Transcript of The After Show: New Insights: Diddy, Karen Read & Luigi Mangione

Hello, everybody. Deborah Roberts here, and welcome to 2020, The After Show. Always great to have you all with us. And today we're going to do a little bit of a special podcast. We're going to turn things around a little bit. Often we are reflecting on a story we just ran, but today we're going to round up some of the big stories, big crime stories that we have covered over the last year. And I don't have to tell any of you that one of the biggest was the shocking Sean Diddy Combs case that so many people were following like bit by bit every day. And then we're going to also talk about the Karen Reid trial, Luigi Mangioni case, this young kid who was accused of murdering an insurance executive. So much to talk about and so much also not only just inside the courtroom, but behind the scenes. And that's what we'd like to do on this podcast. So joining us to pull back the curtain a little bit on some of these cases is our ABC News chief investigative reporter, Erin Katursky, who has been on the front lines of all of these stories.

And Erin, you're taking a break from the court today or wherever you're dispatched to join. But you and I always pass each other the hallways. And I'm always thinking, Erin, I need to ask you. I need to find out the scoop on this story because from DOJ, the Justice Department in our country, and the Trump administration, to Diddy, to Karen Reid, to all these cases, you cover so many of them. And I want to talk first about just you, because I think you and I met, and you've been here at ABC News for a long time. You cut your teeth, I guess, in radio because that's when I met you. I think we were covering the Royals, and you were doing radio, and we never really had a chance to chat that much. So tell us a little bit about your background.

It's so nice. Hi. Hi. I started in radio, but Court is my favorite place to be. I guess the Royals is all right, too.

You can't argue with the Royals just for something different.

The scenery is good. But Court is a happy place, even though for very many, it is not a happy place.

It's not a happy place, yeah.

But for me, it's its own world. It's its own community. It has its own characters, its own traumas, its own histories. That's what makes it interesting because all of that gets renewed every single time there's a new depending.

You see a lot of these same people from the bailiffs to some of the investigators, to the reporters, to, I'm sure, sometimes some of the same judges you've seen over and over again.

That's the best when the judges know you, they give you a little nod.

The nod.

Did he like it or did he not like it? But The judges set the tone for how all of these cases are going to go. There's a hierarchy, right? It all starts with the judge and the attorneys, the court officers, and the people from the community that have made it a habit to sit in on these trials. Some of the same ones sat in on the Trump trial, sat in on the Sean Holmes trial, will undoubtedly sit in on the Luigi Mangioni trial.

You mean just average people who just like to come to court and see what's happening?

A lot of them are retirees. The group of women I met covering the Zhohart Tsarnaev trial, which is a death penalty case after the Boston Marathon bombing, they were there every single day. You'd talk to them to get their impressions of what they saw. They became characters in the story just because they wanted to see justice unfold.

Yeah, almost like courtroom groupies. I think that might be your book or your TV I'm curious.

Those are my people.

Those are your people. Well, Erin, I'm curious because there's so many intricacies of the law, and you have to peel back all the layers, and you do such a great job of breaking it down, helping us understand not only legally what is happening, what might happen, or why that didn't happen. You're not a lawyer.

I married one.

Well, that's helpful.

Yes, sometimes.

I can imagine. But we see you in all of these locations, whether it is, as I said, government cases to the Ditty case, and so many others. And it obviously is very intriguing to you. So you say these are your people. Let's go to the Ditty trial which just happened, and so many people were glued. I was just really surprised at how deeply people were invested in it. If people could only see some of the emails we get back and forth, and I'm on that chain, when you're sending us emails about what just happened and what we can expect, it's really interesting. Talk to me first before we get to Ditty about being even in that courtroom, because when he was arrested, that was one thing. But just for you, being in that courtroom and seeing things unfold and seeing these defendants as you got a chance to see Diddy for a long time.

There's never been another defendant, criminal defendant, like Sean Holmes. And this is a storied courthouse, the Southern district of New York, that has seen mobsters. President Trump has been a defendant in a civil case with Eugene Carroll, Sam Bankman-Fried, Senator Bob Menendez. I mean, all sorts of characters, and those are just the recent ones. Martha Stewart was the first one I covered in that courthouse.

Oh, interesting.

But Sean Holmes is larger than life. Yeah. He walks in. I'll never forget the first time looking, to be honest, a little bloated, a little shell-shocked.

White hair?

The first time, it was still being colored, I think. Okay, got it. But over time, there he is, looking like a suburban dad or something in his little sweater and the graying and then almost all gray, white hair.

Over time. Because this was a guy who was always put together. If you ever saw, and I used to see Sean Diddy Holmes out and about at different events, and he was always polished and dressed immaculately.

He was a fashion plate.

Had his own line.

Had his own line, had an entourage with impeccably dressed women who who turned out to be some of the people testifying at the trial. To see him just as the criminal defendant, and then what he was accused of, that, I think, slapped the celebrity out of it and made you think this is potentially a very serious criminal. Yeah.

Well, I want to get to that in a second because that is what became a little bit, I guess, complicated at the end, what he was accused of and also what we heard about him. But just talk to me a little bit about you were assigned this story because we heard, and there have been rumblings that Sean Dede Holmes might be arrested. And then, of course, that video came out, that horrific video of him assaulting Cassie Ventura, and everybody was horrified by this. What was that like for you knowing that you were going to be covering that trial even before it started.

The anticipation started ahead of the arrest, and we got word that it might happen now, it might happen this day, it might happen that day. And it caught everybody by surprise because federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations ended up taking him formally into custody at a hotel in Midtown, and they did it ahead of when we were all expecting it. The scariest part was remembering who he was because he'd been a little bit out of the... He was never far from the public eye, but I mean...

He wasn't in the spotlight as much recently.

Not as much recently, but he was certainly an iconic character.

Oh my gosh, those white parties that he would give in the Hamptons, and everybody came to those parties.

Everybody wanted to go.

Big names, big names, not Not only was it celebrities, but CEOs and all kinds of folks came to his parties.

He brought hip hop into the mainstream, and now he's accused of trafficking women. The other part that was, I think, the biggest challenge to cover was to keep focused on the narrow issues at hand in the trial versus what everybody thought.

Exactly.

They were like, When is Justin Bieber going to come testify?

That had nothing to do with the charges that he was facing. So he was charged with trafficking and racketeering and a number of charges that almost were, as you said, narrower than what we saw. So talk about what we saw because we didn't see it. You saw it. We only could see sketches. But you saw some of his associates, his assistant who testified. Of course, Cassie Ventura was the star witness, this woman who had been his girlfriend, a protege, a singer, but who talked about horrible abuse from him. What was that like, Aaron, emotionally watching these folks? Because they were very emotional from what you reported.

They were incredibly emotional, and that was difficult. But just to start with Cassie Ventura, who is a strikingly beautiful woman, and she is pregnant.

Eight months or nine months pregnant. Yes.

Ready to go pregnant and comes to the witness stand and then gives this emotional outpouring of testimony and describes what went on.

Horrific.

Most of it I couldn't say on TV, but I wrote a lot about it, and there was no pearl clutching anywhere because it was very graphic. To hear her explain rather methodically, but graphically and through tears, what it was that she said she was put through against her will, despite what the defense said. And credible?

As far as you could feel, you felt credibility there?

Yeah, Yeah, because who comes on a witness stand and-gives all that graphic detail. Gives all of that and says, I'm making this up.

What about the overarching message that we had gotten over the years, which is that people were fearful. This was a man who had that street cred, and you got the impression that even though you had heard rumblings over the years that Sean Holmes might at some point be brought up on charges, people were afraid, right, to testify. And then suddenly now, they're all turning and they're all testifying. What was his body language? Like a guy who probably did strike fear into a lot of people. Now he's on trial, and they are actually throwing all this evidence out against him.

I saw two different people because on one hand, you could see that the power dynamic would shift. Somebody was testifying from the witness stand against Holmes, the defendant, who maybe had been a boss or a mentor or some some other power figure in the relationship. But there were moments where you could see he still held sway, whether they made eye contact, whether there was just a dark look dark. There were moments when you could feel Holmes's eyes go dark. There were moments where he was outwardly, too much for the judge, expressing incredulity at what some the witnesses were saying.

In fact, the judge actually chastised him at one point.

He admonished him on a couple of occasions not to gesture or to make particular glances, especially toward the jury, where it seemed like he was trying to influence testimony. But then there There are times where it seemed maybe like he was slightly cowed by what he was hearing, maybe from Cassie Ventura. In the end, whether the jury bought it or not, largely sided with him.

Well, interestingly, I think a lot of people were shocked. And ultimately, as you said, the jury surprised people, not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking, but guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. And ultimately, he was sentenced to 50 months in prison and has begun serving his sentence. People were surprised, but I think a lot of people felt that maybe he was overcharged, even though we know about the video and there was a lot that we had heard about when it came to those specific charges, it might have been tough for the jury. And then those 50 months, of course, we all heard about it, and I got a chance to cover just a little touch of this at the very end of it. People seem to think, at least lawyers, and I'm sure you heard this, seem to think that the judge was trying to acknowledge that he had done some terrible things, so he gave the 50 months. But on the other hand, many people felt it wasn't enough. How shocked were you by it?

I was surprised. Truthfully, I thought the prosecutors had done enough to convict on the sex trafficking of Cassie Ventura. Jane Doe is a bit more complicated. But look, it was a tall order. Prosecutors were asking the jury to believe that women who stayed with Sean Holmes in some cases for what Cassie Ventura was 11 years, were forced to do things against their will. Now, I think in our society, we now have a nuanced view of sexual relationships, and people understand it can be consensual until it isn't. But for the jury, and certainly for the defense, the way they presented the case was, this was the life these women wanted, and they were willing to do things that- And enjoying the money and the privilege and the status and all of that. It may not be your cup of tea or my cup of tea, but this was Sean Holmes's swinger's lifestyle, and the women were happy to be part of it.

And they were going along with it. Well, it was a controversial special verdict on some levels, and then some people seem to think that at least it was something. Sean Holmes was clearly shocked. He's been transferred now to a federal prison. He's not happy with that sentence, even though many people felt that he got off pretty light because he was facing what? Life in prison, right?

I mean, he was facing what would have amounted to a life sentence for sure. The judge repeatedly made it clear he didn't like the violence that was depicted on the video that we've now all seen involving called in Cassi Ventura. But he's still appealing because he believes that even the transportation for the purposes of prostitution was too much and misapplied. Because remember, his theory is, I wasn't profiting from the prostitution. I just wanted to watch. Being a voyeur is no harm, no foul. That's obviously not the way prosecutors saw it charged him, and the jury found enough to convict. But we'll see if on appeal, he's successful in arguing that the law was misapplied.

Which is so interesting because when you think about it, what is that? Like four years, and he's already had some time served. You're tempted to say, just do the time.

He could be let out before the appeal is fully adjudicated.

Yeah, exactly. It's certainly possible. It's a case that we could go on and on. You and I could talk about this for a very long time, but there are other cases I do want to talk about. So, Erin, stick with me here, and you stick with this, too, because we're going to jump into another case, another big story of the last year, the Karen Reid case in Boston. And Erin is going to help us navigate all the twists and turns in that story. We'll be right back. Hey, guys, it's Kamel Nandjiani. My new stand-up special, Night Thoughts, is now streaming on Hulu.

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Hello, everybody. We are back with a special edition of 2020 The After Show, and we're talking with Erin Katursky here, who is helping us break down a lot of these court cases that you have covered over the years with us, but it's specifically the last year or so, and there have been some heavy hitters.

It's been a doosy of a year.

It's been a doosy. I'm curious, too. You get a lot of last minute notice. Something just happened, whether it's a verdict or whether there's just something in the Komi case that just happened recently, and LaTisha James, and the courts just ruled, and you are on at a moment's notice, and you know that that's going to happen. That's a lot of pressure.

Well, you don't want to get it wrong. And so you try to follow the cases. So when something does happen, you have a little bit of reserve in your head. But the verdicts, I still get the heart palpitations. I can imagine. When there's a verdict, because that's the culmination of the whole show, right? And you never know. Everyone always says, What do you think the jury is going to do? It's a fool's errand.

Nobody knows.

You have no idea. You can't guess. You can't guess a jury. We were talking about the case of Sean Holmes, where I thought the prosecutors had done enough, at least on the trafficking of Cassie, that maybe they could get a guilty verdict there. Jury disagreed. Sometimes juries surprise you. Sometimes they are in line with what you think is going to happen.

With what you've seen. Well, the jury in the Karen Reid case, I think, surprised people in the very beginning, and then the second time, not so much. But this is a case that just captivated people. A woman who was accused, a very attractive, young professional woman in accused of running down her police officer boyfriend after a party, and they had all been drinking, and she was accused because they were having a fight and probably breaking up, deliberately running him over with her car, leaving him in the snow to die. Why were so many people caught up with the Karen Reid. I remember when it broke, and it was fascinating, but people were just... It was like cult status for people.

Well, I think there's a couple of points because initially, the way it was portrayed, this is like woman scorned, right? She is apoplectic at the state of the relationship, perhaps. They're drinking, whatever. She is, Forget it. I'm going to run him over the way the prosecutors portrayed it, intentionally, and I'm going to let them die in the snow.

In the snow, yeah.

And drive off. And then I think people also get hooked for a different reason because there were questions about how the police handled the evidence. The victim here is a cop. And did fellow cops try to sway the evidence a certain way? And then that plays on people's suspicions about authority. And remember, because this came at a time when there's been deep skepticism about the integrity of some police forces. And so you start to wander there. And then here comes in the end, the defense with an entirely different theory involving dog bites and all this. And it gave reason for people to be interested.

And people love these cases when there's doubt. You think back to the O. J. Simpson case and the glove, and if it doesn't fit, you must have quit. And so whenever there is reason to doubt people love to doubt these cases. Well, the first case, as she went to trial, the first case was not... The jury didn't come to a conclusion. It was a hung jury? Yeah. Hung jury. Then she's tried again the second time, and people, again, are just gathering during around this trial. It took a long time. Talk to me about the second case, because, again, she actually went out and talked a little bit about the story, about her case, which was surprising. One of our reporters actually talked with her. You thought maybe there was enough doubt there. What were your feelings as you're seeing the second trial play out? Were you starting to feel that there was ample doubt here about whether she actually did this?

When was the last time you saw somebody accused of murdering someone go on television and talk freely and rather openly about it?

Usually, their lawyers will not let that happen.

That's right. But here, her lawyer had a whole different theory of what Karen Reid was about. She became, in their eyes, the victim of a messed-up prosecution and a corrupt police system. Look at the injuries on the victim. They're more consistent with a dog attack. Then came the triangulation of the car and the automatic braking systems, and it was convoluted enough. The jury said, well- We don't buy it.

There were a lot of armchair investigators and sleuts out there who thought they knew what happened, and you're right, it was very convoluted. Now, what about that verdict? I think a lot of people were shocked when she walked out of that courtroom. They said people erupted It was adopted in the streets when she was acquitted.

She walked out of the courthouse and down the steps. This is just outside of Boston in Dedham, Massachusetts. And there is a crowd waiting and erupting in shears. And that certainly validated her defense's argument and her. And there are still some civil cases that That may or may not go anywhere. So far, not really. You're left with this one family, the family of John O'Keefe, that is still trying to...

Trying to find justice. Find justice somehow. Trying to find justice, yeah, because they want to know what happened to him. She was convicted of a smaller charge.

Drunk driving, basically. Drunk driving. But that's not here or there. She is, in the eyes of the law anyway, acquitted of the murder.

Wow. And so we still don't know. There's still not really finality in this case about what happened to him.

Well, there's no other suspect that police or prosecutors have necessarily put forth. And so for the O'Keeffe, this may be a dead end, ultimately, unless there is something else. Unless they find some new evidence. But prosecutors were pretty clear they thought they knew what happened and presented it in the best way they could to the jury.

To the jury. It's going to be one of those. It's like everybody loves the mystery of what happened, and I think this one will resonate for a while. What about her? What's next for her?

Well, she's got a civil case or two to deal with, but that's largely it. Now, if you're her, do you go hide for a while?

Or do you take those offers for movies and all of them, books? And I'm sure those are all coming her way.

And that has to be maybe what's next and a fuller story of her and who she is and how she got in the position that she did.

Erin, that one is one that, again, people will still be talking about this one for a while, even though she is acquitted. Well, we've got another one we want to talk about, so we can just talk all day, but we won't. Just give us a second. We're going to come back and we're going to talk about the murder of United Health Care CEO, Brian Thompson. Erin had a revealing report on this, in this case involving Luigi Mangioni, the young adult who was charged in that murder. So stay with this. We're going to talk about that one in just a few.

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We are back with 2020 The After Show, and Aaron Kutursky is here with these mesmerizing stories, the stories that we have covered and you have covered. Our 2020 special, Manhunt: Luigi Mangioni and the CEO murder. It was a story that, of course, you had been following from the beginning. Everybody was talking about this story, and we leapt into gear and covered this story. This was one that was just so perplexing. New York City, this guy was walking in Midtown Manhattan. Suddenly, this CEO was gunned down early morning on the street. Police are searching for the killer, and New York police mobilized. I mean, the idea that this would happen. They mobilized, and they eventually bring this young man, Luigi Mangioni, from a fairly prominent family. Tell us a little bit about that one and how it unfolded and what you began to learn the minute you jumped on it.

Well, he's caught almost on a lark sitting at a McDonald's, having taken his mask down to eat. And he's recognized and police in Altuina, Pennsylvania. They call and they say, This guy looks like the guy who's wanted in New York. And he, in the interim, has become something of a celebrity, which to the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and to police is appalling that a murder suspect would become endearing.

Well, when you think about the health care crisis in our country and the way people feel about executives, Erin, I was shocked by that because oftentimes when you and I cover these stories, and there is such an outpouring of just exasperation and grief and outrage, and this man has gone down, and there really wasn't that same outrage. I mean, he wasn't from the New York area. He was from Minnesota, I think. So you wouldn't have necessarily heard it all here. But I was shocked that there wasn't as much outrage that a health care executive was gone down.

The conversation online was astounding when people, and in some cases more openly, say, Health care, it's terrible. Who hasn't been denied or who hasn't had been frustrated by health insurance at one point in their life. Luigi Menjioni became the embodiment of the, I'm fed up and I just can't take it anymore. People almost seeing an excuse for what was a cold-blooded assassination that he is now charged with in both state and federal court. He's pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys are counting on some of those people who see him a certain way to maybe find their way onto a jury one day.

Well, talk about him a little bit. We should also say, too, that he shared an area with Sean Diddy Holmes in the jail where he was being held at the same time, all these notorious folks there.

What a time. Mangione was at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which is on the waterfront in Brooklyn. Sam Bankman-Fried was there for a minute after he was convicted, and Sean Holmes is there. You don't know how much these people interact, but could you imagine these conversations?

Oh, my gosh. That's a movie unto itself right there.

But Mangione was certainly a bit different. I mean, he does not look like your typical murder defendant. He's been getting thousands of pieces of mail. They started to catalog it. The defense started to catalog it online, and you could see the volume. There was a package given to him that had some certain socks that became a focal point for a minute and heart-shaped notes. But he is facing charges in federal court that could get him the death penalty, and in state court, that could get him 25 to life. And so there's this real imbalance between how he is portrayed by some of his admirers and the very calculated killer that prosecutors say he is.

What's next for him?

I think a trial could happen in late 2026. Whether it's going to be in state court first or in federal court first is up in the air. But the very way he was arrested and subsequently, how we came to know about what he might have been thinking is all now being challenged by the defense. They say that police in El Tuna, Pennsylvania, did not arrest him properly, that the search and seizure of his backpack that contained writings, that contained the murder weapon, as prosecutors have said was all improper, and so they're trying to suppress all of that evidence. It's the writings that gave us a clue. The target is health care. It checks every box Mangione was said to have written. That gave prosecutors what they believe to be motivation that he was trying to send a message by gunning down Brian Thompson. Now, the defense says none of that evidence is It's admissible, and they're going to try and leave it out.

Have some of that thrown out. Let's be honest, Aaron, that's the key. If you get a very clever and skilled and expensive defense team, which he apparently has, you get people who can I like these arguments.

And overlap, because one of the defense attorneys who I think was successful in getting Sean Diddy Holmes off on the most serious charges, Mark Agniffalo, is on the defense team for Mangioni.

It's going to, well, you know the cast of characters, that is for sure.

We know them well.

You will know what's happening. Aaron, we could go on and on, and there's so much to dissect on this case. By the way, Mangione is from a prominent family. In Maryland. In Maryland. Politics in his family.

One of his relatives is a state legislator in Maryland. Well-to-do parents went to an elite private school and traveled around different parts of Asia prior to this. One of the things that prosecutors have been trying to do is figure out what led him down the path he's alleged to have gone on.

Because everybody seemed to think that this is a young kid who has a bright future who may even wind up in politics or some big leadership role in the world. Here he is now accused of.

Giving a valedictory speech at his graduation. This is not someone, by any account, who's dim or who has anything but everything going for it.

Yeah, and that's what makes it more interesting for us to cover. Well, you are going to be on it. We know it, Erin. It's always a pleasure to catch up with you. This is great.

I'm so happy to be here.

I hope you enjoyed it because I certainly did. So we'll have to have you back because there's more to talk about, in this case, especially as it unfolds. I'm in. Erin Kutursky, great to have you. And thank you to the listeners out there. We appreciate your being here with us. And remember, you can catch the latest 2020 episodes Friday nights on ABC, and And you can stream episodes anytime on Disney Plus and Hulu. Thanks for coming by. See you soon.

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