Johnny Depp trial: Inside his ‘destroyed’ rented Gold Coast mansion
Johnny Depp scrawled ‘I love U’ in blood with his severed finger and trashed his rented Gold Coast mansion, causing $150,000 damage, a bombshell trial has revealed. SEE THE PHOTOS
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JOHNNY Depp “accidentally” headbutted his ex-wife Amber Heard and painted the words “I love U” in blood with his severed finger on a mirror in a rented mansion he trashed on the Gold Coast.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star’s bizarre libel case in London’s High Court produced another day of startling claims, including allegations he took 10 ecstasy pills in two hours and drew a penis on a picture of a woman in a bikini.
The total damage to the Coomera, Gold Coast mansion he’d rented off motorcycle champ Mick Doohan during the three-day “ordeal of assaults” on Heard in March 2015 was $150,000, the court heard.
He stayed at the property while filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales which was filmed on the Gold Coast.
Heard, 34, claimed she had to barricade herself in a room after Depp allegedly shoved her into a ping-pong table and choked her against the fridge in Australia in March 2015.
The court heard how Depp’s finger was severed in a furious row about what he claims was a post-nuptial agreement that Heard refused to sign.
Depp said Heard was “riled up” and threw a vodka bottle at him before throwing another that smashed and sliced the top of his finger off.
Heard’s account of the situation claimed Depp injured his own hand by smashing a phone against the wall.
Depp admitted to smashing the phone but said it was because he was upset over his finger injury.
The court was shown pictures of writing scrawled on the walls and heard how Depp used his finger tip to write “I love u” on a mirror in the rented property.
The court was told how Depp allegedly urinated on the floor and painted a fake penis on a picture of a woman.
Depp denied that he had told Heard “look what you made me do” when she saw the damage the next morning, which also included a smashed television, window, and the defaced picture.
Sasha Wass, QC, for The Sun, who is defending the newspaper in Depp’s libel case over an article that called him a “wife beater”, put to the actor that he had used his severed finger instead of a paintbrush to graffiti a mirror.
“You had written in paint but you had used your finger, your injured finger, in place of a paintbrush so you had dipped your injured finger in the paint and then used your finger to do the graffiti,” she alleged.
Depp replied: “At first, I had used my blood.”
Heard said she was left with “cuts all over her body” after the three day “ordeal of assaults” while Depp had a burn on his face from a cigarette being stubbed out on it.
Heard said she had been “scared for her life” and told Depp he was “hurting and cutting her.”
Depp has vehemently denied carrying out any physical abuse towards his ex-wife and said he was in “no condition” to carry out an attack and was having a breakdown at the time.
Of the incident with the injured finger, Depp said: “When I realised that the top of my finger was missing and pouring blood profusely and the bones was sticking out, I believe that I went into some kind of breakdown.”
“I was at the end. I couldn’t live, didn’t want to live at that time,” he added.
The court also heard how Depp used paint to write “Starring Billy-Bob” on the walls of the property – in reference to Bill Bob Thornton with whom he believed Heard was having an affair.
Sasha Wass QC, who is representing News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun, said the house was “completely destroyed”.
In a separate incident in Los Angeles in 2015, Depp said he “accidentally” headbutted his ex-wife.
Depp said he had only headbutted her in the “f*****g forehead”, which he said “didn’t break a nose”, according to a recording of the actor played to the court.
“I headbutted you in the f*****g,” Depp was heard to say before he was cut off.
The 57-year-old said after hearing the recording that it was part of a dossier that Heard, 34, had been building.
“She was swinging wildly at me, and I ... from behind, as I was walking away from the argument to my office, she was hitting me in the neck, ear, back, everything,” he said.
“I turned to cover my head and she was swinging quite wildly so the only thing I could do in that situation was either to run or to try to get hold of her, to get my arms around her to stop her flailing and punching me, so I did so, as I did so it seems there was a collision.”
The court was also shown a series of photographs of injuries that Ms Heard claimed to Depp had inflicted.
However, the What’s Eating Gilbert Grape actor, said that the injury in the photograph did not match up with his alleged attacks.
“That is the only collision and the only potential injury that Ms Heard could have had, there is no way I did as she said and broke her nose,” he said.
Ms Wass quizzed Depp on why he did not mention he had “accidentally” headbutted in his witness statement, probing as to whether he changed his story once he was aware there was a recording of the alleged incident.
Depp also denied that he threw a decanter at Heard, punched walls and pulled her up the stairs by her hair in the Los Angeles incident, which caused her to lose clumps of hair.
The actor had also told the court that he had referred to the couple’s relationship as a “crime scene waiting to happen”.
Ms Wass said Depp’s former security guard had told them that if someone had not stepped in “either you or he would be dead.”
Depp replied: “There are several times when I have spoken to Ms Heard and said, ‘listen, we are a crime scene waiting to happen’.”
But Depp testified on Thursday he was so strung out or high at times he was “in no condition” to hurt Heard.
He said the 2014-15 period was a low point in his life when he was in a “great deal of pain” after having detoxed in the Bahamas.
“I did not push Ms Heard or attack in any way, and certainly I was in no condition to in any way,” he said.
“I was in no physical condition to push anyone.”
Depp’s doctor David Kipper also penned a letter to the court which said the actor “romanticises the drug culture” and has no intention to quit.
“He is … quite childlike,” the doctor’s conclusion said.
Depp’s defence is that Heard was a manipulative and scheming publicity seeker who was collecting damaging evidence against her husband from the beginning of their relationship, after they met on set of The Rum Diary in 2011.
NGN lawyer Sasha Wass countered by going through each one his alleged actions in graphic detail.
“You pulled her hair and slapped her face, spat on her face while holding onto a bottle of spirits while drinking from it,” Wass told Depp at one point.
“And all this time you were screaming at Ms Heard that you hated her, threw Ms Heard against the ping-pong table, which collapsed,” she read.
“You were smashing her head so that the back of her head hit against the fridge, and you were blaming her for doing this,” she alleged.
Depp said no and “not true” after each sentence and ran his hand through his shoulder-length hair with a sigh.
But he recalled feeling unsettled about Heard’s relationship with Thornton on the set of the film London Fields.
He also said he was prone to blackouts but still remembered particular episodes well enough to deny the various charges.
“There were blackouts for sure and in any blackouts there are snippets of memory and in recalling that memory you see snippets of pictures but you don’t see the whole memory,” he said.
Depp was due to continue giving evidence late on Friday Australian time.
The Sun is owned by News Corporation, publisher of The Courier-Mail
– With wires