NORRISTOWN, Pa. _ Two accusers lashed out at Bill Cosby from the witness stand on Wednesday morning, as his sexual assault retrial took a dramatic turn in its third day of testimony.
"You remember, don't you, Mr. Cosby?" Chelan Lasha tearfully challenged the defendant, interrupting Judge Steven T. O'Neill as he attempted to dismiss the jury for lunch. The once-aspiring model had just finished recounting for jurors how she said the comedy icon knocked her out with pills and assaulted her in 1986 in a Las Vegas hotel room, when she was 17.
Cosby smiled slightly as she spoke; his lawyers stood in anger, asking the judge to declare a mistrial. O'Neill denied the request.
Lasha's remark came just minutes after another accuser, Heidi Thomas, who says Cosby drugged and abused her in 1984, had finished testifying, but not before declaring under cross-examination, "I want to see a serial rapist convicted."
The women are the first of five accusers being called to publicly testify for the first time about Cosby's alleged sexual misconduct, in a bid by prosecutors to prove that the entertainer used an established pattern of behavior to drug and assault Andrea Constand in 2004. Only one of the more than 60 women who have accused him was permitted to testify at the first trial, which ended with a hung jury.
Lasha, of Palmdale, Calif., was tearful from the moment she took the witness stand and stated her name. Letting out loud sobs between words, she said she had just graduated high school and was an aspiring model when she met Cosby nearly 32 years ago. He visited her grandparents' home in Las Vegas, called her and her grandmother on the phone, and eventually invited her to the Elvis Presley Suite at the Las Vegas Hilton to pose for modeling photos.
Lasha had a cold that day, she said, and after a photographer took pictures of her Cosby offered her what he said was an antihistamine with a shot of amaretto. He told her it would help with her cough, she said, and she took it "because I trusted him."
She said she became woozy and Cosby helped her to a bed, where he lay next to her, grabbed her breasts, humped her and grunted. She said she felt something warm hit her leg and was unable to speak.
"Dr. Huxtable wouldn't do this," Lasha said she was thinking at the time. "You said you were going to help me. What are you doing to me?"
When Cosby woke her up later, she said, she was undressed. She said she left the hotel and went to her high school guidance counselor's house to tell her what happened.
Cosby, 80, sat quietly throughout her testimony, at times leaning back in his chair and resting his hand on his chin.
The beginning of Lasha's account came after Thomas, 58, a music teacher from Colorado, spent nearly three hours on the witness stand over two days this week, testifying about her 1984 trip to Reno, Nev., where she says Cosby drugged and assaulted her during an acting lesson. Unlike Lasha, who struggled to speak between sobs as she testified, Thomas smiled and remained upbeat and composed.
Thomas said she decided to publicly air her allegations against him in January 2015, as other women were sharing their own accusations.
"I hadn't told anybody anything," she testified Wednesday. "And when I determined that these women were not being believed I wanted to support them."
Cosby's lawyer Kathleen Bliss questioned Thomas on the impact of going public. "Since you came out, you've had a lot of attention, wouldn't you agree with me?" the lawyer asked.
"I'm sure that's what many people would say," said Thomas, who insisted she did not earn money from sharing her story and giving an interview.
She also later sent a Facebook message to Constand telling her that she had her back.
Asked about that message Wednesday, Thomas said: "I never would have believed I would be here."
Thomas also testified about flying to St. Louis in 1984 � for acting lessons � with hopes of asking Cosby questions about what had happened on the night of the alleged assault in Reno.
The closest she got to speaking with him directly, she testified, was posing for a quick photo with Cosby after eating dinner with him and a group of his friends after a show.
"I did not get any answers," she said.
Bliss questioned why Thomas kept that photo, along with other pictures, postcards, and plane tickets from her trips to Reno and St. Louis, for so many years in a scrapbook.
"It was a part of my journey," Thomas said.
