Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 5 Shocking Details From P. Diddy's Past

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before Sean Combs was a business mogul and rap artist and producer, he was just a kid from Harlem. It's really surreal. It's really overwhelming to come from New York. I'm taking a look at some of the shocking details Combs has revealed about his childhood and what it could mean about where he is today. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Sean Combs, of course, has been all over the news for the last month following his arrest on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.

Starting point is 00:00:41 He, of course, has pleaded not guilty to those charges, which came after raids on his homes in Miami and L.A. in late March. Combs' world started to crumble nearly a year ago when his ex, Cassie Ventura, filed a civil lawsuit claiming Combs subjected her to a decade of physical, mental and emotional abuse. Combs settled that suit the very next day. Since that time, more civil suits have followed with claims being made that Combs sexually assaulted or sex trafficked at least a dozen women. Combs has denied all of those allegations. Stories about those lawsuits have been the subject of hundreds and hundreds of news stories. And it's not the kind of attention that Sean Diddy Combs is used to or wants. He had

Starting point is 00:01:26 cultivated an image of a self-made billionaire and business mogul for years. Combs had used a number of names over the years, Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy, and now Love. But what do we really know about him as a person and how he became who he is today. What shaped him as a person? I want to go back to the very beginning. Sean John Combs was born on November 4th, 1969 in Harlem. His mom was Janice and his dad was Melvin. We're gonna have more on Melvin and Janice in just a bit, so stay tuned. We know Janice eventually moved Combs and his sister to Mount Vernon, New York after Melvin died. Janice actually worked three jobs

Starting point is 00:02:05 to put them through private school. In a 2006 documentary, Sean Combs, Portrait in Black and White, Combs revealed a lot about his upbringing. He explained the difference in how his grandmother raised him compared to his mother, telling a story about someone stealing money from him after his grandmother sent him to the store to buy cigarettes.

Starting point is 00:02:29 His mom told him to go get the money back and not to come home unless he got that money. He left crying, found the guy, and got beat up, but he said he got that money back. In the documentary, Combs said, My mother, I guess, was raising me for the real world. She always told me, if someone hits hits me to hit them back harder. Combs' father, Melvin Combs, was shot and killed on Central Park West in 1972. But for years, Combs actually believed his father died in a car crash because that's what his mom told him. Combs talked about his father in the documentary, saying in his own words that he later found out his father's brains were blown out and he learned he was

Starting point is 00:03:05 the son of a hustler and a gangster, which he had always suspected. There has been talk over the years that Melvin Combs worked for Harlem gangster Frank Lucas, whose story was depicted in the film American Gangster. Combs apparently found out his father was friends with Frank Lucas, that drug dealer in the area, but has said in other interviews that his father was actually a drug kingpin in his own right, which is something he didn't want to glorify. Lucas has said he and Melvin Combs did business together. Combs said his only memory of his father was him tossing him into the air. He was a very stylish dresser.

Starting point is 00:03:39 The ladies loved him. His whole everything is real meticulous. He had a lot of drive, a lot of determination. You know, he ain't want to be poor. I spoke with Sean Sotero, a music journalist earlier this year about Sean Combs and his father. The Melvin Combs story is very interesting. I found something actually just the other day. You know, it's a daily news story from February in 1973, which is a few years, maybe a year and a half or so after he was killed. But it was around the time that this drug case in which he had been involved in which, you know, finally convictions happened in it. But this article says, well, look, you know, this this case, which is, you know, breaking up a giant heroin ring started when Melvin Combs' phone was wiretapped and that that was sort of the break in this case.

Starting point is 00:04:30 And the article doesn't out and out say this, but it seems to imply that Melvin Combs' death was somehow connected to that, right? And you hear rumors people associated with Harlem in that time have said, well, look, people mistakenly thought Melvin Combs was an informant and that's why he was killed, right? It's sort of something that people who knew him back then or who knew the area back then have said.

Starting point is 00:04:58 And so, you know, it seems to me this article sort of trying to put two and two together and say maybe the reason they thought that was because there was, fact you know this wiretap on his phone so that part was true but obviously wiretaps are not something one does voluntarily right so if this daily news article is to be believed i think that maybe uh sort of explains the story behind his death, possibly. But yeah, I think Diddy definitely had, the image of his father was very important to him. There was a speech he gave at Howard, maybe 2005 or so, something like that,

Starting point is 00:05:42 where he recalls very vividly, I was in college at Howard and the first thing i did was go to the library and look at the microfiche and look up the amsterdam news and see this story about my father like it is something that is very important to him this image of his father as sort of the the drug dealer but not just the drug dealers sort the suave, powerful guy who hung out with, you know, the biggest of the big gangsters, right? Frank Lucas, like you mentioned, who of course, you know, his story is now immortalized in movies, right? He's about as famous as you can get in that sort of milieu. So I think that Diddy seemed to hold on to that image of his father and it seemed very important to him that his father was someone big and notable and important.

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Starting point is 00:07:43 give them the attention they need. There are other things that Combs revealed about his childhood that really make me wonder what's going on with him when it comes to his views on women and sex. Combs spoke in the documentary about how he lost his virginity when he was just 12 years old. Combs also talked about watching pornography at a young age. The first time I had sex, I wasn't scared. It felt so good to me, but I just remember how impressed I was because I used to watch Midnight Blue and how I felt I was just as good as the porno stars like in Midnight Blue. I want to bring in Dr. Daniel Bober. He is a forensic psychiatrist who deals primarily with young people. So Dr. Bober, your first thoughts on this documentary, you know, we have Sean Combs years ago talking about being really, you know, quite sexually

Starting point is 00:08:31 active at what I think is a young age. Yes, I agree. And I think, you know, it's important to state the fact that those who are abused or exploited or have inappropriate sexual encounters at a young age are not necessarily going to go on to become abusers. In fact, the majority don't. So, you know, Sean Combs would not be the first person to have a traumatic childhood, but that certainly would not absolve him of responsibility for his acts. You know, he speaks so vividly. You know, I've kind of talked to a number of people about this, just bouncing it off of people. Like, what do you think of this? Like, he's talking about losing his virginity at age 12, being exposed to pornography, watching pornography at a very young age. And there have been some people who have said to me like, oh, come on, like, it's no big deal. A lot of kids do that at that age. I think of 12 as being very, very young. And I think of that as being a very formative time period and something like where that could shape the way you look at sex and viewing pornography at such a young age seems to me, and I know he's pleaded not guilty to these charges, but the allegations are that he has these days long sex parties and it could go into a lot of different things looking at this.

Starting point is 00:09:52 Is it possible he's just got these kind of wild views about sex and things of that nature? So I think what's going on here is, first of all, it is a big deal. It's not no big deal. So being exposed to sexual experiences at such a young age is definitely a form of trauma. They may have problems with intimacy. They may objectify women. They may have a fear of vulnerability. They may be hypersexual or on the other side, may be sexually avoidant. So it is not no big deal. It is something that can make, it is something that can have a prominent effect on someone in terms of their relationships and their sexual development. But again, it doesn't necessarily speak to the things that he's accused of. It may be an explanation for why he engages in some of the behavior. But I think if you take those childhood experiences and you combine them with celebrity, then you have a person who has very deviant ideas

Starting point is 00:11:09 about sex combined with being a celebrity, acting with impunity, knowing that there are no consequences, or at least believing that there are no consequences for their actions, doing so without fear that something's going to happen to them because of their tremendous wealth and their celebrity. And so I think that is a malignant combination. There's also the viewing of pornography here too. This is another thing where I've bounced this off of some people and they're like, oh yeah, no big deal. But children viewing pornography, even adults being pornography, I'm not trying to sound puritanical, but there are a lot of people. And you're an expert in, you know, you're in forensic psychiatry.

Starting point is 00:11:55 Is that a bad thing, the viewing of pornography? I mean, especially for a young person who's who's a kid. I do think it can be bad. I think it's totally inappropriate. But unfortunately, with widespread access to the internet, to social media, kids at younger ages are being exposed to this type of pornography. And I have seen situations where patients of mine, for example, have acted out sexually at an inappropriate age, at least associated with the fact that they were viewing pornography. So I think it could be potentially destructive, but it really depends on the kid, their temperament, their parents,

Starting point is 00:12:37 their support system. So I think there's tremendous variability. There's another piece of this puzzle too, and that's drug use. And drug use is alleged to have been rampant here. There's talk of GHB, ketamine, cocaine. There's allegations in civil suits being made that Sean Combs' staff kept him basically drugged up all the time. It's almost as if they were instructed to do so. How does drug use influence these behaviors? I think of drug use as loosening one's inhibitions and things of that nature. Certainly, drug use can make you disinhibited, affect judgment, affect your insight, affect your ability to control your impulses.

Starting point is 00:13:25 But as we know, in criminal law, drug use in and of itself, voluntary intoxication is not a defense for a crime. What I see his defense team doing right now is painting this sort of family man defense. Because one of the accusers is a single adult woman living at home and he is married with children. As a society, we place a positive moral value on either being married or having children or both. And the fact that this is a single woman, I think they're using that to sort of prejudice people, if you will, or causing them to view her in a negative light because he is this sort of pure family man and she is a single adult woman. And again, I think there's sort of a subtext there that in some way he's morally superior because of that. They've also said too that his defense

Starting point is 00:14:17 attorney Mark Agnifilo has said this was consensual. You might not like it, but these were consenting adults. That's kind of what he said publicly, too. So it'll be interesting to see how they play that at trial. He's also said he will testify. You know, there's another thing about Sean Combs' upbringing, too, that I find interesting. You know, he it's actually quite sad in this documentary. He talks about how, you know, his mom, you know, taught him, like, if somebody hits you, hit them back harder. And, you know, you got to be tough and you got to hit them back harder. And I'm sure,

Starting point is 00:14:50 you know, growing up in Harlem, you know, at least for the first part of his life was not easy. That was rough. And she moved them out of there to try to get them into a better life. And kudos to her. But then there was this also this, you know, discussion about, you know, getting the money stolen and, you know, having to go out there and fight. I mean, it's, oh my goodness, like I'm like, it's like you want to kind of put your arms around the young Sean Combs and hug him and take him in. Listen, no question about it. He's tremendously talented. He's changed the world. He brought himself up from very difficult circumstances. So like all things, people are not all good or all

Starting point is 00:15:32 bad. But that doesn't excuse his conduct. If in fact, these things are true, then he engaged in criminal conduct. But it doesn't take away from the fact that he had a difficult childhood, that he's an enormous talent and success. And we've seen this happen with other people before, like Michael Jackson. These are people who, again, millions of people listen to their music and have found moments of happiness listening to them. And then we find out something about them that tarnishes that image and we find ourselves conflicted about whether we should still be listening to them because of these acts that they've been accused of committing or have committed. Yeah. I feel like he had it pretty rough in some respects, losing his father too. He didn't have a father figure. And that's often very

Starting point is 00:16:23 important. It's important to young men, to boys to have a father figure. And that's often very important. It's important to young men, to boys to have a father figure. His father, of course, was murdered. Oh, no question about it. Again, and all these things affected him, I'm sure. But the fact is that a majority of people who are exposed to this type of loss, trauma, abuse, neglect, don't go on to become abusers themselves, although certainly it increases the risk significantly when compared to the general population. Dr. Daniel Bober, thank you as always for your expertise. I appreciate it. My pleasure.

Starting point is 00:16:54 And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 5 Shocking Details From P. Diddy's Past

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