Katie Ring (2:48)
You may know him as Puff Daddy, P. Diddy or now Brother Love. He's a music legend with an illustrious career. But for over a hundred accusers, Sean Combs is an alleged abuser and sex trafficker. In his federal trial, he was recently sentenced to 50 months, about four years and two weeks in federal prison. But his legal troubles are far from over. This is just part one of a deep dive. We'll be doing all week, we'll start with the mountain of scandal that led up to Combs initial arrest and how close some of the key evidence came to being destroyed. But first, let's talk about the man behind the music label, Sean Combs. Born on November 4th of 1969, Combs is originally from Harlem, New York. His eventual stage name, Puff Daddy came from a childhood nickname, Puff, that his friends gave him because he had an incredibly short temper. They said he'd huff and puff at the smallest things. When he grew up, his career was marred by a roller coaster of success and pitfalls. Combs started off as an intern at uptown Records in 1990 and he quickly rose up the ranks, which many credit to his close relationship with the founder of Uptown, Andre Harrell, who he would later credit as one of his mentors. Just a year in, he was tasked with promoting a celebrity basketball game, which was a huge responsibility. But Diddy oversold the event and everything turned to chaos. People who had bought tickets were denied entrance and people started pushing to get through. This resulted in a crowd crush that took the lives of nine people and injured dozens of others. It was a major stain on what was supposed to be the launch of his career. But in the end, the consequences weren't all that dire for Combs. He remained at the company for about a year longer before he was fired, reportedly due to his erratic behavior and internal conflicts. However, in an interview with Oprah, Diddy said he was, quote, fired because there can't be two kings in one castle. Although Harrell fired Diddy, they remained friends and Harrell introduced Diddy to one of the most well known names in the music industry, Clive Davis. In 1994, Diddy and Clive entered a 5050 joint venture that resulted in the creation of Bad Boy Records. The company quickly became one of the most successful hip hop labels and amassed sales of more than 12 million albums in its first three years. But Diddy and the label were once again connected to a serious scandal. In 1994, Tupac arrived at Quad Studios in New York to record a verse for Junior Mafia. Biggie was upstairs, but Pac didn't know he would be there. Outside of the studio, Pac was robbed, pistol whipped and shot five times. But the attackers were not publicly identified. Tupac miraculously survived, but afterwards he accused Diddy and Biggie of setting him up, or at least knowing it was coming and not warning him, sparking one of the most famous feuds in rap history. Tupac was murdered in 1996 in Las Vegas and the man suspected of his murder, dwayne Keefe D. Davis was arrested in September of 2023 and indicted for the first degree murder of Tupac. 27 years after the crime and although these allegations have not been proven, Davis told authorities that Diddy put a $1 million hit on Tupac and that he would do anything for those two guys. Heads referring to Tupac and Suge Knight. Just one year later, on March 9, 1997, Diddy's most famous artist, the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie, was shot and killed in LA. When it comes to the death of Biggie, almost every law enforcement investigation, documentary and court case points to LAPD corruption and or gang related motives. But this still didn't stop conspiracy theories after multiple sources came forward saying that Biggie was about to leave Diddy and his label, Bad Boy Records. This cycle of high highs and low lows would continue throughout Combs career. It happened again in 1998 when he won a Grammy for his first album and then a year later was involved in a nightclub shooting. He was eventually acquitted in relation to the shooting, but after that his frequent brushes with scandal seemed to die down. In reality though, he just found ways to keep things more quiet. During the 2000s and 2010s, Diddy only got more and more famous as a rapper and record producer. He got his star on the Walk of Fame, performed in the super bowl halftime show and and did his fair share of charity work giving him the outward appearance of a successful, talented and generous man. But trouble was brewing behind the scenes and one person who witnessed it all firsthand was Combs long term girlfriend, Cassie Ventura. We're going to talk about Cassie's story in more detail in our next episode, but for now we'll give you the necessary background. Cassie met Diddy in 2005 when she was just 19 and starting out her career as a singer. Diddy was 37, so not only was he almost 20 years her senior, but he owned the label she signed with. Which means there was a serious power imbalance at play as Combs began pursuing Cassie romantically. At first, Diddy played the role of a mentor. But he slowly groomed her, pushing her boundaries further and further, saying each time that they had to go somewhere for the advancement of her career. But that's not what Diddy actually was interested in. He wanted Cassie. He started aggressively pursuing her and in 2007 she finally agreed to date him. Unsurprisingly, it was far from happily ever after. Diddy was allegedly physically and sexually abusive throughout their entire relationship. He reportedly pressured Cassie to take party drugs and appeal to his sexual fetishes. The main one being voyeurism. Apparently Sean would hire male escorts and force Cassie to have sex with them while he watched and masturbated. Sometimes he'd even force her to hire the escorts. And these encounters were just the tip of the iceberg. Diddy also threw elaborate drug fueled sex parties that he dubbed freak offs, which lasted hours or even days at a time. And it was one of these parties that led to perhaps the single most crucial piece of evidence in Combs eventual trial. It was March 5th of 2016 and Diddy had taken Cassie to the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles for a freak off where he wanted her to have sex with a hired escort. But Cassie didn't want to participate. When she refused though, Combs got so enraged, he punched her in the face. Cassie quickly grabbed a few other things and darted from the room. She stopped in front of the hallway elevator where she pushed the button before starting to put on her shoes. As she did this, Combs stormed out of the room straight towards her, wearing nothing but a towel. He proceeded to knock Cassie to the ground, stomp on her and kick her repeatedly. At one point, he even grabbed a vase and threw it at her. Then he grabbed Cassie and physically dragged her back to the room. At the time, neither of them had any idea that the whole thing was caught on the hotel security cameras. People in the nearby hotel rooms also heard everything and someone called security. Israel Flores was the responding security guard. When he found Combs and Cassie in the hallway, she had a black eye and Combs was glaring at him, still clearly heated. However, Combs also seemed to understand that he was in serious trouble because he offered Flores a stack of money, but Flores turned him down. Cassie left the hotel after this, but she came back shortly afterward. The hotel staff tried to tell her she couldn't go back up to the room, but she did anyways. No one knows what went on behind closed doors after that, but we do know that Combs was already in damage control mode, working to get his hands on the security footage before it got leaked. The hotel's head of security, who also worked at the front desk, Eddie Garcia, would later testify under immunity about what happened next. In the days following the incident, Combs chief of staff Christina Coram got him on the phone with Eddie Garcia. He told Eddie he'd been drinking heavily that night and he said something along the lines of, you know how it is with women. He said that if the video got out, it could ruin him. And then he offered to pay him $100,000 to make the video disappear. Eddie called his boss, Bill Medrano to tell him about Combs offer. Bill not only agreed, but said he wanted $50,000 for himself. In other words, Eddie and Bill had seen proof that Cassie was violently abused and they readily accepted hush money to destroy the evidence. After that, Bill downloaded what he thought was the only copy of the video onto a thumb drive and cleared everything else. Soon he met up with Diddy, who was carrying stacks of cash. When Diddy saw the thumb drive and realized that his abuse would be successfully covered up, he was smiling ear to ear and visibly excited. But there was one more thing he wanted to add. On top of their deal, he wanted all of the hotel employees involved in the COVID up to sign NDAs. Eddie and his boss Bill gladly agreed, but Eddy didn't think Israel, the guard who responded to the incident, would go along with it. So without telling Diddy, Eddie roped in a different security guard, a man named Henry Elias, and pretended that he was the one who had responded to the call. Diddy scanned each of their IDs before having them sign the NDAs, but not before facetiming Cassie, who said she had wanted the video gone as well. Then Combs handed over the $100,000 bribe. Eddie took $30,000 and gave Henry $20,000 for for going along with things. Then they sent bill the $50,000 he wanted. When it was all said and done, Combs called Eddie his angel. All four men were more than satisfied. But none of them realized that wasn't the only copy of the footage.
