A former employee testifies Sean Combs threatened to kill Kid Cudi

NEW YORK — A former employee of Sean Combs testified at his federal trial Tuesday that he repeatedly threatened her while she was working for him, and that the music mogul once kidnapped her during a jealous rage over a romantic rival.

Capricorn Clark testified that Combs came to her apartment one morning in December 2011, after he learned that Casandra Ventura, his on-and-off girlfriend, had been dating rapper Scott Mescudi, known as Kid Cudi.

Combs had a gun, Clark testified, and told her “get dressed, we’re going to go kill” Mescudi.

She said she waited in a Cadillac Escalade as Combs and a bodyguard entered Mescudi’s Los Angeles home while the rapper wasn’t there.

Combs is facing sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges, which include accusations that he or his associates kidnapped Clark twice while she worked for him. Lawyers for Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, have denied that Clark was ever kidnapped — and have said there was never any criminal conspiracy.

A longtime Combs associate who rose from personal assistant to a fashion marketing director, Clark is the most prominent former employee to testify at the trial so far.

Clark testified that after Combs kidnapped her, he threatened to kill her if she did not help him evade a police investigation into the break-in at Mescudi’s home. Later that day, she said, she watched Combs beat Ventura over what he viewed as a betrayal. “He repeatedly kicked her, and with each kick she would crouch more and more into a fetal position,” Clark said.

The cross-examination from one of Combs’ lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, sought to underscore how Clark repeatedly sought to return to work for Combs, despite the incidents she said she endured. Clark acknowledged that as recently as last year, after raids on Combs’ homes revealed that a criminal investigation of him was underway, she expressed interest in working for the mogul again.

The kidnapping accusations are meant to buttress the racketeering conspiracy charge against Combs, which accuses him and members of his inner circle of a series of crimes dating to 2004. The crimes cited in the indictment include sex trafficking, arson, drug violations, bribery, obstruction of justice and the two acts of kidnapping.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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