Diddy’s former personal assistant told jurors at his trial that she was forced to take lie detector tests for five days and threatened with being thrown in the East River if she failed.
Taking the stand on Tuesday, Capricorn Clark said she was left ‘petrified’ after being brought to an abandoned building in New York and locked in while being questioned about the hip hop mogul’s missing jewelry.
Another time, she claimed Diddy kidnapped her at gunpoint and drove her to a love rival’s house where he intended to shoot the man dead, the court heard.
Diddy allegedly broke into the home and then chased the other man after he pulled up out the front in his car.
The extraordinary claims emerged during the testimony of Clark, 46, who repeatedly broke down in tears while describing her nightmarish employment with Diddy.
Diddy, 55, whose real name is Sean Combs, has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution.
He faces life in jail if convicted.
During her testimony, Clark said that a few months after working for Diddy in 2004, a diamond necklace with a cross, a diamond bracelet, and a diamond watch all went missing.
The next day Paul ‘Uncle Paulie’ Offord, Diddy’s head of security, took her to a vacant building in Manhattan – it would later be used for an office for Diddy’s record label, Bad Boy – and had the doors locked behind him.
They went to the sixth floor where on an abandoned floor there was a fold up table and a huge man sitting chain smoking.
In vivid testimony she said the man was ‘the size of two linebackers’.
Clark said: ‘He said I had been brought to the building to take a lie detector test to figure out what happened with this jewelry.
‘He said if you fail these tests they’re going to throw you in the East River’, referring to the river off the coast of Manhattan.
According to Clark, the man was ‘very serious….this was a very serious conversation. I was petrified’.
Fighting back tears, Clark said she did the test because ‘I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t pass….and the test was the only way to get through this thing’.
After some time the man administering the test told her the results were ‘inconclusive’.
She said: ‘It was: ‘I’m not getting a good reading. You need to calm down. You’re going to be in the East River If I can’t get a good reading on this’. I couldn’t calm down. I wasn’t doing a good job of calming down’.
The next day Offord brought Clark back to the same building again and they kept going for the rest of the week, the jury was told.
Clark said: ‘I was told I was not able to leave until we got to the bottom of it’.
She was asked to return to work on Monday and never went to the police.
The threats to Clark’s life – which totaled around 50 during her time with Diddy – had actually begun on day one of her employment, she told the court.
Diddy took exception to her having worked for his hip hop rival Suge Knight and, during a walk in Central Park, told Clark: ‘If anything happened he’d have to kill me’.
The threats were sometimes aimed at other people including rapper 50 Cent, with whom Diddy has a long-running feud.
According to Clark, early in her employment with Diddy they were at the MTV office and were doing some publicity with 50 Cent.
She told the court: ‘After the interview wrapped up, myself, Puff (Diddy) and Chris Lighty got in an elevator’.
Lighty, who died in 2012, was Diddy’s manager and was also managing 50 Cent at the time.
Clark said: ‘Puff told Chris – they were having some issue – I don’t like the back and forth, I don’t like that. I like guns. He (Diddy) had an issue with 50 Cent’.
Asked to describe Diddy’s demeanor, Clark said: ‘Very serious’.
By 2011 Clark had become the Global Brand Director for Sean John, Diddy’s fashion label.
One morning that December she was woken up around 5.30am by Diddy who was standing outside her apartment in Los Angeles a jealous rage after finding out his girlfriend Cassandra Ventura was seeing somebody else.
Clark opened her door to see a ‘furious’ Diddy who, bizarrely, had a split in his grey trousers by the crotch so she could see his underwear.
He was also holding a gun in his hand and demanded to know about the rapper Kid Cudi, also known as Scott Mescudi, who had been dating Ventura at the same time as Diddy.
Clark said: ‘He said why didn’t you tell me? I said I don’t know what you’re talking about. He said who is Scott? I said I don’t know any Scott. He said Kid Cudi. I said oh Cassie’s friend’.
Referring to Mescudi, Diddy said: ‘Get dressed we’re going to go kill this n*****’.
When Clark resisted, Diddy told her: ‘I don’t give a f*** what you want to do. Go get dressed’.
Fighting back tears, she said: ‘I’d never seen anything like this, he’d never come to my house….I’d never seen him with a weapon, never seen him making me do something (like) this’.
They arrived at Mescudi’s house in the Hollywood Hills and Diddy and his security guard, Reuben, gained entry to the property.
Clark said she called Ventura and told her that ‘Puff (Diddy) came and got me with a gun and brought me to Cudi’s house to kill him’.
She heard Mescudi on the other end of the phone saying: ‘He’s in my house’.
Clark said: ‘I could hear him running out. I said Cassie stop him, he’s going to get himself killed. She’s like, I can’t’.
Shortly after Diddy got out of the house, Mescudi pulled up.
Clark said: ‘Puff (Diddy) looked in my face, I gave him a visual cue it was him. There’s that n***** right there.
‘Cudi (Mescudi) pulled up, came to a complete stop. Took a look and sped up the hill. Puff and Rube jumped in the car and we started chasing him. It felt like forever but couldn’t have been more than a minute’.
After some police passed them on the way to Mescudi’s house, Diddy began to calm down and told Clark to go and speak to Ventura and Mescudi.
Diddy allegedly said: ‘Once you get Cassie you guys need to go talk with (Mescudi) and convince him not to tell the police it was me. If you guys don’t convince him of that I’ll kill all you m************’.
When Clark relayed this to Mescudi he was ‘mind blown’, Clark said.
She took Ventura to Diddy’s home and he subjected her to a brutal heating.
Clark said: ‘Puff was standing there in a robe and underwear and he immediately began kicking Cassie.
‘(He used) 100 percent full force in her legs to begin with. He kicked her in her thigh, her leg, he kept kicking her’.
Ventura kept backing off and eventually ended up in the courtyard in the fetal position but Diddy kept up the beating.
He allegedly told Clark that ‘if I jump in he was going to f*** me up too’.
Diddy then ordered Clark to get off the property and in distress she called Ventura’s mother and told her to call the police.
Mescudi has told the court that the next day his Porsche 911 Cabriolet was set on fire and that he suspected Diddy was responsible.
When Clark was called by the police and an arson investigator she hung up the phone, she told the jury.
In tears once more, she said: ‘I wanted this whole thing to be over and that was going to make it worse’.
Recounting another disturbing episode, Clark said that Diddy objected to her being away from him for an hour in the summer of 2006 while at his Miami home.
Rob Walker, the manager of Pharrell Williams, had come over as they were shooting a video on an island nearby and Clark accompanied him after he let.
Sixty minutes later, Diddy rang Clark and said: ‘Where the f*** are you?’ so she went back
Another time at the Miami home, Clark complained to the chef and said, ‘I hate it here’ and he went berserk.
Clark said: ‘She walked outside and told him what I said, it exasperated her. He immediately looked at me, he said you hate it here, he charged at me.
‘Ran towards me and started pushing me back, out towards the front entrance of the kitchen, about 25, 30 yards’.
Lifting her arms up to show they jury, she said: ‘Right here, the top of my shoulders
‘(He was saying) if you hate it here get the f*** out of my house! He repeated it until we were outside’.
Clark quit her job but rejoined Combs later on, one of several times she left his employment then went back before she finally quit in 2018.
During cross examination Diddy’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo showed Clark a text she sent him in 2021 in which she warmly reminisced about working for him.
The message read: ‘Totally unrelated to our current conversation, but did you know I had the biggest crush on you before I first started working for you? When we hung out all the time. I played it super cool….I couldn’t tell if it was mutual. I just know for sure you liked to have me around. Sometimes I wonder if we misused all that dope chemistry. It was super fun back then’.
The message said she used to call Diddy ‘Choc’, short for Chocolate, adding she had ‘great memories’ from those days.
Clark cried again when asked to describe how working for Diddy had been positive in some ways.
She said: ‘Coming from my background without finishing college it was another form of business school if I could make it through.
‘I did learn a lot of stuff from Mr. Combs. He knows how to execute…he’s tenacious, he wanted to break the glass ceiling as to what we were allowed to do with black people in the business world and that was….it helped to be working with someone who would match wits with you in the fervor to be successful’.
Removing her glasses and wiping the tears from her eyes with a tissue, Clark said: ‘This is very complicated’.
Clark became distraught after being shown emails from her time working with Diddy – the judge asked her if she needed a break but she said no.
Clark said she felt like Diddy’s ‘protector’ and that it was painful to her that the only reason she was rehired was because Ventura asked him to do so.
‘This is my whole life,’ she said, ‘and their shenanigans: I have no parents, my son has autism, he’s nonverbal. My stakes are higher, sir’.
Agnifilo asked about why Clark reached out to Diddy in 2021 and asked for a letter of recommendation.
‘I needed his help so I could take care of my son,’ she said.
Agnifilo asked: ‘You reached out to him consistently, you wanted him to forgive you?’
Clark replied: ‘I wanted my life back’.