Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
The Wire
- You must come here now.
- No.
Please go to the bathroom.
I don't wanna do
something I don't wanna do.
Go to the bathroom. Hey, come here.
Listen to me. Five minutes.
Don't ruin your friendship
with me for five minutes.
It was a Friday in March 2015.
It was cold outside
and Ambra Gutierrez found herself
on a corner in lower Manhattan
breaking down.
Ambra was 22.
She didn't speak much English.
She's a Filipina-Italian model and
she'd just moved to the United States
about a month before
to pursue her career.
And I was on the street
and I just started crying.
And in my head, I was like, my God,
like, why is this happening?
Ambra pulled out her phone
and called her agent
and told him she had just
been assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.
She said he groped her
and put his hand up her skirt
during a meeting at his office.
I felt that I needed
to go to the police.
So, I told him to take me there.
This is the story of my efforts
to uncover the truth
about how a powerful and predatory
man for decades evaded justice.
It's the story of how media
and law enforcement
and the world of private espionage
protected that man.
I knew there's gonna be retaliation.
I didn't think there was going
to be such collusion.
And how, in the end,
all of that wasn't enough,
in the face of a group of sources who
risked everything to expose the truth.
CATCH AND KILL
THE PODCAST TAPES
THE WIRE
I was shaking.
Harvey Weinstein assaulted me.
So, I went to that station.
And
When I talked to the police guy,
I said that this person assaulted me.
He answered, again?
And I don't know why
but that again just made me feel
like burning inside, like this,
I don't know, I nearly would
say boiling the blood.
Cause you suspected this was a guy
who was doing this in a serial way?
Happened again. Yeah.
And then, while Ambra was sitting with
the NYPD's special victim's division,
giving a detailed report
of what had happened,
she got a call on her cell phone.
It was Weinstein.
Ambra, I'm very mad at you.
Where are you?
Weinstein didn't know Ambra
was with the police.
He was calling because
he was annoyed with her.
Apparently, he'd told her
he was going to hold tickets for her
at a production of Finding Neverland,
a Broadway show he was producing.
Ambra, however, didn't show up.
They're very expensive tickets.
I said, I'm sorry.
I didn't feel so good, you know,
women's problems, something like that.
So, here's Ambra,
sitting in the police station,
in the middle of reporting this guy.
And now she has him on the phone.
I asked him like,
so, how do my breasts feel?
And he said, you're great.
They feel great. They're amazing.
Like he was admitting
and so I thought that, that's it.
They heard it.
I was saying the truth.
Instead, they asked me, Ambra,
could you do something for us?
They said, would you want to meet
him tomorrow and wear a wire?
And I said, yes, sure.
The night before the sting,
Ambra says she couldn't sleep.
She was just hours away from
reengaging with the man
who had assaulted her the day before.
And yet, while she was lying
there awake
turning over this decision
to help the police,
there was one word that
kept coming back to her,
something the police
had said the day before.
Again? I don't know, I kept
repeating in my mind that again.
I don't know, that gave me strength
to do everything, I think.
I didn't want that to happen
anymore to anyone.
It is spring. It doesn't necessarily
look or feel like it today.
The next afternoon, the police hid
the wire under Ambra's clothes.
She went to see Finding Neverland.
And then she met Weinstein.
I'm glad you went because
I made this a movie many years ago.
- With Johnny Depp and Kate Winslett.
- Yeah, I've seen it.
And now I wanted to make it a musical.
And the police
- Were there undercover?
- Yeah.
And they told me that
if I was feeling uncomfortable
to just say that you were going
to the restroom.
Weinstein and Ambra stayed
at the bar for a while.
So, I will tell you something
that I think you could be good for.
But we're gonna have
to teach you a little bit.
If you wanna spend time with me,
whatever, I will mentor you.
I teach you. But you have to relax
with me, have fun, enjoy.
He was saying those names
of actresses that he helped,
giving me so many compliments, saying
you're much better than this and that.
And keep on repeating
that if I would listen to him,
I would become even
greater than them.
And what's going through your head
as you're listening to him do this?
I was thinking how, I don't know,
he could even like think that
I would even believe those things.
Ambra's pretty savvy
about these things.
Some of that is just who she is
and some of it came from experiences
in a different country
with a different powerful man.
Silvio Berlusconi, the now former
Prime Minister of Italy.
Berlusconi had made a lot
of his money as a media mogul.
In 2009, Forbes listed him as the 12th
most powerful person in the world.
And at the time,
he controlled or influenced
six of at least seven
major TV networks.
And the government, which he ran,
also provided subsidies to most
of the newspapers in the country,
which many argue made the press
less critical of the Prime Minister.
I was born in Torino.
My mom is Filipina and my dad Italian.
Her family was working class.
She was close with her mom,
but her strongest relationship was
with her little brother, Claudio.
My brother, of course, was little.
He was three years younger.
We were playing
a lot of video games.
What did you play?
We had Mario Karts
and Play Stations,
there is this little dragon that
I don't remember
- Spyro the Dragon. Yeah.
- That's it.
So, I remember like trying
to go to sleep
and then instead turning
on the TV and play all night.
Ambra says her father could be violent.
She called him Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
She says sometimes he beat her mom
and when Ambra tried to intervene
and protect her,
sometimes she'd get hurt, too.
Eventually, her father left
and Ambra needed to find a way
to support the family.
That's when she decided
to try modeling.
She was a finalist
for Miss Italy in 2010.
She was on TV and got a lot of
attention. Not all of it wanted.
I was noticed by bad people
that tried to take advantage
of playing on my dreams,
taking me to the house of the
Prime Minister at the time.
Ambra's agent brought her to what
she was told would be a work function.
Turns out, it was one
of these wild bacchanals
that Berlusconi threw
at his mansion outside of Milan.
The press called them
Bunga Bunga parties.
This is a story about a guy
who wants to dance.
As the Italian Prime Minister,
he's in the news again
insisting that his infamous Bunga Bunga
parties are innocent get together.
Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi
is once again defending his love life.
Allegations that he paid for sex
with a 17-year-old girl
and used his office to cover it up.
I was there with my friend
and what I saw was
just like women that work
in TV being there
and doing dances, erotic dances
and like being naked and other stuff.
Ambra says she was groped
repeatedly by Berlusconi.
The 30 or so women there were asked
to perform degrading sex acts
like kissing a statue
of an erect penis.
After two hours, Ambra and her friend
demanded to leave.
On their way out, one of Berlusconi's
associates told them,
you can forget about your careers.
Back at the hotel bar in Tribeca,
Ambra was still wearing the wire.
What, so you're gonna do
Victoria's Secret on Monday, right?
- I have a casting, yeah.
- Yeah, on Monday.
- I'll talk to you about that.
- Okay.
She and the undercover police
surrounding her
had been waiting for Weinstein
to escalate things.
Then he said, okay,
I need to get ready for this event.
I'm gonna take a shower
and just come with me.
Let's go. I have to go upstairs.
Let's go.
I was like, why do I have to come
with you, if you're taking a shower?
But I was playing dumb.
You relax, I'm gonna go take a shower.
That's all, and if you need anything
Be like, okay.
I left my jacket there.
And I followed him.
And this was something the police
had told you to do
if you got in a situation
where you needed to get out?
- That's something I thought of.
- It's something you came up with?
My mom always told me like,
always pay attention.
Be careful, like you're a woman.
In any situation, I had to have
an escape plan, always.
- Don't worry. I'm not being pushy.
- My jacket.
- Well, where is it?
- It's downstairs. I forgot.
All right, I'll come with you
to bring it up.
I took my jacket
and I'm watching the police.
Will someone follow me?
And then in the hallway,
almost close to the room,
I finally hear someone say,
Hi, Mr. Weinstein,
this is blah, blah, blah from TMZ.
Hi, Andy Reily from TMZ.
How are you doing, sir?
- Who's the lady you're in company with?
- What are you doing? Whatever.
And this was a police officer
posing as a TMZ reporter.
- What's your name again?
- Please
- I'm from TMZ.
- I don't give a shit who you are.
Weinstein tried to get him to leave
but the cop wouldn't budge.
Weinstein went and complained
to the hotel staff,
who pointed him and Ambra
to a more private entrance
and eventually to a service elevator.
Weinstein pressed the button for the
penthouse. And Ambra had a problem.
And I couldn't text the police.
My phone was not working.
I was trying to keep calm and I knew
that I could have get out of there.
So, there I was starting
to get very nervous.
Ambra was getting farther away
from the police.
Her phone wasn't working.
And the pacified Weinstein,
the one who'd seemed so interested
in helping her career,
had now become more insistent,
more overbearing.
And he started saying,
get into the room.
- What do we have to do here?
- Nothing.
I am gonna take a shower.
You sit there.
He's like, I'm just gonna take a shower.
You sit there five minutes.
- Sit there and have a drink, water.
- I don't drink.
- Can I stay on the bar?
- No. You must come here now.
- You look beautiful. Please?
- No, I don't want to.
I'm not doing anything with you.
Now you're embarrassing me.
I'm sorry. I did not mean. Yesterday
was kind of aggressive for me.
- I know.
- I need to know a person to be touched.
I won't do a thing. Come with me.
I swear, I won't. Just sit with me.
Don't embarrass me in the hotel.
I'm here all the time.
Please, I'm not gonna do anything, I
swear on my children. Please come in.
What did you think when he said
that I swear on my children?
I don't know.
It made me feel a little disgusted.
Go to the bathroom.
Please, I don't wanna do something
I don't wanna do.
- Come here. Listen to me.
- I wanna go downstairs.
I'm not gonna do anything and you'll
never see me again after this.
I'm a famous guy.
- I'm feeling very uncomfortable.
- Please come in now. Five minutes.
Don't ruin your friendship
with me for five minutes.
I know, but it's kind of like,
it's too much for me, okay?
Ambra, still wearing the wire,
asked him a question.
Yesterday you touched my breasts.
Please, I'm sorry. Just come on in.
I'm used to that.
- You're used to that?
- Yes, come in.
- No, but I'm not used to that.
- I won't do it again. Sit here.
She'd gotten it.
She'd gotten a confession.
Weinstein didn't know Ambra
was recording
but it was obvious she wasn't
gonna comply with his requests.
And in that moment,
she'd become a liability.
He followed her downstairs
and returned to the bar.
Weinstein was trying to keep her calm.
He asked if they could have a coffee.
But Ambra's job was done.
She was scared, exhausted.
She walked away from him
and into a bathroom
where she met two police officers.
They snuck her out of the building
and into a car.
She was rattled
but they reassured her.
They were like, Ambra, you were great.
You got it. You stopped a monster.
Shortly after Ambra left the hotel,
detectives went and found Weinstein.
He voluntarily followed them
to an NYPD precinct
where he was questioned before
eventually requesting a lawyer.
He was let go that night.
The matter was now in the hands of the
District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr.
The Manhattan District
Attorney's Office
is one of the great civic
institutions in this city.
Ambra met with the head
of the DA's sex crimes unit,
Martha Bashford, for questioning.
First moment I saw her, I said, great.
She's a woman.
And they asked questions like,
so, what happened in Italy?
Were you a prostitute?
And things like that.
And I was like,
did you hear the recording?
Two law enforcement sources
told me Bashford grilled Ambra
about Berlusconi and her personal
sexual history.
One even said Bashford was acting
like one of Weinstein's
personal defense attorney.
The DA's office has said that this
was all part of a typical interview
meant to prepare a witness
for what could happen at trial.
But Ambra and those law enforcement
sources saw it differently.
I understood what was happening.
But I couldn't believe it, that was
actually going that way.
- So, I
- What was happening in your view?
That this person was against me.
This situation, trying
to report criminal activity
and getting smeared
as a prostitute instead,
Ambra had faced this before, too.
Back in 2010, the Berlusconi parties
became public knowledge in Italy.
Silvio Berlusconi
has appeared in court
to deny having sex
with an underage prostitute.
Ambra provided a police statement
and eventually agreed to testify
against the Prime Minister on charges
that he'd paid for sex with a minor.
I had paparazzi coming at school.
I had people not talking to me anymore.
And my life just fell down completely.
After meeting with the Manhattan DA's
office, Ambra simply had to wait.
I got out of that meeting and I was
waiting for something to happen.
Was waiting for someone to call me
to tell me anything.
Weinstein's lawyers, meanwhile, hired
a private intelligence firm called K2,
to keep Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr.
from pressing charges.
K2 Global Partners has investigated
countless suspects,
corporations and sovereign nations.
The firm dug up clips from the Italian
press about the Berlusconi scandal,
clips that made Ambra out
to be an elicit sex worker.
And then current
and former K2 employees,
all of whom had previously worked
at the DA's office,
relayed the information smearing
Gutierrez in calls to prosecutors.
She's the stunning Italian model
who's accusing famed movie mogul,
Harvey Weinstein, of sexual
Have made similar claims before.
Just like in Italy,
the claims about her
found their way into American tabloids,
tabloids Weinstein had close ties to.
She was a witness in the notorious
Bunga Bunga sex scandal.
They were trying to smear me.
So, I don't know.
I kept waiting for the DA to call me.
Instead, I saw coming out in the news
that Harvey Weinstein was not going
to be charged criminally.
The New York District Attorney chose
not to press charges against Weinstein,
citing not enough evidence.
If we had a case that we felt
we could prosecute
against Harvey Weinstein, we would.
What went through your mind
when you saw that?
Game over.
- And your reputation was spiraling.
- Getting shredded completely. Yeah.
Like I was losing everything and then
I got an email from my lawyer
where Harvey wanted
to stipulate a contract
to help me out in the situation,
let's say.
It was to put this all behind
in exchange of money.
I told him, no, I don't want
anything from you.
Like I don't want money. He started
with, I think $300,000 dollars.
And then he went up to $500,000.
And the last time that he tried
to offer me the million dollar.
I remember that day cause
it was the most
scary that I could remember.
Cause my brother called me.
And started saying
that someone went to where
he worked, asking about me.
Ambra's brother, Claudio,
the one she'd grown up playing
video games with all night.
He was living in Italy at the time.
And the press had found him, too.
It freaked her out.
I couldn't put anyone
of my family at risk.
And that's it.
I decided to accept.
On April 20th, 2015, a few weeks
after the alleged assault,
Ambra sat in an office
in midtown Manhattan
with an 18-page non-disclosure
agreement in front of her.
One of Weinstein's attorneys
sat opposite her.
He looked super nervous,
even looking
a little like embarrassed.
Like I'm here but I'm sorry
that I'm here. You know?
As part of the agreement,
she was required to hand over
all of her technology to another
investigative agency, Kroll.
She had to give them passwords
to all of her email accounts
and they combed through the accounts
to clear them of any evidence
of the Weinstein incident.
Then they gave all the devices back
empty. Because there were no charges,
none of the evidence the police
collected was public record.
No one outside law enforcement
knew there had been a tape.
It was as if nothing
had ever happened.
Ambra slipped into
a long period of depression.
She couldn't get any work.
She developed an eating disorder.
I didn't leave my bed.
I remember
like my mom had to bathe me,
to take care of me cause I was
just there in bed sleeping,
trying to think it was a dream.
She lived in the Philippines
and Italy for the next two years,
trying to put it all behind her.
At that moment, I was in the thick
of my Weinstein reporting at NBC.
I'd read the initial tabloid
coverage of Ambra's story.
I'd heard there was a sting.
I called Ambra's lawyer
who sounded worried and said
he wasn't at liberty to talk.
But then, to my surprise,
I got a text from her.
This is Ambra.
I would like to meet you.
We met for the first time
at a Manhattan restaurant.
She was sitting in the back.
She seemed anxious.
You were putting a lot on the line.
What made you decide
to talk to me anyway?
I was really thinking like this is it.
Like after two years,
I could be taking my life back.
I remember Ambra
taking a deep breath
and then showing me
the million-dollar settlement.
Turns out, Ambra was sitting on
something bigger than the contract.
She didn't have a recording
from the wire,
but it turns out that throughout the
sting, while she was wearing the wire,
Ambra was also recording
a backup on her cell phone.
The first thing that I did after
that police operation,
I sent my recordings to five
different emails that I had.
Remember that Kroll,
the cyber security firm
Weinstein hired to enforce
Ambra's NDA,
had asked for all of her passwords
and scoured all of her devices
and email accounts to make sure any
copies of the recording were destroyed.
And Ambra had said she'd complied.
But there was one password
she didn't give up right away.
And I said, sorry,
I don't remember the last one.
I'm gonna figure it out.
It's an Italian account.
I opened up my email
and I saw the recordings.
I made copies of it
to the desktop of the computer.
And then I called my lawyer
and I said,
I remember the password.
It's this one.
So just like that, Ambra
had saved a copy of the recordings
and no one figured it out.
For weeks, I pressed Ambra
to give me the audio.
I would have wanted to give
you those recordings
and, of course, I didn't wanna make
trace of where it was coming from.
And then I said,
well what if we just
- Record the recording.
- Record the recording.
And it allowed me to say, she never
transferred any files to me.
Of course. It was the truth.
And then I said, great,
let's get the computer out
and I remember you saying,
there's a problem.
- The speaker don't work.
- The speakers don't work.
So, you ran out of the restaurant
to get a speaker.
What was going through your mind as I
sprinted across town to get speakers?
I was really waiting for it to come out.
Like I was really ready.
Five minutes. Don't ruin your
friendship with me for five minutes.
Later, in fact checking calls
with Weinstein and his lawyers,
when we told them we had a copy of the
recording, Weinstein was shocked.
The recording that was destroyed by
the district attorney, he kept saying.
District Attorney
Cyrus Vance, Jr.'s office
denies this and says they would
never destroy evidence.
Please, I'm sorry.
Just come on. I'm used to that.
That October, I published the first
in a series of articles
exposing Weinstein
and telling Ambra's story.
What was it like to finally see the
story and the recording go public?
Like extreme happiness.
The freedom that maybe a person
could feel after being in jail.
I don't know. It was just
Being born again.
I got to see these
two versions of Ambra.
The source that I was working with
who was so
brave and strategic and savvy.
And then this caricature of you
that so many people
in the media had embraced.
I got to listen to all these executives
over and over again saying,
she's a hustler, she's a shake
down artist, she's a hooker.
And it blew my mind on several
levels because, first of all,
if a source had been a prostitute, that
doesn't mean her story isn't true.
Exactly. That's something
I would always say.
Did you hear the recordings?
Even if I was that.
Of course.
I never wanted to not be myself.
Why should I change what I am,
what makes me happy,
to just make people think
that things cannot change?
That even a woman that wears
high heels and a short skirt
can stop someone bad
to do bad things,
to be strong enough to be knowing
who she is, what she want
and so to say no when
she doesn't want to do things.
Once I understood Ambra's story,
I realized another way
to understand the power dynamic
that played out in that hotel.
Because in standing her ground
and showing this incredible degree
of savvy and determination,
Ambra Gutierrez became the one
with the power.
People really miscalculated,
underestimating you.
It was perfect. They would never have
thought I had those recordings.
Who am I? I have no power.
I'm a model.
Ambra's recording was the kind
of hard evidence
that reporters have chased for years.
Some of those reporters had come
pretty close to nailing the story, too.
That's what I discovered
when I spoke to Kim Masters,
the respected entertainment journalist.
All of a sudden, Harvey comes
screaming like a mad man.
He said, what have
you heard about me?
I said, I've heard you rape women.
- No.
Please go to the bathroom.
I don't wanna do
something I don't wanna do.
Go to the bathroom. Hey, come here.
Listen to me. Five minutes.
Don't ruin your friendship
with me for five minutes.
It was a Friday in March 2015.
It was cold outside
and Ambra Gutierrez found herself
on a corner in lower Manhattan
breaking down.
Ambra was 22.
She didn't speak much English.
She's a Filipina-Italian model and
she'd just moved to the United States
about a month before
to pursue her career.
And I was on the street
and I just started crying.
And in my head, I was like, my God,
like, why is this happening?
Ambra pulled out her phone
and called her agent
and told him she had just
been assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.
She said he groped her
and put his hand up her skirt
during a meeting at his office.
I felt that I needed
to go to the police.
So, I told him to take me there.
This is the story of my efforts
to uncover the truth
about how a powerful and predatory
man for decades evaded justice.
It's the story of how media
and law enforcement
and the world of private espionage
protected that man.
I knew there's gonna be retaliation.
I didn't think there was going
to be such collusion.
And how, in the end,
all of that wasn't enough,
in the face of a group of sources who
risked everything to expose the truth.
CATCH AND KILL
THE PODCAST TAPES
THE WIRE
I was shaking.
Harvey Weinstein assaulted me.
So, I went to that station.
And
When I talked to the police guy,
I said that this person assaulted me.
He answered, again?
And I don't know why
but that again just made me feel
like burning inside, like this,
I don't know, I nearly would
say boiling the blood.
Cause you suspected this was a guy
who was doing this in a serial way?
Happened again. Yeah.
And then, while Ambra was sitting with
the NYPD's special victim's division,
giving a detailed report
of what had happened,
she got a call on her cell phone.
It was Weinstein.
Ambra, I'm very mad at you.
Where are you?
Weinstein didn't know Ambra
was with the police.
He was calling because
he was annoyed with her.
Apparently, he'd told her
he was going to hold tickets for her
at a production of Finding Neverland,
a Broadway show he was producing.
Ambra, however, didn't show up.
They're very expensive tickets.
I said, I'm sorry.
I didn't feel so good, you know,
women's problems, something like that.
So, here's Ambra,
sitting in the police station,
in the middle of reporting this guy.
And now she has him on the phone.
I asked him like,
so, how do my breasts feel?
And he said, you're great.
They feel great. They're amazing.
Like he was admitting
and so I thought that, that's it.
They heard it.
I was saying the truth.
Instead, they asked me, Ambra,
could you do something for us?
They said, would you want to meet
him tomorrow and wear a wire?
And I said, yes, sure.
The night before the sting,
Ambra says she couldn't sleep.
She was just hours away from
reengaging with the man
who had assaulted her the day before.
And yet, while she was lying
there awake
turning over this decision
to help the police,
there was one word that
kept coming back to her,
something the police
had said the day before.
Again? I don't know, I kept
repeating in my mind that again.
I don't know, that gave me strength
to do everything, I think.
I didn't want that to happen
anymore to anyone.
It is spring. It doesn't necessarily
look or feel like it today.
The next afternoon, the police hid
the wire under Ambra's clothes.
She went to see Finding Neverland.
And then she met Weinstein.
I'm glad you went because
I made this a movie many years ago.
- With Johnny Depp and Kate Winslett.
- Yeah, I've seen it.
And now I wanted to make it a musical.
And the police
- Were there undercover?
- Yeah.
And they told me that
if I was feeling uncomfortable
to just say that you were going
to the restroom.
Weinstein and Ambra stayed
at the bar for a while.
So, I will tell you something
that I think you could be good for.
But we're gonna have
to teach you a little bit.
If you wanna spend time with me,
whatever, I will mentor you.
I teach you. But you have to relax
with me, have fun, enjoy.
He was saying those names
of actresses that he helped,
giving me so many compliments, saying
you're much better than this and that.
And keep on repeating
that if I would listen to him,
I would become even
greater than them.
And what's going through your head
as you're listening to him do this?
I was thinking how, I don't know,
he could even like think that
I would even believe those things.
Ambra's pretty savvy
about these things.
Some of that is just who she is
and some of it came from experiences
in a different country
with a different powerful man.
Silvio Berlusconi, the now former
Prime Minister of Italy.
Berlusconi had made a lot
of his money as a media mogul.
In 2009, Forbes listed him as the 12th
most powerful person in the world.
And at the time,
he controlled or influenced
six of at least seven
major TV networks.
And the government, which he ran,
also provided subsidies to most
of the newspapers in the country,
which many argue made the press
less critical of the Prime Minister.
I was born in Torino.
My mom is Filipina and my dad Italian.
Her family was working class.
She was close with her mom,
but her strongest relationship was
with her little brother, Claudio.
My brother, of course, was little.
He was three years younger.
We were playing
a lot of video games.
What did you play?
We had Mario Karts
and Play Stations,
there is this little dragon that
I don't remember
- Spyro the Dragon. Yeah.
- That's it.
So, I remember like trying
to go to sleep
and then instead turning
on the TV and play all night.
Ambra says her father could be violent.
She called him Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
She says sometimes he beat her mom
and when Ambra tried to intervene
and protect her,
sometimes she'd get hurt, too.
Eventually, her father left
and Ambra needed to find a way
to support the family.
That's when she decided
to try modeling.
She was a finalist
for Miss Italy in 2010.
She was on TV and got a lot of
attention. Not all of it wanted.
I was noticed by bad people
that tried to take advantage
of playing on my dreams,
taking me to the house of the
Prime Minister at the time.
Ambra's agent brought her to what
she was told would be a work function.
Turns out, it was one
of these wild bacchanals
that Berlusconi threw
at his mansion outside of Milan.
The press called them
Bunga Bunga parties.
This is a story about a guy
who wants to dance.
As the Italian Prime Minister,
he's in the news again
insisting that his infamous Bunga Bunga
parties are innocent get together.
Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi
is once again defending his love life.
Allegations that he paid for sex
with a 17-year-old girl
and used his office to cover it up.
I was there with my friend
and what I saw was
just like women that work
in TV being there
and doing dances, erotic dances
and like being naked and other stuff.
Ambra says she was groped
repeatedly by Berlusconi.
The 30 or so women there were asked
to perform degrading sex acts
like kissing a statue
of an erect penis.
After two hours, Ambra and her friend
demanded to leave.
On their way out, one of Berlusconi's
associates told them,
you can forget about your careers.
Back at the hotel bar in Tribeca,
Ambra was still wearing the wire.
What, so you're gonna do
Victoria's Secret on Monday, right?
- I have a casting, yeah.
- Yeah, on Monday.
- I'll talk to you about that.
- Okay.
She and the undercover police
surrounding her
had been waiting for Weinstein
to escalate things.
Then he said, okay,
I need to get ready for this event.
I'm gonna take a shower
and just come with me.
Let's go. I have to go upstairs.
Let's go.
I was like, why do I have to come
with you, if you're taking a shower?
But I was playing dumb.
You relax, I'm gonna go take a shower.
That's all, and if you need anything
Be like, okay.
I left my jacket there.
And I followed him.
And this was something the police
had told you to do
if you got in a situation
where you needed to get out?
- That's something I thought of.
- It's something you came up with?
My mom always told me like,
always pay attention.
Be careful, like you're a woman.
In any situation, I had to have
an escape plan, always.
- Don't worry. I'm not being pushy.
- My jacket.
- Well, where is it?
- It's downstairs. I forgot.
All right, I'll come with you
to bring it up.
I took my jacket
and I'm watching the police.
Will someone follow me?
And then in the hallway,
almost close to the room,
I finally hear someone say,
Hi, Mr. Weinstein,
this is blah, blah, blah from TMZ.
Hi, Andy Reily from TMZ.
How are you doing, sir?
- Who's the lady you're in company with?
- What are you doing? Whatever.
And this was a police officer
posing as a TMZ reporter.
- What's your name again?
- Please
- I'm from TMZ.
- I don't give a shit who you are.
Weinstein tried to get him to leave
but the cop wouldn't budge.
Weinstein went and complained
to the hotel staff,
who pointed him and Ambra
to a more private entrance
and eventually to a service elevator.
Weinstein pressed the button for the
penthouse. And Ambra had a problem.
And I couldn't text the police.
My phone was not working.
I was trying to keep calm and I knew
that I could have get out of there.
So, there I was starting
to get very nervous.
Ambra was getting farther away
from the police.
Her phone wasn't working.
And the pacified Weinstein,
the one who'd seemed so interested
in helping her career,
had now become more insistent,
more overbearing.
And he started saying,
get into the room.
- What do we have to do here?
- Nothing.
I am gonna take a shower.
You sit there.
He's like, I'm just gonna take a shower.
You sit there five minutes.
- Sit there and have a drink, water.
- I don't drink.
- Can I stay on the bar?
- No. You must come here now.
- You look beautiful. Please?
- No, I don't want to.
I'm not doing anything with you.
Now you're embarrassing me.
I'm sorry. I did not mean. Yesterday
was kind of aggressive for me.
- I know.
- I need to know a person to be touched.
I won't do a thing. Come with me.
I swear, I won't. Just sit with me.
Don't embarrass me in the hotel.
I'm here all the time.
Please, I'm not gonna do anything, I
swear on my children. Please come in.
What did you think when he said
that I swear on my children?
I don't know.
It made me feel a little disgusted.
Go to the bathroom.
Please, I don't wanna do something
I don't wanna do.
- Come here. Listen to me.
- I wanna go downstairs.
I'm not gonna do anything and you'll
never see me again after this.
I'm a famous guy.
- I'm feeling very uncomfortable.
- Please come in now. Five minutes.
Don't ruin your friendship
with me for five minutes.
I know, but it's kind of like,
it's too much for me, okay?
Ambra, still wearing the wire,
asked him a question.
Yesterday you touched my breasts.
Please, I'm sorry. Just come on in.
I'm used to that.
- You're used to that?
- Yes, come in.
- No, but I'm not used to that.
- I won't do it again. Sit here.
She'd gotten it.
She'd gotten a confession.
Weinstein didn't know Ambra
was recording
but it was obvious she wasn't
gonna comply with his requests.
And in that moment,
she'd become a liability.
He followed her downstairs
and returned to the bar.
Weinstein was trying to keep her calm.
He asked if they could have a coffee.
But Ambra's job was done.
She was scared, exhausted.
She walked away from him
and into a bathroom
where she met two police officers.
They snuck her out of the building
and into a car.
She was rattled
but they reassured her.
They were like, Ambra, you were great.
You got it. You stopped a monster.
Shortly after Ambra left the hotel,
detectives went and found Weinstein.
He voluntarily followed them
to an NYPD precinct
where he was questioned before
eventually requesting a lawyer.
He was let go that night.
The matter was now in the hands of the
District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr.
The Manhattan District
Attorney's Office
is one of the great civic
institutions in this city.
Ambra met with the head
of the DA's sex crimes unit,
Martha Bashford, for questioning.
First moment I saw her, I said, great.
She's a woman.
And they asked questions like,
so, what happened in Italy?
Were you a prostitute?
And things like that.
And I was like,
did you hear the recording?
Two law enforcement sources
told me Bashford grilled Ambra
about Berlusconi and her personal
sexual history.
One even said Bashford was acting
like one of Weinstein's
personal defense attorney.
The DA's office has said that this
was all part of a typical interview
meant to prepare a witness
for what could happen at trial.
But Ambra and those law enforcement
sources saw it differently.
I understood what was happening.
But I couldn't believe it, that was
actually going that way.
- So, I
- What was happening in your view?
That this person was against me.
This situation, trying
to report criminal activity
and getting smeared
as a prostitute instead,
Ambra had faced this before, too.
Back in 2010, the Berlusconi parties
became public knowledge in Italy.
Silvio Berlusconi
has appeared in court
to deny having sex
with an underage prostitute.
Ambra provided a police statement
and eventually agreed to testify
against the Prime Minister on charges
that he'd paid for sex with a minor.
I had paparazzi coming at school.
I had people not talking to me anymore.
And my life just fell down completely.
After meeting with the Manhattan DA's
office, Ambra simply had to wait.
I got out of that meeting and I was
waiting for something to happen.
Was waiting for someone to call me
to tell me anything.
Weinstein's lawyers, meanwhile, hired
a private intelligence firm called K2,
to keep Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr.
from pressing charges.
K2 Global Partners has investigated
countless suspects,
corporations and sovereign nations.
The firm dug up clips from the Italian
press about the Berlusconi scandal,
clips that made Ambra out
to be an elicit sex worker.
And then current
and former K2 employees,
all of whom had previously worked
at the DA's office,
relayed the information smearing
Gutierrez in calls to prosecutors.
She's the stunning Italian model
who's accusing famed movie mogul,
Harvey Weinstein, of sexual
Have made similar claims before.
Just like in Italy,
the claims about her
found their way into American tabloids,
tabloids Weinstein had close ties to.
She was a witness in the notorious
Bunga Bunga sex scandal.
They were trying to smear me.
So, I don't know.
I kept waiting for the DA to call me.
Instead, I saw coming out in the news
that Harvey Weinstein was not going
to be charged criminally.
The New York District Attorney chose
not to press charges against Weinstein,
citing not enough evidence.
If we had a case that we felt
we could prosecute
against Harvey Weinstein, we would.
What went through your mind
when you saw that?
Game over.
- And your reputation was spiraling.
- Getting shredded completely. Yeah.
Like I was losing everything and then
I got an email from my lawyer
where Harvey wanted
to stipulate a contract
to help me out in the situation,
let's say.
It was to put this all behind
in exchange of money.
I told him, no, I don't want
anything from you.
Like I don't want money. He started
with, I think $300,000 dollars.
And then he went up to $500,000.
And the last time that he tried
to offer me the million dollar.
I remember that day cause
it was the most
scary that I could remember.
Cause my brother called me.
And started saying
that someone went to where
he worked, asking about me.
Ambra's brother, Claudio,
the one she'd grown up playing
video games with all night.
He was living in Italy at the time.
And the press had found him, too.
It freaked her out.
I couldn't put anyone
of my family at risk.
And that's it.
I decided to accept.
On April 20th, 2015, a few weeks
after the alleged assault,
Ambra sat in an office
in midtown Manhattan
with an 18-page non-disclosure
agreement in front of her.
One of Weinstein's attorneys
sat opposite her.
He looked super nervous,
even looking
a little like embarrassed.
Like I'm here but I'm sorry
that I'm here. You know?
As part of the agreement,
she was required to hand over
all of her technology to another
investigative agency, Kroll.
She had to give them passwords
to all of her email accounts
and they combed through the accounts
to clear them of any evidence
of the Weinstein incident.
Then they gave all the devices back
empty. Because there were no charges,
none of the evidence the police
collected was public record.
No one outside law enforcement
knew there had been a tape.
It was as if nothing
had ever happened.
Ambra slipped into
a long period of depression.
She couldn't get any work.
She developed an eating disorder.
I didn't leave my bed.
I remember
like my mom had to bathe me,
to take care of me cause I was
just there in bed sleeping,
trying to think it was a dream.
She lived in the Philippines
and Italy for the next two years,
trying to put it all behind her.
At that moment, I was in the thick
of my Weinstein reporting at NBC.
I'd read the initial tabloid
coverage of Ambra's story.
I'd heard there was a sting.
I called Ambra's lawyer
who sounded worried and said
he wasn't at liberty to talk.
But then, to my surprise,
I got a text from her.
This is Ambra.
I would like to meet you.
We met for the first time
at a Manhattan restaurant.
She was sitting in the back.
She seemed anxious.
You were putting a lot on the line.
What made you decide
to talk to me anyway?
I was really thinking like this is it.
Like after two years,
I could be taking my life back.
I remember Ambra
taking a deep breath
and then showing me
the million-dollar settlement.
Turns out, Ambra was sitting on
something bigger than the contract.
She didn't have a recording
from the wire,
but it turns out that throughout the
sting, while she was wearing the wire,
Ambra was also recording
a backup on her cell phone.
The first thing that I did after
that police operation,
I sent my recordings to five
different emails that I had.
Remember that Kroll,
the cyber security firm
Weinstein hired to enforce
Ambra's NDA,
had asked for all of her passwords
and scoured all of her devices
and email accounts to make sure any
copies of the recording were destroyed.
And Ambra had said she'd complied.
But there was one password
she didn't give up right away.
And I said, sorry,
I don't remember the last one.
I'm gonna figure it out.
It's an Italian account.
I opened up my email
and I saw the recordings.
I made copies of it
to the desktop of the computer.
And then I called my lawyer
and I said,
I remember the password.
It's this one.
So just like that, Ambra
had saved a copy of the recordings
and no one figured it out.
For weeks, I pressed Ambra
to give me the audio.
I would have wanted to give
you those recordings
and, of course, I didn't wanna make
trace of where it was coming from.
And then I said,
well what if we just
- Record the recording.
- Record the recording.
And it allowed me to say, she never
transferred any files to me.
Of course. It was the truth.
And then I said, great,
let's get the computer out
and I remember you saying,
there's a problem.
- The speaker don't work.
- The speakers don't work.
So, you ran out of the restaurant
to get a speaker.
What was going through your mind as I
sprinted across town to get speakers?
I was really waiting for it to come out.
Like I was really ready.
Five minutes. Don't ruin your
friendship with me for five minutes.
Later, in fact checking calls
with Weinstein and his lawyers,
when we told them we had a copy of the
recording, Weinstein was shocked.
The recording that was destroyed by
the district attorney, he kept saying.
District Attorney
Cyrus Vance, Jr.'s office
denies this and says they would
never destroy evidence.
Please, I'm sorry.
Just come on. I'm used to that.
That October, I published the first
in a series of articles
exposing Weinstein
and telling Ambra's story.
What was it like to finally see the
story and the recording go public?
Like extreme happiness.
The freedom that maybe a person
could feel after being in jail.
I don't know. It was just
Being born again.
I got to see these
two versions of Ambra.
The source that I was working with
who was so
brave and strategic and savvy.
And then this caricature of you
that so many people
in the media had embraced.
I got to listen to all these executives
over and over again saying,
she's a hustler, she's a shake
down artist, she's a hooker.
And it blew my mind on several
levels because, first of all,
if a source had been a prostitute, that
doesn't mean her story isn't true.
Exactly. That's something
I would always say.
Did you hear the recordings?
Even if I was that.
Of course.
I never wanted to not be myself.
Why should I change what I am,
what makes me happy,
to just make people think
that things cannot change?
That even a woman that wears
high heels and a short skirt
can stop someone bad
to do bad things,
to be strong enough to be knowing
who she is, what she want
and so to say no when
she doesn't want to do things.
Once I understood Ambra's story,
I realized another way
to understand the power dynamic
that played out in that hotel.
Because in standing her ground
and showing this incredible degree
of savvy and determination,
Ambra Gutierrez became the one
with the power.
People really miscalculated,
underestimating you.
It was perfect. They would never have
thought I had those recordings.
Who am I? I have no power.
I'm a model.
Ambra's recording was the kind
of hard evidence
that reporters have chased for years.
Some of those reporters had come
pretty close to nailing the story, too.
That's what I discovered
when I spoke to Kim Masters,
the respected entertainment journalist.
All of a sudden, Harvey comes
screaming like a mad man.
He said, what have
you heard about me?
I said, I've heard you rape women.