It was only about a half-hour into the cross-examination of Casandra Ventura that a lawyer for Sean Combs drew on messages the couple exchanged, in an attempt to establish one of the defense’s key arguments in the case: that Ms. Ventura, and other women involved in the case, were willing participants in the sex marathons known as “freak-offs.”
Anna Estevao, the defense lawyer questioning Ms. Ventura on Thursday, presented a message the singer wrote to Mr. Combs in 2009, that read, “I’m always ready to freak off lolol.”
In another exchange from around that time, Ms. Ventura expressed her excitement in graphic terms, and he told her: “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hott.”
She answered: “Me too. I just want it to be uncontrollable.”
Conversations like those, which could involve both explicit flirtation and logistical planning about their meetings and preparations, were “somewhat typical” for the two, Ms. Ventura testified.
Those messages showed a very different side of the relationship than what Ms. Ventura described in the first two days of her testimony, under questioning by prosecutors. Over hours of sometimes excruciating testimony, she said that Mr. Combs had forced her to take part in “hundreds” of these episodes over about 10 years, and used violence and threats of releasing explicit videos from the freak-offs as what she called “blackmail material.”
Mr. Combs, who is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have vehemently denied that any of his sexual encounters were not consensual.
In the first hours of her cross-examination on Thursday, Ms. Estevao also recalled parts of Ms. Ventura’s testimony from earlier in the week, when the singer said she had agreed to take part in freak-offs because she loved Mr. Combs and wanted to make him happy.
Ms. Estevao, whose tone was measured, calm and conversational, began her questioning by asking about tender and flirtatious messages Ms. Ventura and Mr. Combs had written each other in the early stages of their relationship.
“I miss you sooo much and I’d fly wherever you needed me whenever!!!!!!!” Ms. Ventura wrote in 2008.
A year later, Mr. Combs messaged her: “I love you sooooo much it makes me cry”
Ms. Estevao asked her: “You knew the Sean that he didn’t want anybody else to see but you.” Ms. Ventura did not disagree with her.
But Ms. Ventura showed some resistance when Ms. Estevao’s questioned her motivation for participating in the sex marathons. In one exchange, the lawyer asked, “So, to make him happy you told him that you wanted to do freak-offs, right?”
“No,” Ms. Ventura replied. “There’s a lot more to that.”
Whether Ms. Ventura, and other woman involved in the case, participated in the freak-offs willingly is a crucial point of dispute in the trial.
During the defense’s opening statement on Monday, Teny Geragos, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, described the women at the center of the government’s case as “capable” and “strong.”
“For Cassie, she made a choice every single day for years. A choice to stay with him — a choice to fight for him,” she said. “Because for 11 years, that was the better choice. That was her preferred choice.”
