Johnny Depp’s House Manager Ben King said he heard “hysterical sobbing” as he entered the house where Mr Depp and Amber Heard were staying in Australia on Sunday 8 March 2015.
He said it “sounded like Ms Heard to me,” adding that she was “crying ... uncontrollably”, as he recalled the episode when he found Mr Depp’s fingertip on the floor of the house.
The defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard began on Monday 11 April in Fairfax, Virginia following Mr Depp’s lawsuit against his ex-wife in March 2019. Mr Depp is arguing that she defamed him in a December 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post titled “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
Mr King said Mr Depp’s doctor David Kipper was “rummaging through a bin” in the kitchen.
“He said Mr Depp had sustained an injury to his finger and he was looking for the fingertip that he said had been severed,” Mr King added.
The house manager said he left Dr Kipper in the kitchen and went downstairs “to search”.
Mr King testified that he was the one to find the fingertip in the “bar area” of the house, adding that as he walked downstairs, he noticed that “a big chunk had been taken out of the marble staircase”.
He said he found broken glass, a “collapsed” ping pong table, and lots of cans surrounding the “bar area”.
Mr King said he found the fingertip “directly below the bar” and that another “big chunk” had been taken out of the marble top of the bar.
He noticed “kitchen paper” with “lots of blood around it” on the floor among which he found the fingertip. He added that he noticed “puddles of what smelled like alcohol” around the fingertip as well as broken glasses and bottles.
Mr King said the walls around the area had been damaged, as had the windows and a mirror behind the bar. He testified that a vodka bottle he found had been broken, adding that “nothing was really intact”.
He said he picked up the fingertip in the paper and put it in a plastic bag on top of some ice and handed it to Dr Kipper and head of security Jerry Judge “who were keen to get it to the hospital quickly to see if it could be reattached”.
He added that he found the fingertip around an hour after arriving, at about 3.30pm and that there were “blood drips” across the floor.
Speaking about the extensive damage to the rest of the house, he said “the remnants of a coffee cup was embedded” in a wall-mounted TV.
When it was suggested that Ms Heard leave for LA and Mr King volunteered to travel with her, he said she was very resistant, saying things like “I can’t leave, it’ll be the end if I leave”. She eventually agreed to fly to LA, and they left on Monday 9 March. He added that he didn’t witness any physical injuries to Ms Heard.
Mr King testified that Ms Heard asked him on the flight if he “had ever been so angry with someone that you lost it with them?”
He said she was “incredulous” when he said he hadn’t and that it was the end of the conversation.
Towards the end of the flight, Mr King said he noticed “long” and “very uniform” marks on her forearm.
Mr King said that after they returned to Australia, he saw many more arguments between Mr Depp and Ms Heard and that Mr Depp would try to leave the room when the “provocation” occurred.
In her 2018 op-ed, Ms Heard wrote that “like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet — I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn’t see myself as a victim”.
“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” she added at the time.
While Mr Depp isn’t named in the piece, his legal team argues that it contains a “clear implication that Mr Depp is a domestic abuser”, which they say is “categorically and demonstrably false”. Mr Depp is seeking damages of “not less than $50m”.
Ms Heard has filed a $100m counterclaim against Mr Depp for nuisance and immunity from his allegations.
