long, Ventura said, before she realized she did not want to participate in future parties.

“Did you want to participate in every freak off?” prosecutor Emily Johnson asked.

“No,” Ventura answered. “I felt like it was all I was good for. It was disgusting. I felt humiliated. I didn’t have the words for how horrible I really felt.”

She said that Combs “would be violent” with her if she refused to participate, adding that her professional career stalled as she was forced to devote nearly all her time to planning the freak-offs that Combs demanded. As she testified, Ventura flipped through a binder containing the photographs of the male escorts she says were hired for the freak-offs and recounted needing to self-medicate with illegal drugs to make it through the prolonged sessions that were demeaning and emotionally and physically draining.

When Johnson asked if there was any part of the freak offs she enjoyed, Ventura began to sob. She grabbed a tissue and, through tears, said, “I thought it was the only time I could get.”

“The version of him I was in love with was no longer there,” she said.

Early witnesses lay foundation for Ventura’s testimony

Ventura was long billed as the key witness against Combs after CNN last year obtained a 2016 videotape showing Combs kicking and dragging her in a hotel elevator lobby.

Prior to Ventura taking the stand, the jury heard from two other witnesses who appeared to corroborate and bolster part of Ventura’s testimony.

Male escort Daniel Phillip testified he was paid as much as $6,000 for having sex with Ventura while Combs watched and masturbated. He also testified that he witnessed Combs throw a bottle at Ventura after she did not immediately obey his instructions and then “grabbed her by her hair and dragged her by her hair into the bedroom.” Defense attorney Xavier Donaldson tried to raise doubts about Phillip’s testimony, pointing to a discrepancy about dialogue in a previous statement to authorities, Philip stood by his account of the physical abuse.

On the first day of the trial, prosecutors showed the 2016 video to the jury and prepared jurors for Ventura’s testimony to come. Israel Florez, an LAPD officer who was working security at the now-shuttered InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, testified that Combs offered him money to cover up the assault and that he noticed Ventura had a “purple eye.” Florez said he refused the money.

“These are foundational witnesses. They create the context and the backdrop in which Cassie then testifies and gives more color and more examples, building upon earlier testimony to be the star witness that the government expects her to be,” ABC News legal contributor Brian Buckmire said.

Ventura concluded her testimony on Tuesday by explaining the moment depicted in the video watched by jurors was the result of her effort to try to escape one of the freak-offs.

“There’s an instance in Los Angeles where it got violent, and I chose to leave,” she said. “When I chose to leave, I grabbed what I could and got out and Sean followed me into the hallway by the elevators, grabbed me, tried to drag me back to the room.”

While jurors have already seen the video, it was played again in court on Tuesday afternoon. “That’s me,” Ventura said.

Ventura is expected to return to the stand when the trial resumes Wednesday morning.

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(OCEAN COUNTY, N.J.) — A wildfire in New Jersey has exploded to 12,000 acres after igniting Tuesday in Ocean County and threatening more than 1,000 structures, shutting down a major highway and causing thousands of people to flee the flames.

The Jones Road Wildfire was 35% contained on Wednesday afternoon, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey’s Commissioner of Environmental Protection, said fire officials expect the blaze to grow and that it could turn out to be the largest wildfire in New Jersey in 20 years.

“Thanks to the incredible, heroic work of the good men and women of our New Jersey fire service folks, homes and lives have been saved and we truly averted a major disaster,” LaTourette said.

LaTourette said that no injuries have been reported.

Fanned by dry vegetation and low relative humidity, the fire was first reported in Ocean County at 9:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday and exploded overnight from a few hundred acres to 8,500, according to the Forest Fire Service.

Trevor Raynor of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said the fire was first spotted from the Cedar Bridge Fire Tower near Barnegat Township, New Jersey.

“We dispatched resources right off the bat. When they arrived at the location, the fire was about 10 to 20 acres,” Raynor said. “We had resources there quickly, we dispatched aircraft, and even with a big show of force, it grew to be a large wildfire.”

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, who is serving as acting governor while Gov. Phil Murphy is out of the country, declared a state of emergency in Ocean County on Wednesday morning, freeing up resources to battle the blaze.

The fire is located south of Toms River along the Garden State Parkway. At one point on Tuesday evening, flames jumped the parkway, prompting officials to close it and bringing one of New Jersey’s busiest roads to a halt.

“Smoke and everything was right in my backyard. Everything was covered in black ashes,” said Kelly Mendoza, one of the evacuees.

Officials said the blaze threatened structures in Ocean and Lacey Townships.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, said Chief Bill Donnelly of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

Officials said they expect to have the fire fully contained by this weekend. About 100 firefighters were battling the blaze from the ground and air on Wednesday, officials said.

“As the day progressed, it was kind of scary,” evacuated resident Michael Ferrara told ABC News about weighing his decision Tuesday night to leave or stay.

Ferrara said he watched in horror as flames and smoke closed in on his neighborhood, prompting him to heed the mandatory evacuation orders.

He said the first thing that went through his mind was keeping himself and his family safe.

“But what are you going to take with you — birth certificates, passports?” Ferrara said. “It’s just a very eerie feeling.”

LaTourette said that more than a thousand structures were under threat at one point and more than 5,000 residents heeded mandatory evacuation orders or voluntarily evacuated.

A forced power outage due to the fires has also left at least 25,000 customers in the dark. Wednesday’s forecast is expected to be breezy through the morning with winds gusting up to 20 mph from the north, but winds should calm this afternoon as high pressure starts moving into the region with the next chance for rain beginning Friday night.

Firefighters lifted the evacuation order and cautioned residents to stay on alert.

“I hope that I have a home to return back to,” one distraught evacuee told ABC News.

Due mostly to drought conditions across New Jersey, particularly the southern part of the state, firefighters have had a busy first four months of the year, Chief Donnelly said.

He noted that at this time last year, there had been 310 wildfires across the state that scorched 315 acres. So far this year, Donnelly said there have been 662 wildfires statewide that have burned 16,572 acres.

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(GREEN ISLE, Minn.) — Vance Boelter was preoccupied with societal problems and how he could fix them to serve the greater good, according to some of his previous writings and the man who worked with Boelter for more than a decade doing web design for a series of his projects.

Before allegedly carrying out a “political assassination” on Saturday, Boelter was “clearly very religious, very passionate,” and “devout, and sincere in his beliefs,” said Charlie Kalech, CEO of the web design firm J-Town, commissioned by Boelter. But at that time, Boelter appeared to show no signs of the violent extremism of which he’s now accused, Kalech said.

Boelter is charged with killing Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounding Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Allegedly posing as a police officer over Father’s Day weekend, authorities said Boelter “shot them in cold blood” in an alleged early-morning rampage that launched a two-day manhunt.

However, in the preceding years, Boelter seemed like a hard worker striving to make his ideas real, and sometimes, struggling to make ends meet. His fervent personality frothed with big, civic-minded ideas on how to “make the world a better place,” Kalech said. In the professional relationship they had, Boelter was clearly “idealistic.”

“I think he sincerely believed in the projects that we worked on, that he was acting for the greater good,” Kalech told ABC News. “I certainly never got the impression he saw himself as a savior. He just thought of himself as a smart guy who figured out the solution to problems, and it’s not so difficult – so let’s just do it. Like a call to action kind of person.”

Most of those grand-scale projects never came to fruition, and the last time Kalech said he had contact with Boelter was May 2022. But in planning documents and PowerPoint presentations shared with ABC News, which Kalech said Boelter wrote for the web design, Boelter detailed lengthy proposals that expressed frustration with what he saw as unjust suffering that needed to be stopped. Some of those projects were also sweeping, to the point of quixotic — even for the deepest-pocketed entrepreneur.

Boelter first reached out to Kalech’s firm for a book he had written, “Revoformation,” which Kalech took to be a mashup between “revolution” and “reformation.” It’s also the name of the ministry Boelter had once tried to get off the ground, according to the organization’s tax forms.

“It seemed to me like maybe he volunteered more than what was good for him. In other words, he gave too much away instead of worrying about earning money, because he didn’t always have money,” Kalech said. “It was never clear to me if the ministry really existed. Are there congregants? Is there a constituency? I don’t know. Or was it like something in his head that he was trying to make? That was never clear to me.”

Kalech recalled that Boelter chose his firm for the work because they are Jerusalem-based, and he wanted to support Israel.

Boelter’s interest in religion’s impact on society is reflected in a “Revoformation” PowerPoint that Kalech said Boelter gave him, dated September 2017.

“I am very concerned that the leadership in the U.S. is slowly turning against Israel because we are losing our Judaic / Christian foundations that was [sic] once very strong,” the presentation said. “I believe that if the Christians are united and the people who are leading this Revoformation are a blessing to Israel that it will be good for both Israel and the U.S.”

Over the years, Boelter would reach out with what appeared to be exponentially ambitious endeavors, Kalech said: “What he wanted to take on, I think, might have been bigger.”

Boelter wanted to end American hunger, according to another project’s PowerPoint. And while the idea would require massive changes to current laws and food regulation, it appeared Boelter dismissed that as surmountable if only elected officials could get on board.

“American Hunger isn’t a food availability problem,” the presentation said. “American Hunger is a tool that has been used to manipulate and control a vast number of American’s [sic], with the highest percentage being people of color. This tool can and should be broken now, and failure to do so will be seen as intentional criminal negligence by future generations.”

“We should be embarrassed as a nation that we let this happen and have not correctly [sic] this injustice 100 years ago,” one slide said.

One slide described how his own lived experience informed his idea, referring to him in the third person: “several times in his life Vance Boelter was the first person on the scene of very bad head on car accidents,” and that he was able to help “without fear of doing something wrong” because he was “protected” by Good Samaritan law – which could and should be applied to food waste, the slide said.

To keep an eye on which lawmakers supported the necessary legislation, “there needs to be a tracking mechanism,” the presentation said, where citizens could “see listed every singe [sic] elected official and where they stand on the Law (Food Providers Good Samaritan Law).”

“Those few that come out and try to convince people that it is better to destroy food than to give it away free to people, will be quickly seen for who they are. Food Slavers that have profited off the hunger of people for years,” the 18-slide, nearly 2,000-word presentation said.

“At least in his mind and on paper, he was solving problems,” Kalech told ABC News. “He would think about things and then have a euphoric moment and write out a manifesto of, How am I going to solve this? And then bring those thoughts to paper and bring that paper to an action plan and try to implement it.”

The last project Kalech said Boelter wanted to engage him for was a multifaceted collection of corporations to help start-up and expanding businesses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all under the umbrella “Red Lion Group.”

The 14-page, over 6,000-word planning document for the project outlined ideas for what Red Lion Group would offer: ranging widely from “security services” to agricultural and weapons manufacturing sectors, medical supplies, investment services, martial arts, oil and gas and waste management. Red Lion would also serve in media spaces: with “CONGOWOOD” Film Productions “to be what Hollywood is to American movies and what Bollywood is to Indian movies.”

Boelter was to have a 49% minority ownership of the group, with a business partner owning 51%.

“The Africa thing, the Red Lion thing, we didn’t really get into it, because it became pretty apparent pretty soon that he just didn’t have the funds to go ahead,” Kalech said – at least, as far as his web design services were concerned.

“He was interested in doing good,” Kalech said. “But moderation in all things, and when good becomes extreme, it actually becomes bad,” adding that hurting anyone crosses a “red line.”

“The question one keeps coming back to is – what makes the seesaw tip? Like, he’s good, he’s good, he’s good, he’s acting for the greater good, he has all these good ideas, he’s trying to engage community, serving on a government committee, he’s engaging churches and places of worship, and then something happens, and he goes ballistic,” Kalech said.

“Who would do that? Someone who’s absolutely desperate, just seeing that there’s no other choice. That’s the only thing I can imagine. But look, obviously someone like this is not operating on the same frequency as we are,” Kalech said. “They’re blinded by their faith, or their beliefs. And, you know, especially something like murder, it’s so ironic, because that’s one of the big 10.”

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