Capricorn Clark, a former assistant to Sean “Diddy” Combs, told his trial how the rapper allegedly kidnapped her in 2011 and set out to kill Scott Mescudi, better known as Kid Cudi.
In a day of emotional testimony, Clark, who worked on and off for Diddy and his companies from 2004 through 2017, took the stand to shed more light on Diddy’s alleged 2011 break-in to Mescudi’s Los Angeles home after discovering he was dating Cassie Ventura, Diddy’s longtime on-and-off girlfriend. The musician testified last week that he believed Ventura and Diddy weren’t together when they started dating in the fall of 2011.
Clark, then the global brand director for Diddy, told the jury on Tuesday she heard “loud banging” at her door around 5.30 a.m. on December 22, 2011.
Through the peephole, she says she saw a “very upset Puff,” as she called him. He was wearing a button-down shirt, sweater, and gray slacks that were “split open knee to knee between the crotch so I could see his underwear.” He was also wielding a gun, she recalled. He was “furious” and asked Clark why she hadn’t informed him about Ventura and Mescudi, Clark testified.
Inside her apartment, Diddy told Clark, who was in her pajamas: “Get dressed. We’re going to kill this n*****.”
Ruben, a member of Diddy’s security team, drove a black Escalade — holding Diddy and Clark in the backseat — to Mescudi’s home that morning, she recalled, noting the gun sat on Diddy’s lap. Clark sat in the car as the two men entered the musician’s home, she testified.
“I was praying Cudi wasn’t inside there,” she told the court.
Diddy faces five federal counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.
His former assistant’s testimony about the kidnapping was just one of many revelations throughout the day.
- After jewelry went missing in 2004, Clark recalled Diddy’s head of security bringing her to the sixth floor of a “dilapidated” building for five days in a row to sit for lie detector tests.
- The man conducting the tests told her that if she failed the tests, she would be thrown in the East River, Clark recalled.
- Human resources calculated Clark was owed $80,000 in overtime pay for regularly working 19-hour days in a three-month period, but Diddy “ripped up the paper” and was never paid that money, she testified.
- Clark recalled finding "handprints left in [baby] oil” while she was cleaning up hotel rooms after her boss’s days-long stays.
- She said she was “blacklisted” from working in the music industry after she was terminated as global brand director in 2012.
She then called Ventura’s burner phone. Diddy came back to the car, asked who Clark had been talking to, and called back the last number, which was not saved under Ventura’s name in her phone. That’s when Mescudi’s black Porsche pulled up to the Escalade. The men jumped back into the Escalade and then chased Mescudi’s car until they heard police sirens near the home, Clark said.
Diddy insisted that Clark convince Mescudi not to call the police — and threatened to “kill all of them” if the report was made, she recalled. Clark later took Ventura to Diddy’s home, where she saw the rapper repeatedly kick Ventura, who was crying as she curled up in a fetal position.
In the courtroom, Clark took off her dark-rimmed glasses to wipe tears from her eyes with tissues as she choked up: “My heart was breaking for seeing her get kicked like that.”
After asking Ruben, who was there witnessing the violence, and then calling two other members of his security team to tell him to stop harming Ventura, Diddy kicked her out. Without a vehicle, she left on foot.
She then called Regina Ventura, Cassie’s mother, to warn her: “He’s beating the s*** out of your daughter. I’m in over my head. I can’t call the police but you can.”
This wasn’t the only time Clark encountered Diddy’s threats. She recalled her first day on the job working for him. After discovering that Clark had previously worked for his record producer rival Suge Knight, Diddy and his head of security took Clark to Central Park after 9 p.m. “He told me that he didn’t know that I had anything to do with Suge Knight and that if anything happened, he would have to kill me,” she recalled.
