Sean Combs was arrested in September 2024 on sex trafficking, racketeering and prostitution-related charges. Photo / Getty Images
At a film premiere in 2003, Sean “Diddy” Combs wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: “I am the American dream”.
For a time, he was. This boy from Harlem with an unrivalled drive had not climbed, but sprinted his way to the very top.
The epitome of glamour and excess, Combs, who was variously known as Puff Daddy, Puffy, P Diddy, Diddy and Love, presided over a multimillion-dollar empire that dominated the music and fashion industries.
Credited with shaping the careers of The Notorious BIG, Mary J Blige and Faith Evans among others, Combs adopted global megastars Usher and Justin Bieber as proteges in their youth.
He rubbed shoulders with A-list stars and was given a key to New York. He was untouchable.
But more than 30 years after his star began to rise, Combs suffered a sudden and spectacular fall from grace.
The disgraced star was arrested in September 2024 and indicted on sex trafficking, racketeering and prostitution-related charges.
For two months this northern summer a jury heard how he had viciously beaten his ex-girlfriends, who accused him of forcing them into taking part in days-long orgies with male prostitutes in events he called “freak-offs”.
He allegedly doled out drugs to keep participants compliant.
His accusers, including his ex-girlfriend, the singer Cassie Ventura, aired some of their most harrowing and intimate memories during one of the most closely-watched celebrity trials of the last decade.
During the trial, the man who once called himself the “king”, was a shadow of his former self.
His throne reduced to a chair at the defence table in the Lower Manhattan federal courtroom, his previously black-dyed hair and beard had turned white.
His prison-issued jumpers were a far cry from the designer garb he was accustomed to, such as the black suit adorned with 600 Swarovski crystals and matching cape he wore to the Met Gala in 2023.
The man who used to have stars including Kim Kardashian, Mariah Carey and Leonardo DiCaprio flocking to his extravagant white parties cast a lonely figure.
The only members of his once abundant entourage to show up in court were his family, save for a brief appearance from Kanye West, who himself has suffered a public fall from grace.
Packed into the court’s front rows, his mother and six of his seven children sat while Combs blew them kisses from the defence table.
His legal team built an extraordinary case, admitting during their opening statements that Combs was a domestic abuser.
During the trial, scores of witnesses testified about the music mogul’s alleged horrific and sometimes public abuse.
The court was told he once allegedly beat Ventura so savagely that her injuries brought his security guards to tears. Another time, she required plastic surgery, the court heard.
The jury was shown reams of text messages between Combs and his exes, images and clips of freak-offs – drug-fuelled sex parties – and one particularly harrowing video of Ventura being beaten and dragged by him.
They saw videos of the highly choreographed “freak-offs”, involving dozens of bottles of baby oil, mood lighting and an array of illegal drugs.
Combs would take control of his victims’ lives, the prosecution argued. He paid their rent and, in Ventura’s case, had her career in his hands as she signed up with his label Bad Boy Records at the age of 20 in 2006.
If anyone expressed a desire to get “off the hamster wheel” of drug-fuelled sex parties, he became violent and threatened to release videos of the encounters, prosecutors alleged.
Combs was cleared of sex trafficking and racketeering charges and found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution.
The rapper was born in Harlem, New York, in 1969 to Janice, a kindergarten teacher, and Melvin, a drug dealer.
When his father was shot dead in his car in 1972, he and his mother moved to Mt Vernon, a middle-class suburb north of the Bronx.
His classmates at Mount Saint Michael Academy, an all-boys private Catholic high school, remember him as a popular teenager who moved effortlessly between every group.
Giovanni Zagrelli, who was in Combs’ year at school, told the Telegraph: “He was always a really good kid, always had a smile on his face.
“I remember during lunch, he would go from table to table, he talked to everybody.”
But signs of his volatility were already there.
Combs said he earned the nickname Puffy as a child because he had a “temper” and was known to “huff and puff” when he was angry.
After school, Combs went to the prestigious Howard University in Washington, DC, Kamala Harris’ alma mater, where he gained a reputation for throwing raucous parties and met several of his future label executives.
He dropped out after two years to pursue a music career, and became a rising star at Uptown Records when he helped Mary J. Blige and Jodeci go multi-platinum.
He was fired in 1993 and went on to launch Bad Boy Entertainment with a reported US$10 million ($17.14m) investment. From there, his career soared.
“It is a Horatio Alger story like none other that I’ve seen in front of me, and I’ve seen quite a few,” said Prince Charles Alexander, 66, a producer who worked with Combs from 1990 until 2004.
The “young kid” he first met was “detail-oriented, focused and a hustler”.
“He had something,” he told the Telegraph, reflecting on Combs’ ability to make and market a music star.
One of Combs’ defining career moments was the discovery of Christopher Wallace, the late rapper known as The Notorious B.I.G, which cemented his position as a force in the music industry.
His empire continued to grow. He launched a solo album, a clothing line and signed a deal to promote Ciroc Vodka.
As his star rose, Combs became “more coarse” and “extra”, according to Alexander, who described himself as an uncle or big brother figure to Combs.
“There came a point in his life where listening to anyone was just not his reality any more because he had made moves that nobody around him could make,” he added.
“So who do you listen to when you are the one making all the right moves?”
In 2004, Alexander walked. “I felt like any minute now he’s getting a little bit too rambunctious, any minute now he’s gonna probably come at me ... and we will fight.”
Combs met Ventura, a 19-year-old model from Connecticut, the following year.
Shortly after they began dating, Ventura alleges Combs coerced her into taking part in “freak-offs” that would last up to four days and became her fulltime job, she told the court.
Ventura would have to wear high heels and lingerie during these drug-fuelled, sordid nights in luxury hotel rooms, the jury was told.
She slept with several male escorts at Combs’ direction, with his assistants testifying they would clean up the mess afterwards.
On the stand, she described how Combs would subject her to savage beatings, sometimes in public.
“He would mash me on my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me on the head if I was down … I would get knots on my forehead, bruised lips … black eyes and the whites of my eyes would be red. Bruises all over my body,” she said.
The jury was shown CCTV footage of him dragging and kicking her outside the lifts at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016; she told the jury she was attempting to leave a freak-off and he would not allow it.
One witness testified Combs violently attacked Ventura at a lavish 2010 dinner in West Hollywood filled with R&B superstars and music executives.
Music royalty, including Grammy-winning stars Usher and Ne-Yo, were among the guests, as well as Jimmy Iovine, chief executive of Interscope Records, according to court testimony.
But as the Hollywood dinner was in full swing, things took a turn.
Combs allegedly beat Ventura, his girlfriend at the time, in front of the A-list guests, punching her so hard in the stomach that she doubled over in pain.
“No one intervened,” said Dawn Richard, a singer present at the dinner, during her testimony at Manhattan federal court.
Another victim, who testified under the pseudonym Jane, described a similar pattern of abuse. She claimed Combs wooed her on a glamorous trip to Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas before asking her to take part in “hotel nights”, which became more and more frequent.
A few years later, they entered into a “love contract” where he would pay her $10,000 a month in the form of rent payments. If she told him she did not want to take part in “freak-offs” anymore, he would threaten to stop paying.
One night in June 2024, Jane said Combs kicked down four doors in her home after they argued, attacked her and then told her to have sex with an escort.
The defence tried to paint Ventura and Jane as willing participants in the “parties” who were driven by money.
The jury reached a verdict after weeks of gruelling testimony, though Combs still has dozens of outstanding lawsuits against him, which include allegations from men and women that he drugged and raped them.
Combs has vehemently denied all the claims.
When this trial started nearly two months ago, defence lawyer Teny Geragos made an extraordinary admission in her opening statement: Combs was a domestic abuser with a vicious temper.
Combs’ beating of Ventura at the InterContinental was “indefensible, horrible, dehumanising and violent”, she said.
“But it is not evidence of sex trafficking,” she added, “It is evidence of domestic violence.”
After he was cleared on the most serious charges, Combs clutched Geragos’ hand before clenching and shaking his fists and later holding his head in his hands in relief.
Combs then got on his knees, his forearms planted on the black leather defence chair, and appeared to pray.
As he left the courtroom, Combs turned to face his family and said: “I’ll be home soon.” He added: “I love you, baby” and, “I love you, Mom.”
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