These Are the Women Expected to Testify Against Bill Cosby

By Diana Moskovitz | April 3, 2018 | 6:05pm

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The retrial of disgraced comedian Bill Cosby is set to start next Monday in Norristown, Pennsylvania, after last year’s proceedings ended in a mistrial. Right now, jurors are being selected; as of Tuesday afternoon, they had seated seven. The charges are the same—three counts of aggravated indecent assault—but the case presented by prosecutors will be different: This time, they are allowed to present five additional women who said they were victims of Cosby, in ways similar to Andrea Constand, to support the criminal case. Their names were first reported by the Associated Press.

Judge Steven O’Neill granted the request last month allowing more women to testify. The AP was able to figure out who was being called based on descriptions of the women in documents submitted to the court. All have spoken publicly before about how they say Cosby drugged, then assaulted them.

Janice Baker Kinney

When she spoke out in 2015, Baker Kinney said that she was a bartender at Harrah’s in Reno, Nevada, when Cosby came there. In a statement released through attorney Gloria Allred, Baker Kinney said that a friend told her that they had been invited to the house where performers often stayed for a pizza party with Cosby. That was where, according to the statement, Cosby drugged then sexually assaulted her.

Janice Dickinson

Dickinson said that she also met Cosby in 1982. Here is what she told Entertainment Tonight back in 2014:

Dickinson says they had dinner in Lake Tahoe, and claims that he gave her a glass of red wine and a pill, which she asked for because she was menstruating and had stomach pains. And that’s when she tells ET that things took a disturbing turn.

“The next morning I woke up, and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” she tells ET. “… Before I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.”

Dickinson is currently suing Cosby for defamation in California after his legal team called her a liar.

Chelan Lasha

Lasha told New York magazine that she wanted to be a model, so her stepmother wrote to Cosby who then invited her family to a show at the Hilton Las Vegas with promises of introducing her to someone with Ford Modeling Agency. He got her alone inside his hotel room, where he gave her a double shot of Amaretto and a blue pill (he told her it was an antihistamine). New York reported that she recalled, “him humping her leg, grunting” before she blacked out.

Lise-Lotte Lublin

Lublin said she met Cosby in 1989 through her modeling agency. The third time she saw him was in Las Vegas, alone in the Hilton’s Elvis suite, according to a statement released through Allred. He invited her to his room for some improvisation so he could weigh in on her acting, she said. There, he gave her two drinks that she insisted she drink, which she did. She lost consciousness soon afterward, according to her statement, and woke up at home.

Heidi Thomas

Thomas was 24 at the time, living in Denver, and was a model but also wanted to do acting. An agent said that Cosby wanted to mentor her, so she met with him at a house in Reno in 1984, she told CNN. There, Cosby had her read a scene that was supposed to be performed by an intoxicated person, so he gave her a glass of Chablis, according to the CNN report. She said this to CNN in 2015.

Thomas says that when she woke up, Cosby was next to her in bed, naked and “forcing himself in my mouth.” She says she remembers feeling like she wanted to throw up.

Soon after, Thomas says, Cosby was getting on top of her again and referring to himself in the third person.

“I’m your friend … your friend is gonna (ejaculate) again,” Thomas remembers him saying.

The letter also includes this list of people who will possibly be called to bolster the women’s testimony:

This week is focused on finding jurors. Just one, a young white man who said he knew nothing about the case, was selected yesterday. WHYY described the six selected so far today as “two older white women, a middle-aged African-American woman, a white man who appeared to be in his late 30s, a 20-something African-American male and a white man around his 50s.” Opening statements are scheduled for Monday.