Will police bodycam footage destroy Amber Heard's case? Johnny Depp to reveal unseen evidence
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are going to have a face-off again in a Virginia court on April 11. The duo will reportedly present evidence in-person to defend themselves in the $50 million defamation trial. An army of Hollywood stars and agents will also testify. This time, unlike the UK trial, Depp’s legal team will reportedly present previously unseen police body cam footage from the pair’s blowout fight that led to their divorce.
Heard and her allies have multiple times accused Depp of throwing a phone at her face, tearing a bunch of her hair and smacking her around in their marital home's kitchen during the May 21, 2016 incident, which ended their marriage. But the ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ star’s legal team has claimed that the actress and her friends’ account is completely opposite to what two sets of police responding to the scene witnessed and captured that day.
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As per reports, the unseen evidence is from the same day when Heard was allegedly violently attacked by Depp. The 35-year-old’s best pal Rocky Pennington, who also witnessed the alleged assault, had earlier said, “They have a big kitchen island in the middle of the kitchen and on there, there's candles and like fruit and, you know, glass, like jars and vases and things like that. And he just was hitting everything with the wine bottle, just smashing it all off. So there was fruit on the floor and baskets and, you know, glass bottles and flowers.”
Heard had also supported Pennington’s account while adding: “We have huge heavy silver candlesticks, candelabra sticks. Those were on the floor broken. Baskets of fruit that we had on the kitchen island. There … fruit everywhere. Baskets on the ground. The containers holding the spoons and forks, kitchen utensils, those were spilled. He broke a lot of glass things that left glass on the floor … when he walked out into the hallway, you could see wine spilled all over the ground and wine on the walls and … and so I knew that at least he had gone through there and was like sloshing wine anywhere.”
However, according to the responding officers, things were not how Heard and her friend remembered. It has been said that after the incident, four police officers went to the ex-couple’s luxurious, loft-style apartment in downtown Los Angeles within the gap of two hours after the ‘Aquaman’ star’s pals called 911 twice by mistake. The two cops — Tyler Hadden and Melissa Saenz, a domestic violence specialist — who first visited the $1.5 million property in May 2016 had reportedly given new depositions in early 2021, according to an April Daily Mail report. They apparently claimed that they did not see any damage, injuries of assault, or evidence of a crime at the time.
Saenz told Heard's attorney Elaine Bredehoft in March 2021: “I did not identify her as a victim of domestic violence. We met with the victim, we checked the location, the husband wasn't there, and that the victim advised us she wasn't going to give us further information.” Also, when Hadden was asked about signs of any damage or violence, he responded: “Not that I can recall.” Both Saenz and Hadden were not wearing any body when they went on to check on Heard.
However, later that night, two unnamed officers responded to the scene, wearing body cams. The three-minute clips obtained by DailyMail.com showed the cops “walking through a hallway and kitchen towards an open plan living area where there are three women sat on a couch and two small dogs scampering about. The apartment is dimly lit but the footage captures tables and sideboards topped with an assortment of picture frames, ornaments, stacks of books and a large bottle of wine.”
The footage also apparently captured candles, candelabras all kept nicely at their respective places. A vase of flowers was also seen kept on top of the kitchen island "but nothing appears to have been damaged or knocked over. There are no obvious stains or puddles on the Persian rugs inside the property or on the walls or carpets in the corridor separating Depp's various homes, which he has since sold.”
Though in a 2019 deposition, Pennington's husband, Josh Drew, had said that “after the first officers we did clean up the broken glass off the floor … the dogs were there and just for safety's sake,” he also noted, “In Penthouse 3 there was a number of broken glass and items strewn about the counters and the floor in the kitchen. Only in the kitchen. It was sort of around the kitchen island. In the hallway, outside of the penthouse, was quite a bit of spilled wine. I don't believe we dealt with that at all.”
Later, Depp's attorney Adam Waldman told DailyMail.com, “Amber Heard and her friends described a chaotic, messy crime scene but the newly released LAPD bodycam videos unambiguously show that the penthouse was utterly undamaged and that their testimony was one more grandiose lie.”
He added: “You can see clearly in the police bodycam videos that all the items Ms. Heard and her friends claimed Mr. Depp smashed to smithereens with a wine bottle off the island in his penthouse kitchen – glass, fruit, baskets, vases and candelabras – are in perfect condition and tidily in their place. Nor does the red wine they claimed that Mr. Depp splashed all over the light-colored hallway carpets and walls exist. These videos prove unambiguously that the first two police officers on the scene told the truth about no damage. It is not complicated: Ms. Heard and her confederates lied.”