Linda Fairstein Hashes Out DSK Case; Agrees to Change Music Habits

Linda Fairstein spent 25 years leading the sex crimes unit at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and now uses the expertise she gleaned there to write bestselling novels. She also occasionally appears with Imus, who, despite making several valiant attempts, could not get Fairstein to throw her former employer under the bus.
 
Over the last week, the case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused of raping a hotel housekeeper in May, has essentially crumbled, taking along with it the reputation of Cyrus Vance, Jr., Manhattan’s relatively new DA. As Fairstein sees it, widespread criticism of Vance is totally inaccurate and uncalled for.
 
“There’s no question that there was a healthy amount of semen found in that hotel room: on the wall, on the floor, and on the clothing of the chambermaid who made the complaint,” she said, providing Imus with way too much hilarious information.
 
“On the wall?” Imus barked. “Come on dude! Calm down!”
 
Since “something of a sexual nature happened in that room between them,” Fairstein noted, the question of whether it was consensual, or whether money was exchanged, or whether it was, in fact, assault needs to be examined from every angle, which is what the DA’s office set out to do.
 
“The first week, there was no reason to disbelieve her,” Fairstein said. “The DNA, the semenal fluids, was found immediately—part of it on her, on her clothing. That sort of cut against consent anyway, because if it was such a consensual encounter, you’d think she might take her clothing off.”
 
Also working in the accuser’s favor, at least initially, was that she made a very prompt outcry, telling coworkers immediately that there had been an aggressive encounter. What’s more, she was examined at one of the top rape crisis treatment centers in New York City, if not the country, and the findings there were consistent with her claims.
 
“It seemed like everything made sense,” Fairstein said. And so, since the case had to be heard by a grand jury within four days of her complaint, DSK was arrested, thrown in jail, and, after making bail, placed under house arrest.
 
Right away, Fairstein told Imus, the DA’s office began digging for information about the accuser, scouring her bank records, phone records, and records of when she entered and exited DSK’s suite at the hotel.
 
“You get all these things, hoping, of course, that they’re going to support your witness’s story,” she said. “And in this case, almost every piece of supportive evidence turned out to be unhelpful, to contradict her; in fact, in many instances, to catch her in very brazen lies.”
 
It was not DSK’s attorney who brought this information to the judge, but the DA’s office, which, in Fairstein’s view, was in a precarious spot. “He’d have been damned for not believing this woman in the first place: a minority woman in a powerless job,” Fairstein said of Vance.
 
Though Vance has been charged with ineptitude since taking office last year, Fairstein pointed out that some other cases that ended undesirably, like the one where two police officers were acquitted of raping a drunk woman in her East Village apartment, were initially indicted by his predecessor Robert Mogrenthau.
 
More to the point, Imus wondered why Fairstein had chosen Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Desperado” as one of her favorite songs instead of Don Henley’s version. “It’s connected to a very sentimental, romantic episode in my life,” she said, but admitted she now prefers Henley’s interpretation, and promised she’d never speak of Linda Ronstadt again (which is probably good protocol to follow anyway).
 
-Julie Kanfer