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Crime Story: Episode 3- Nicki Weisensee Egan

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm Kathleen Goldhar. This is Crime Story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: I stood my ground because I believed my reporting and I believed these women. And I just I'm not one who's going to back down when someone's attacking my credibility and attacking my reporting.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's hard to underestimate the influence that Bill Cosby had for generations of people around the world at the height of his career. He was almost better known as Dr. Huxtable or America's dad. The Cosby Show. His juggernaut of a TV show broke racial boundaries and made Bill Cosby a cultural leader in America. He was untouchable.

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TV ANNOUNCER: The one, the only the best there is Mr. Bill Cosby ladies and gentlemen.

BILL COSBY: Let's make something different for Santa this year. Jell-O declares, Hmm, boy, look at this. Isn't this wonderful?

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UNNAMED: Few people on this planet can say they've changed the world. But Mr. Cosby can.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But behind the scenes there were whispers of something sinister that behind his squeaky clean image, Cosby was drugging and assaulting women.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Caesar wasn't the person that he portrayed himself to be on that show. Just because you play a nice guy on TV doesn't mean you are one.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Nicole Weisensee Egan was the first reporter to dig into the claims against Cosby when many journalists were afraid to touch it or just couldn't believe it. Eagn has stayed on the story ever since writing a book and publishing a podcast called Chasing Cosby. So for you, this story does go back decades. Can you tell me when you first heard or learned about accusations against Bill Cosby?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Let me first add that I grew up watching Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids on Saturday morning cartoons, and I watched The Cosby Show. I write about it in the book. It really helped me get through a very difficult time in my own house after my brother died and my mother fell apart and my dad was trying to keep her together. And, you know, it's just this warm, cozy place I could go to to watch a family that wasn't falling apart like mine was. So I was a huge Cosby fan, but I was a crime investigative reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News in January 2005. And a story broke on the local news about Bill Cosby being investigated for drugging. And this is what it said initially, groping a former Temple employee. And so my first reaction when they asked me to work on it was not the Cos, because I was a fan, I just couldn't fathom it. But, you know, your job as a journalist or as it used to be anyway, is to put your personal feelings aside and just try to find out what the facts are. So I knew who Cosby was or who I thought he was anyway, but I needed to know who this woman was that was accusing him, And was she even in a position to know him?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What did you find out about her? This this woman that we now know as Andrea Constand.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: They weren't releasing her name, which is the norm for victims in sexual assault cases. But I had a source at Temple University who gave me her name. So I was able to do a Nexis search on her. And I found out, you know, she was one of the top ten basketball players in high school in Canada. She'd been recruited by 50 to 60 U.S. universities, ultimately choosing the University of Arizona. She went to Italy and played for 18 months, and then she went back to Canada and she was approached through a mutual friend to see if she was interested in becoming director of operations for the Temple women's basketball team. And she ended up accepting that offer. And several months into that job is when she first met Cosby because Cosby was like one of his most famous alum. Even though he never graduated from Temple, he got an honorary degree. He was on the board of trustees for Temple University. So she met him through a donor one night at a the Temple women's basketball team.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: We know now that Cosby was accused and eventually found guilty of drugging a lot of his victims. Do we know if that's what he did with Andrea as well?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: That's what she says he did. So after she met him at the through that donor at temple, he called her the next day and they struck up what she thought was him being her mentor. So he was coaching her on, you know, she wanted to become a sports TV caster and they would go to dinner or she had been to his house for dinner several times. So that night in January 2004, which is when she said this happened, he'd invited her to his home because she was she wanted to quit her job at Temple and go back to go back to Canada and go to massage therapy school. And she was looking for advice from Cosby about how to get that. And now let me also add, he had made moves on her twice before at various events, but she was never worried about it. She was able to rebuff him and she wasn't worried about anything happening that she couldn't control because she's a six foot tall, you know, professional athlete. He was like older than her own father. He was like a grandfatherly figure to her. So that's what makes this whole thing so horrific, because when she gets there, he asks her, he says, you're stressed. Would you like some? Way, he described it. They'd always talked about alternative therapies, like Andrew didn't even take prescription drugs. So she thought he was giving her herbal medication for anxiety. And she took it. And because she trusted him and within 20 minutes, she was feeling woozy and she was trying to get up. And he he led her over to the couch and she lay down there and one of the few minutes, she couldn't speak, she couldn't move, she couldn't do anything. And that's when he sexually assaulted her. And when she woke up a few hours later, you know, her bra was half off. And and she's she has dim memories, she's coming in and out of consciousness of the assault. And he's standing there in his white bathrobe. It's like 5:00 in the morning offering her a muffin in tea like nothing had happened.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Oh, God. What did she do after the assault?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: She couldn't make sense of it. You know, here was this guy. He'd been like a grandfather figure to her. So she went home and she took a shower, and she said, What just happened? And she tried to confront him about it and find out what drugs he had given her. And he told her to meet him at some an a restaurant in Philly where he was meeting with some high school students. She went there, but she couldn't talk to him. He said, well, come back to my house and I'll talk to you. She went that this time she didn't leave his doorway. She wouldn't go into the house. And she said, What? What did you give me? What happened? And he said, you had an orgasm. And she's like, No, I didn't. And she just like, left. She was horrified. And let me add to she she was in a relationship with a woman at the time, and Cosby knew this. So I'm covering this story and all these little details are starting to come out. And I found out that detail about Andrea when I was researching it back then. And I asked her attorneys, I'm like I said, why don't you want this out there that will show that this was not consensual. And they said, well, because the Cosby people will just find some guy she dated a long time ago and say she wasn't really gay. And, you know, of course, you don't out someone without their consent.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But Andrea doesn't tell anybody or really do. I mean, it took a lot of courage to go back to Cosby and try to get that information. But that was there was quite a bit of time between that and her telling family or people that gave her any support, right?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Right. She had to keep in contact with Cosby through her job until April 2004 when she left. And when she got home to Canada. She was living with her parents and she started having all these nightmares. They could hear her crying in her sleep. They could hear her screaming. She was pale. She was losing all this weight. She didn't want to interact with any of her family, which was very unlike her. They were really worried about her, but she just would not tell them what was going on or what she was having these nightmares about. And these nightmares were about women being sexually assaulted. And it was her fault because she hadn't spoken up and she woke up sobbing and she called her mom, who was on her way to work. She called her on a cell phone and finally blurted it out and told her what happened, that Bill Cosby drugged and raped me.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I'm going to ask you about the work you did, too, but I just want to get back to her mother for a minute. I mean, she's a spectacular woman.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: She is.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She's braver than I can imagine. She actually communicates with Cosby as well.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Right. Because Gianna is finally okay. She has some answers to by her daughter's been acting this way, but she was so worried, she wanted to know what drug Cosby gave her daughter and if that could be why her daughter had been acting so strange for the last nine months. And so she tells Andrew, I want to talk to him. Give me his number and Andrea's like, no, mom, I don't want you to talk to him. She said, If you don't, I'm going to jump on a plane and I'm going to go confront him in person because Gianna is a mama bear. And, you know, that's what's so powerful about the way she responded, because other victims tried to tell their mothers and this came out in one of the court trials and the mother was a Cosby fan and just didn't want to hear it. So she called this number. It's like an answering service. He called her back and they had like a three hour conversation. And he she said, what did you give my daughter? And she's saying to him, like, how did you know she was going to wake up? Why didn't you call 911? And he just was evasive. But he said, Oh, let me go look, I'll get the I've got the name of it on a prescription. The bottle upstairs. It's a prescription. And he goes up and comes back because you know what? I can't find it right now. I'll write it down and I'll mail it to you. And then he said he would call her back in a couple of days to see how Andrea was doing. And during that time period, Gianna talked to her son in law, who was a detective police detective up in Canada and the local police. And they both encouraged her to record the next phone call because in Canada you can record at one party, consent is all you need. And so she got a recording device, and when he called, she started recording it.

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BILL COSBY: Because I would be willing to pay for the schooling.

GIANNA CONSTAND: Uh huh.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That tape was so amazing. I mean, not only is it absolutely reprehensible, what he did to her tried to offer her money, but he had the gall to add a caveat. On top of everything else, she had to keep a certain grade level. I was that actually took my breath away.

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BILL COSBY: Whatever. As long as she maintains a 3.0 average

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Right, I mean, everything about Cosby is about control. He has to be in control of everything. Even I think the drugging part of this there. In one of the court documents, Andres attorneys described him as a Somnophilia, which is about having sex with people who are unconscious. It's like necrophilia. Only the person is unconscious. And I think control is about everything. And I think, you know, when he drugged Andrea that night because he couldn't get her any other way and this was going to be probably nearly his last chance if she was going to be moving back to Canada.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So what happens to Andrea while she's trying to get justice, like she files first reports in Canada, but because the assault was the United States, it has to go to the United States. That gets picked up. Where does that go?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: So what happens is it goes to the Cheltenham Township police and the Montgomery County DA's office and the Montgomery County DA's office would basically oversee it. And that was Bruce Castor, who was the D.A. at the time. And he there was like radio silence from him on this thing for the first four days. And then he released just a brief press release that basically said derogatory things about Andrea. And and when he finally did a press conference, his one and only press conference on it, that's where he said, you know, we don't we don't arrest people for making mistakes. And it just became clear that he had no intention of prosecuting Cosby. And those were excerpts of that press conference that a California attorney named Tamara Green heard. And she said, that's D.A. speak for, I'm not going to charge him. And so she decided to come forward and said he had done the same thing to her 30 years before he had drugged and sexually assaulted her because she wanted the D.A. to know that, hey, you may think Cliff Huxtable isn't capable of this, but I'm here to tell you he did the same thing to me.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And Tamara wasn't the only woman who came forward back then, right?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: I think there were 14 women total coming forward against Cosby back in early 2005. And I was writing about all of them. I interviewed a couple who wanted their names and photos to be used, and it didn't matter. Bruce Castor didn't even have his detectives interview most of them.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And as these women are coming forward and as this story is unfolding, it seems like a lot of the media kind of go away. But you don't. You're sticking to it. So can you tell me a little bit about what you were doing and what was motivating you in the face of, you know, Cosby was this cultural icon. I mean, he was more than an entertainer. Right? Like.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Cosby had this hold on us. And so it must have been difficult for you professionally to keep this up when it felt like the rest of us media and the society just sort of wanted to turn away from it.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: So I was horrified because I, I got in journalism for all the usual reasons. And I'd, I'd worked for a newspaper that had its flaws, but it never back down from anybody. And I was getting calls from Cosby's attorney, threatening to sue every day. He was also sending letters to my editors, threatening to sue. A negative story was printed about me in the Philadelphia Weekly, where it quoted journalists and experts saying that Tamara Green's story shouldn't have been a cover story, that it was a he said, she said, and just trashing my journalism. Castor was telling other local reporters he could have me arrested for my stories. I stood my ground because I believed my reporting and I believed these women. And I just I'm not one who's going to back down when someone's attacking my credibility and attacking my reporting. I know I would not have published those stories. I would not have put my name on those stories if I didn't believe them to be true and that they were just using a lot of slimy tactics on Cosby's people would leak untrue information about Andrea to the press, and the press would run with it. It was it was it was hard. It was very, very, very hard to think that the power that celebrities or anyone with deep pockets has against the media is is it's terrifying because you wonder how much how many other things they're getting away with out there. That, two people are too scared to report because they have bottomless pockets and they could just sue and sue and sue.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Or not the courage that you have. So D.A. Castro refused to charge Cosby in a criminal case, but Andrea did take him to civil court and it's there that she eventually got a settlement. And we all sort of thought that the case was finished. But something happened in 2014 that blew this all up again. What was that?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Yes. So Hannibal Burress, he was a young up and coming black male comedian, was performing in Philadelphia. I think the Trocadero in October and Philly mag reporter just happened to be in the audience that night and Hannibal started making jokes about being in Cosby's hometown. He was making jokes about basically about Cosby being a hypocrite because he'd always like he and Eddie Murphy had a big thing because Eddie cursed in his acts and Cosby didn't like that. And so Hannibal Burress was making jokes about it. And he basically said, you know, you're doing this, but you know, Bill Cosby, you're a rapist.

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HANNIBAL BURRESS: I don't curse on stage. Well, yeah, you're a rapist. So...

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: And so Dan McQuade, who was the reporter there for the Philly Mag, started recording on his iPhone, and he's figured out that's an item for PhillyMag.com. You know, it's just a young black male comedian who is at issue with making comments, you know, about Bill Cosby in his hometown. So when at that Friday, late in the day, and it kind of didn't go anywhere all weekend and Monday, like I think it was BuzzFeed or Gawker picked it up and all these online news organizations had sprung up in the ten years since I had been reporting this. And there was no social media when I reported this in 2005. And certainly newspapers barely had websites. So it was a different experience because Bill Cosby could control the media, but he could not control social media. And these online news organizations really weren't scared of him at all.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then more and more women start coming forward right? How many women come forward after this?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Well, and that's what was interesting to me. I think all through October, it was sort of the same women that I'd spoken to back and, you know, 25, because I remember thinking this is like deja vu all over again. I reported this in 2005 and no one cared. And then a new victim came forward, Joan Tarshis, who had never spoken before and had her name and identity revealed. And so then new victims started coming forward and it really began to snowball.

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REPORTER: Bill Cosby is facing allegations from over two dozen women.

REPORTER 2: The fall from grace of a living American legend, 50 years in the making.

UNNAMED: I can name off 12 right now that I know of. They were also drugged and raped by Bill Cosby.

REPORTER 3: The man once beloved as America's dad for his role on The Cosby Show, now reviled by many as the accusations just keep.

REPORTER 4: Coming. 37 women have stood up publicly pointing their finger and said that Bill Cosby has either raped or sexually assaulted them. Many of the stories follow the exact same script. They allege Mr. Cosby gave him a drink. It incapacitated them and then he had his way with them.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: And that's, you know, by the time he was arrested, there were 60 some women who were accusing him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And you broke the story about him being arrested?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Yes. I mean, you know, I just I got right back to work on this as soon as it broke again. You know, once again, I saw the power he has with the media because the Associated Press was doing an interview with him.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS JOURNALIST: I have to ask about your name coming up in the news recently regarding this comedian.

BILL COSBY: No, no, we don't answer that.

ASSOCIATED PRESS JOURNALIST: Okay.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: And there's a video of it and you can find it online.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS JOURNALIST: I just wanted to ask if you wanted to respond at all about whether any of that was true.

BILL COSBY: There's no response.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Right, where he says, you know, oh, I know the AP wouldn't run this because he asked about it and he said no comment. But he still didn't even want them to use that.

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BILL COSBY: Now, can I get something from you?

ASSOCIATED PRESS JOURNALIST: What's that?

BILL COSBY: That none of that will be shown? Well, I think if you want to consider yourself to be serious, that it will not appear anywhere.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: And he says it was at oh cost so-and-so in Los Angeles like someone who works for the AP and make sure this doesn't run.

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BILL COSBY: And I think you need to get on the phone with his I will person immediately.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: And I think they were finally forced to release it because NPR ended up releasing that he had done that and AP didn't for like two weeks. But then the Associated Press was the one that went to court to try to get the some court documents unsealed from Andrea's civil suit against Cosby, because there were excerpts the depositions and some of those documents, and they had been sealed and they there was no reason to keep them sealed. It was like, what, ten years later? So they went to court and started that process.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And once those became public, that really blew it wide open for him, right?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Yeah, those the AP the judge finally agreed to unseal just those documents. So The New York Times got a copy of it and wrote a huge story. We know from those documents in which Cosby admitted to given Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, just expand on that a little bit. What did he admit to and his reasoning for things?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: He didn't admit to anything illegal, but he admitted to giving Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. But they were legal in the U.S. back then, and they weren't illegal until 1984. And he made it. Everything was consensual. I mean, he didn't admit to anything illegal in there. And in fact. When they were settling the lawsuit. He wanted Andrea's lawyers to make anger, agree that she would never cooperate with law enforcement should they ever decide to pursue this case. And they refused. They said that's obstruction of justice. So what they agreed to is that she wouldn't initiate a criminal case.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So what was different about 2018 than 2005? Prosecutors do charge Cosby. What was different?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: But what's really interesting is the woman who was the D.A. of Montgomery County at that point, Risa Ferman, was the one who had been Bruce Castor's second in command in 2005. And I think she really felt like an injustice had been done back then, that she had no power to do anything about it. Bruce was the boss, so she decided to reopen Andrea's case.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And the court case begins. And many of the sources that you spoke to took the stand and told their story. Are there certain moments of that trial that stick in your mind?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: The first trial, though, none of the women who come forward who could have criminal cases of their own because the statute of limitations had expired. But what they could be is supporting witnesses for Andrea just to show a pattern of behavior or conduct by the defendant. But the judge only allowed one of them to testify at the first trial. And really, it was horrifying watching her test when she worked for Cosby's agent. Cosby is represented by William Morris, you know, the biggest talent agency in the country. And he was like their biggest client. He was so important. He had his own private phone line to his agent. And this woman was the secretary to his agent. And he was giving her acting lessons. And then he asked her for lunch. I forget which hotel it was. He she shows up and they're like, Oh, no, it's in the bungalow. And she goes to a bungalow and he's there and he's dressed in a white robe. And she goes in and he says, Here, take this, and he gives her a pill. And this was what was so horrifying to me, especially horrifying. She says she put it under her tongue course, hoping that it would notice that she didn't swallow it. And he looks at her and goes, lift up your tongue. Then he makes her swallow it and then she runs to the bathroom. She's horrified and she sees all these prescription drugs everywhere in his bathroom. And then, you know, as all these women describe, within 20 minutes, she her you know, she's getting fuzzy anyway, she sexually assaults her there. And then within a few days, she overhears some I think she picked up a line, the private phone line. They're talking about firing her. And Cosby saying that, you know, she's never at her desk about the bodies trying to get her fired. So she runs to H.R. And she ends up filing a workman's comp claim and they end up settling it. And it's amazing. I believe cosby was deposed for that. There's no record of it. There was no there's always, always records of depositions. There's always not. There's none of that one. So she ended up settling it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That really brings me to the idea of how enabled Cosby was. And, you know, it does come out that people either knew exactly what he was doing or knew that there was something wrong with what he was doing. Can you talk to me about that? There was a whole industry around Cosby that let this happen.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Right. And that's what my book really dives into that. And we didn't get into it as much just for time constraints and other reasons in the podcast. But he and he had enablers in the media. These modeling agencies were funneling him victims. William Morris, his agency there, they were helping pay off some of these women to silence them. So Hollywood knew. I mean, there were a cache. I heard Joe Rogan and Bill Maher a couple of years ago joking about, Yeah, I've known since the mid-nineties. And oh, yeah, I knew since the mid eighties. Ha ha ha. Like.

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JOE ROGAN: Well, now that he's been exposed.

BILL MAHER: Somebody told me he was a creep back in 1983.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, okay. Someone told me in 94.

BILL MAHER: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: So it just and there are a couple of other comedians that came out that that knew about it. I mean, it was very well-known in Hollywood that he was doing this to women. And the media knew and the media wasn't reporting on it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What was it like seeing Cosby in court at that point for you?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Surreal. I mean, first of all, he said when he's arrested, you know, when he shows up to turn himself in, all of a sudden he's wearing black glasses and using a cane. We didn't see any of that before. And his attorneys are holding on to him on either side, like he's very old and frail and can't walk on his own. And let me tell you, that came with him throughout all the trial proceedings. I never saw that thing touch the ground once. It was like a vaudeville cane or something. The moment I had that was almost mainly sad was when he after he was convicted, I was at a sentencing. And because there was five months in between when he was convicted, when he was sentenced at the end of the court proceeding, he starts unbuttoning as cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. He's preparing to be arrested. And I see that he's wearing these red suspenders underneath his shirt. And I just got this weird pang. It made me sad. And I'm like, What is that? And again, I put this in the book When I finally figured it out a few days later, I'm like, those red, it reminded me of Cliff Huxtable when he's wearing those red spread suspenders. And and it just made me sad. I mean, I was just he so wasn't the person that he portrayed himself to be on that show. And it was you know, I was letting go of my own image of him, which you have to do. I mean, these are celebrities. You know, they just because you're nice, you play a nice guy on TV doesn't mean you are one. And we are a celebrity worshiping country in America. We are. And you know, there are still and I understand what he means to the black community because he was the first person to put, you know, black people in a no show like that who had like his wife was a lawyer and he was a doctor. You know, I do understand the emotion of it, but I guarantee you all those people who still support him have never met him in person. No, they don't know him. They love his image. They they don't know who he is.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. I mean, he was so good at grooming people. He.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Yes. And he groom the moms, too. He didn't just groom the victims because the first person you know, studies are shown when a sexual assault survivor does decide to disclose it, usually to a family member. And so he groomed and he did with Gianna and Andrea's sister. He had them to an appearance in Canada, one of his comedy appearances. He got him tickets and they even they had pictures with him. And some of these women did try to go to the police. And they get laughed out of the police station.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He groomed his fans too. I feel like he groomed society. I mean, you know, you say you had I didn't have a broken family, but I have a a very sort of warm memory of discovering the stand up Bill Cosby himself with my dad on TV one day. And it became this touchstone for us. We loved it. We eventually went to see him in Toronto before it became this thing that we had between us. Of course, I'm at the age where the Huxtables and The Cosby Show was such a massive influence on our lives, and it really did. You had to work so hard in your own mind to drop your feelings towards him as the image that he portrayed. And it added to. Once you got through that kind of shock, you realized and this is, I don't know, another word to use it, the genius of him, the evil genius of him, because that image was so carefully considered.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: It was. It was. And, you know, his first known sexual drugging and sexual assault victim dates all the way back to 1965 when he was on I Spy and Sonny Welsh, she was a 17 year old virgin and he he drugged and sexually assaulted her. And, you know, that's how far back this goes. But he he he had this whole image out there that he didn't drink or do drugs, which is some of the women who were with him later on. So they did see him drink, but he did like kids. He did an album back then about kids not doing drugs. Meanwhile, he's got a routine about the Spanish fly, about giving a woman the Spanish fly.

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BILL COSBY: It always happens when you're 13. Only when you're 13 on up to like when you get married. Guys turn around. Talk about Spanish fly. And it never starts with one of the guys on the corner. It's always some strange 13 year old. You know, what? You know anything about Spanish fly. No. Tell me about. Well, it's just girl crazy, Mary. You put some in her drink, man, she ahhhhh Yes.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: It's in his book Childhood that comes out. I think that came out in the eighties. He's writing bestselling books about fatherhood, about marriage, you know, about his childhood. And it's all this squeaky clean Bill Cosby image. And he's known he doesn't curse in his comedy routines. He's known for that. Yeah. And I mean, The Cosby Show, like, even after all of this, if I came across The Cosby Show, this is up till about 2018, probably up until about the second trial. I could still watch it when I saw on it TV. And in fact, I started my Prolog to my book with watching one of the episodes that I'd stumbled across. And it was the one where we found out that Theo has dyslexia. But then I was watching, oddly enough, a Gloria Allred documentary on Netflix in like March of 2018, and I'm watching it. And then they show this one of his victims come on. And it's Lily Bernard. I didn't know her name. I didn't know her at that point. But she played the zany Mrs. Minnifield on The Cosby Show.

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LILY BERNARD: Our baby has half my husband's genes, and I'm making up for what he lacks by eating lots of calcium. It's called genetic compensation.

BILL COSBY: You read this in a book?

LILY BERNARD: Nope. I made it up.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: I remember that character because I thought, Oh, my God, she was. She was so funny. Like, she was brilliant and funny. And it was such a sweet, sweet, you know, moment on that show. And I thought, Oh my God, not her, too. At that point, I was done with the show. I could not watch it anymore. Like how many of the women she was a guest actor. There were a lot of them were extras that he then drugged and sexually assaulted. And then he destroyed their careers or tried to try. I mean, Lily's a brilliant actress. All you have to do is watch that. And when you hear and we talk about on the podcast what was going on during all of that, like the drugged and sexually assaulted her twice. And it was being very awful to her and vicious to her during the whole taping of it. When you hear all of that was going on, it makes you appreciate even more what a wonderful actor she is, because you would never know.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And eventually, though, he is convicted. Can you tell me about what happened at the end of the case?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Yes. So the first the first trial ended in a mistrial. There was five days of the jury deliberated and they finally could not reach a verdict. And so they declared a mistrial and the D.A. announced he's going to try them again. So by the time the second trial came around, it was April 2018, and I started covering it for The Daily Beast. And again, I'm watching it. And let me tell you, the D.A. did a better job the second trial. The first trial, even I was like, what? What is going on here? I mean, I just felt some of the testimony was scattered. They were allowed to use a sexual assault expert just to talk about sexual assault victim behavior, because that is another subtheme in my book, which is about how sexual assault victims are treated differently by people than any other crime victims, that they're supposed to have these pristine reputations in order to be believed. And even when they are like Andrea Constand had a pristine reputation, I mean, but still, the Cosby people took lies, played up lies about her in the media, ran with it. So even then, it's not it's not even a foolproof that, you know, all elements are going to be taken seriously. But their sexual assault expert at the first trial didn't really make her point very well. And it was a little convoluted, her testimony. So what they did the second trial that a different sexual assault expert, Barbara Ziv, who was fantastic and she that day, which was unusual, had her testify first. I mean, normally they do the police, they kind of, you know, then the witnesses and the victim or whatever. Instead, they just put the expert on the stand first to explain rape myths and victim behavior, just to educate the jury And honestly, the media. I mean, there was still a lot of stuff I didn't even know at that point about sexual assault victim behavior. You know, that 85% of rapes are like are people they know. That, you know, there's often contact afterward that some there's most often it's delayed reporting, not immediate. Very few victims report to the police immediately and just trying to kind of nullify all these things that were going to come up next in that and the trial and I think really helped. And it was a different jury. The first jury was from Pittsburgh that Cosby wanted an outside jury. This story was from our county, Montgomery County, which is outside Philadelphia. And then this time five other four women were allowed to testify. And so but still, I didn't think he'd be convicted again. I just I mean, the first story hadn't been able to believe it. Sexual assault cases, again, they're not easy ones in general.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Hmm.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: I thought maybe one where they took three counts against him. So, yeah, when they found him guilty on all three, I was. I mean, I was in utter shock.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And what was he sentenced to?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: He was sentenced to 3 to 10 years, which is the sentence for that crime.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But there is a point after Cosby is convicted, but before he's sentenced, where he lets the mask slip a little bit and you do get to see a little bit of the real Cosby. Can you remind us about what happened there?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Sure. So so what happened is at that second trial, Shayla Lasha, who was a 17 year old high school senior when he drugged and raped her and she was like an honor student. She was doing really well until then. And after that, her life fell apart. So she's sobbing throughout her testimony. And at one point she looks directly at him and says, You remember, don't you, Mr. Cosby? And he just smirks. And during like closing arguments, he's laughing at some of what Kristen Fadden, one of the prosecutors is saying, and she flies across the room and goes, sexual assault isn't funny, you know, And she just lectures energy to scream that. I mean, just there were all these moments and he I think he you know, he just really his behavior was completely inappropriate. And it was just really getting to people after a while. And it just the utter callousness of it too, I mean, they but his attorneys were more and more vicious than any other attorneys I've ever seen. I mean, they really ripped the victims to shreds in their closing arguments and made fun of them. And, you know, it was it was really, really awful. So all of that happening. Yeah. I didn't really expect a conviction. I didn't expect him to go to jail.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Neither did he.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Yeah, but they also gave him special treatment. They got all the media out of there while they put the handcuffs on him. And then. But then they didn't even let him out. And that's that picture you see everywhere. And and he was supposed he got doesn't need a sexually violent predator. So he was supposed to be taking these like these counseling during these counseling sessions. And when he was in prison, he just wasn't doing it. So when he came up for parole, started to come up for parole, he had to lose a 3 to 10 year sentence and he would have to serve a minimum of three years so he could apply for parole six months beforehand. He got rejected for parole.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Why did they reject his parole?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: He hadn't done the classes. He hadn't done anything. And I'm like, now I know why because I think like three months after that, there's the PA Supreme Court, because meanwhile, he's appealing this decision, the conviction, and it finally makes its way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, And that's what I want to ask you about next, because he doesn't finish his sentence. He actually gets out and he gets out on a technicality.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: New at five. After spending nearly three years behind bars, comedian Bill Cosby is out of prison tonight. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturning his sexual assault conviction.

REPORTER 2: Cosby was convicted for drugging and molesting Andrea Constand. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court says Cosby should never have been charged because a former district attorney made a deal with the comedian.

REPORTER 3: In 2005 the district attorney at the time, Bruce Castor, who later would go on to be one of President Trump's impeachment attorneys, did not bring charges. Castro testified that there was not enough evidence, but instead he made a verbal agreement not to prosecute Cosby if he would give a deposition in Constand's civil case. That same deposition became the basis for a new D.A. to charge him ten years later. Days before the statute of limitations expired, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court says prosecutors broke the promise.

REPORTER 4: Cosby relied upon D.A. Castor's public announcement that he would not be prosecuted. But Castor's successor, Kevin Steele, used Cosby's testimony as a key piece of evidence more than a decade later to file criminal charges against the comedian.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Can you explain that to us?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Sure. So the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal on two issues, one, which was laughable. This press release was an immunity agreement. And two, whether these four all these four, four women should have been allowed to testify because it is highly prejudicial testimony. But nowhere does it say you can only have X number of people or the allegations can only go back X number of years. So and a lot of ways the judge was winging it a little bit because he didn't know. So that was the other issue they were going to address, which I thought, if anything, that one had some validity to it. So the Supreme Court ended up rolling solely on whether or not Cosby's due process rights have been violated because the D.A. promised not to prosecute him in 2005. Based on this press release that Bruce Castor put out, which was not an immunity agreement and Bruce Castor was on the stand for six or 7 hours, and the judge kept saying, but Bruce, you know immunity agreements have to be signed off on by a judge. I mean, that's the way it is. And Bruce says, well, I, as a sovereign of Montgomery County, had the authority to make this decision myself as the sovereign of Montgomery County. And finally, the judge just gave up. That's what they did. And they bought hook, line and sinker that this press release was an immunity agreement. And so they said that his due process rights that were so egregiously violated about this, that the only possible remedies for him to be released immediately and barred from being tried a third time. And oh, about that issue with the, you know, the four or four B witnesses, we're not even going to get to that because this is so awful. And I'm just like watching this. And next thing you know, within hours he's out.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Do you have any idea why Bruce Castor was so supportive of Cosby?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Well, I mean, nothing for certain, but but one of the reasons he Castor just run for governor the previous year in the primary and lost. And in Pennsylvania, it's one of the few states where individuals can contribute as much to a candidate as they want. So maybe it was that or maybe it was he just didn't want to alienate, you know, Dr. Huxtable fans. But, you know, he's a tough, tough prosecutor. And I'd never seen him back down from a tough case. So I was still completely shocked when he handled this the way he did.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Do you think that the case against Cosby, even though in the end he got off on a technicality, still had an impact?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: I mean, you know, as Tamara Green said afterward, he served almost his entire minimum minimum sentence. And that's not nothing. But he also, you know, he got his. I think, you know, it's celebrity justice. It just shows you that the amount of tremendous power that celebrities still have and how powerless crime victims are and rape victims are. So that's why you've seen recently. Oftentimes, the only recourse they have is a civil lawsuit like Andrea wanted him to be charged in 2005. It didn't happen. And so she her only recourse was to file a civil lawsuit. She was going into therapy for dealing with all these flashbacks and her nightmares and everything. And that costs money. And, you know, he destroyed a lot of these women's careers. So that that he has had a financial, his actions have had financial impacts on these women in some of the states in the last few years, they've enacted these so-called look back laws, which are give only for civil lawsuits in these sexual assault cases. And they give victims like one or two years or some, you know, to file lawsuits against their perpetrator no matter how long ago it was. So Lilly Bernard filed against him in New Jersey last year. Six women, including Lilly, filed against him in New York, and they also filed against The Cosby Show and Carsey-werner, which was the production company that had the show. One has filed against him in California and seven filed against him in Nevada. My understanding is two more are going to as well. And then one of them, another civil lawsuit from a teenager. Because what a lot of people don't realize is how many of his victims were teenagers when this happened to them, or like a lot of them were also barely into their twenties. She she her lawsuit finally went to trial and he was convicted. But then he's appealing it, you know, So she won it and she got like 500,000. But he's appealing it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: These women are pretty extraordinary, eh? I mean, that's.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: They are. It's scary going up against him there. It really is. I mean, especially if Lily Bernard is Latino, black, mixed. And she talks about, you know, the additional burden that that they have as black women because they get attacked by others in the black community for, quote, bringing down a black man. And her famous quote is like, this is about rape. That's not about race. And so I think, you know, the conviction gave people a lot of hope because that was a jury of your peers. And so real people were in charge of it. But once it gets into the criminal justice system, like when it's in the hands of the courts, that's when the person's power and influence can still happen. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens to Harvey Weinstein's convictions and Kelly's, you know, once they get to the higher courts.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So can Cosby be retried at all or is he completely this is done?

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: This is done.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Maybe not for anybody else. Are all of the women he can't nobody else.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: None of the ones that have currently, it would have to be something more recent.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, I'm sure you'll be following along and I'll be looking out for your work. So thanks so much, Nicki. It was great talking to you.

NICKI WEISENEE EGAN: Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to listening to the other episodes.

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TRANSCRIPT: Crime Story, Episode 3

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