Kid Cudi’s Car was Firebombed in 2012 By? Two Guesses, Sean Combs or Sean Combs
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| Sean Combs, left, and Kid Cudi, whose car was firebombed in 2012.Mark Von Holden/Invision, via Associated Press; Jordan Strauss/Invision, Associated Press |
By Matt Stevens
The New York Times
In their efforts to show that Sean Combs was capable of the sort of violence that helped him control a criminal enterprise, federal prosecutors have pointed to his possession of multiple firearms, a video that depicts him assaulting his girlfriend, and broad language in court papers describing multiple acts of intimidation and violence.
But in one of their most detailed accusations, prosecutors have also outlined a specific incident in which they say the music mogul, who is now charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, orchestrated the firebombing of a convertible car.
The 14-page indictment does not detail what investigators say were acts of kidnapping and arson directed by Mr. Combs. But in a letter filed last week with the court, federal prosecutors described a disquieting sequence of events that unfolded in late 2011 and early 2012 in which they say Mr. Combs executed a scheme to break into a person’s home, and, roughly two weeks later, set their car on fire.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the sex trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution charges that have been leveled against him.
The government has argued that the car fire incident was evidence of the kind of menace Mr. Combs used to operate what it has described as a racketeering enterprise — and to control the associates that investigators say he directs.
“The defendant’s violence — whether spontaneous or premeditated — had the effect of exerting his continued control over these individuals,” the letter said.
Neither the letter nor the federal indictment identifies the person who the government says was targeted. But the timing and facts of the incident described by the government closely mirror an accusation made in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Combs’s former girlfriend, the singer Cassie, last year.
In the suit, lawyers for Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, described the car bombing as an example of “what Mr. Combs was both willing and able to do to those he believed had slighted him.” In this case, his target was Kid Cudi, a man competing for his girlfriend’s affection, the lawsuit said.
Last fall, Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, said in brief remarks to The New York Times that the description of the incident in Ms. Ventura’s suit was accurate.
A lawyer for Mr. Combs did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. But at a bail hearing last week, one of his lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, quickly referred to the incident as described in the government’s filing and said: “let’s suffice it to say there is another side to that story and one day that other side might be told.”
Although the government has been largely generic so far in its descriptions of the violence it contends Mr. Combs is responsible for, he has been cited in recent civil lawsuits for specific acts of sexual violence. On Tuesday, for example, Mr. Combs was sued by a woman who said he had drugged and raped her.
Mr. Combs’s lawyers have been fighting the lawsuits in court and have described the plaintiffs as jumping on a “bandwagon,” constructing false claims as a way to extract settlements from Mr. Combs.
According to Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, by 2011, Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura, a singer on Mr. Combs’s label, had hit a rough patch in their relationship. Mr. Combs, the lawsuit said, had a history of abusing the singer and she had begun a brief relationship with Kid Cudi, another prominent, genre-defying artist and Grammy winner.
When Mr. Combs later discovered emails between Ms. Ventura and Kid Cudi, on Ms. Ventura’s phone, he “became enraged,” according to court papers in her case, and later punished Ms. Ventura by striking her repeatedly and kicking her, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Combs also sought to send a message to Kid Cudi.
“Mr. Combs told Ms. Ventura that he was going to blow up Kid Cudi’s car, and that he wanted to ensure that Kid Cudi was home with his friends when it happened,” her lawsuit said.
Within a few weeks, Kid Cudi’s car, which was parked in the rapper’s driveway, burst into flames, the court documents say.
Federal prosecutors described a strikingly similar situation in their detention letter.
In the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2011, Mr. Combs and an associate “kidnapped an individual at gunpoint to facilitate breaking into and entering the residence” of a person they refer to in the letter as “Individual-1.” According to the letter, people working for Mr. Combs then set fire to Individual-1’s car about two weeks later, “by slicing open the car’s convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside the interior.”
Multiple witnesses, the letter said, testified about the events surrounding the kidnapping and break-in. Prosecutors have also said that incident reports from police and fire agencies corroborate the break-in and extensively document the arson. The city of Los Angeles denied requests from The Times for those incident reports because investigatory files are exempt from disclosure under California law.
A spokeswoman for Kid Cudi did not respond this week to requests for comment.
In her lawsuit, Ms. Ventura said the car blew up in February 2012, slightly later than federal prosecutors suggested in their detention letter.
Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura settled her lawsuit a day after it was filed, but many of the allegations she made in the court papers have been echoed in the indictment brought by federal prosecutors. She accused Mr. Combs of what she said had been years of beatings, controlling behavior and various forms of sexual abuse, including rape. He denied her accusations before settling the case.
Federal prosecutors have focused in particular on events Ms. Ventura’s suit described as “freak-offs,” in which she said she was coerced into having sex with male prostitutes for Mr. Combs’s gratification.
It was during one such “freak-off,” according to Ms. Ventura’s suit, that Mr. Combs found her phone — and the emails between her and Kid Cudi, which the lawsuit said triggered Mr. Combs’s violent response.
Ben Sisario and Julia Jacobs contributed reporting.
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