One Police Plaza

Where Are the 5s?

October 22, 2018

That’s the question from a senior law enforcement official, referring to detectives’ DD5s — written reports of important interviews with complainants, defendants and witnesses that detectives are expected to file.

That issue concerns Nicholas DiGaudio, the former lead detective investigating movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for allegedly sexually assaulting three women. DiGaudio failed to file a DD5 of his interview with a friend/witness of one of the three, and he may have filed an incomplete DD5 of his interview with a second.

His actions reveal how a detective’s selective approach to an investigation can lead to slanted evidence and a possibly botched prosecution.

DiGaudio did not file a DD5 in his interview in February with an unnamed witness who is a friend of Lucia Evans, one of three female complainants against Weinstein. Evans had told prosecutors Weinstein had forced her to provide oral sex in Weinstein’s office in 2004. But the witness/friend says Evans gave her a contradictory account, telling DiGaudio on Feb. 2 that Evans told her she had agreed to provide oral sex in return for Weinstein’s offer of acting job.

In a letter last month to Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s special counsel Joan Illuzzi-Orbon acknowledged DiGaudio’s failure to file a DD5 concerning his Feb. 2 interview. She wrote that he “failed to inform our office of important aspects of the account prior to the indictment.”

Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice James Burke then threw out Evans’s charge against Weinstein.

Detectives Endowment Association president Mike Palladino also acknowledged DiGaudio’s failure to file a DD5 of his interview with the friend/witness. But he said that DiGaudio informed Illuzzi-Orbon of the substance of the friend/witness account in a telephone conversation that was overheard by other officers. Palladino did not name the officers. (Relating what DiGaudio told him, Palladino said Illuzzi-Orbon replied, “I believe Lucia. I’ll deal with the discrepancy down the road.")

But why didn’t DiGaudio file a DD5?  “Where is your DD5 on a significant conversation?” says the senior law enforcement official. “If he didn’t do it, why not?”

Last week, Illuzzi-Orbon wrote to Brafman again about DiGaudio, this time about cell phone records of the second female complainant and Weinstein, which DiGaudio told the complainant not to turn over to prosecutors. According to Illuzzi-Orbon’s letter, the complainant told DiGaudio she had personal and irrelevant messages she did not wish prosecutors to see and that DiGaudio told her to delete them.

“According to Complainant 2,” Illuzzi-Orbon’s letter read, “Detective DiGaudio then added, ‘We just won’t tell Joan.’”

Palladino said DiGaudio filed a DD5 of his interview with the second complainant. But Palladino said he didn’t know whether the DD5 included DiGaudio’s telling her to delete the messages or the line, “We just won’t tell Joan.” 

FRIENDS CLOSE, ENEMIES CLOSER. This country’s relationship with the Saudis goes far deeper than a $100-billion arms deal that President Donald Trump has cited. Consider this: 15 of the 19 airplane hijackers who attacked our country on 9/11 were Saudis. Yet at the request of the Saudi government through its ambassador Bandar bin Sultan (1983-2005) our government allowed a planeload of Saudis connected to the royal family living in the United States to depart this country before the FBI could question them. Neither then President George W. Bush nor any other government official has publicly explained this.