DA wants Toronto woman to testify as fifth accuser in Danny Masterson retrial

According to a defense motion that is going to be heard today in the Danny Masterson criminal case in Los Angeles, Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller is planning to add a fifth accuser in Masterson’s retrial, which is scheduled to begin jury selection on April 11.

And the woman Mueller plans to call to the witness stand is someone you first heard about here at the Underground Bunker in an October 2021 story.

Kathleen Jenkins told us that she believed the That 70s Show actor assaulted her at a ‘Dracula 2000’ cast party, something she had never reported to law enforcement.

After that story was published, however, Jenkins did report her allegations to Canadian authorities, and now Mueller wants her to join the three Jane Doe accusers and Tricia Vessey (Jane Doe 4) in the retrial.

Like Vessey, Jenkins would be included as a “prior bad acts witness,” but Masterson will still be facing the same three forcible rape counts based on the allegations of Jane Does 1-3 that he did in the first trial, which ended in a hung jury and mistrial on November 30. (If he’s convicted of all three counts, Masterson faces 45 years to life in prison. He has maintained his innocence.)

Defense attorney Philip Cohen is opposing the inclusion of Jenkins, complaining that her allegations are 23 years old and are significantly different than what the other women are saying.

In his motion, he spelled out what she will testify to:

According to discovery provided by the People, Kathleen J. learned of the allegations against Masterson in 2021, after which she communicated with two Jane Does and a reporter. She was eventually put in touch with law enforcement and now alleges a 23-year-old sexual assault.

Kathleen J. would apparently testify that in 2000 she was at a wrap party at a hotel in Toronto, where she had been working on a movie. Cast members of a different movie were having a party in a suite in the same hotel, and Kathleen J. accepted an invitation to join them. She was with her then-husband (now ex-husband) and two stepdaughters. She says she drank wine with her family at dinner but drank nothing at her own wrap party and nothing at the second party in the hotel suite. Kathleen J.’s husband was on a balcony smoking and she was sitting on a couch when Masterson approached her and offered her a vodka and orange juice. Kathleen J. says that after consuming the drink she began to feel lightheaded and said she needed to go to the bathroom. Masterson led her to a door and into a bedroom.

Kathleen J. claims that Masterson guided her to a bed, removed her nylons, and penetrated her vagina with his penis. She says that while this occurred, she felt like she could not move. The next thing she remembers is walking down the hotel hallway, where her 17-year-old stepdaughter came out of another room. They both returned to their separate hotel rooms. Kathleen J. got into bed with her husband, who was asleep. She had pain in her vaginal and anal area. She did not discuss the incident with anyone.

Kathleen J. says that several months later she and her husband were watching the movie that Masterson had been filming in Toronto. She became upset and disclosed the incident to her husband. Years later, she disclosed the incident to a girlfriend. She did not report the incident to law enforcement until October of 2021, after she communicated with the other Jane Does and a reporter.

Cohen complains that the defense only heard about the DA’s intention of calling Jenkins in a March 6 email, and he says that isn’t enough time for Masterson’s defense to investigate her claims.

One thing the defense intends to do, he says, is “obtain written notes kept by Kathleen J. and a reporter with whom she apparently spoke.” Also, that they plan to call that reporter to the witness stand.

In 2021, Masterson’s prior defense attorney, Tom Mesereau, tried a similar gambit, serving us with a subpoena and asking for us to turn over any notes on our reporting in this case, which goes back to 2017 when we first broke the news that Masterson was under investigation.

Our attorney Scott Pilutik easily got that subpoena quashed, and we have a feeling that Judge Charlaine Olmedo will have a similar amount of patience for any attempt by Cohen to get access to our documents.

In his motion, Cohen also reiterated a long list of restrictions he’d like put in place for the retrial, most of which he also asked for the first time around.

For example, he wants any mention of the Church of Scientology kept out of the retrial, a request that was denied in the original trial. Similarly, he wants Tricia Vessey to be prevented from testifying, something that the prosecution overcame last time.

Cohen also wants to keep out any testimony that the accusers were drugged by Masterson. The prosecution did keep out any direct allegations of drugging in the first trial, but still got in plenty of testimony which implied that the women had suddenly found themselves suspiciously intoxicated after Masterson had served them drinks.

Another change Cohen wants in the retrial is to prevent Jane Doe 3 from testifying about the December 2001 “unconscious sodomy” incident that appeared to cause some confusion with the jury. It was that incident, when she woke up to find that she was bleeding and that Masterson admitted to having anal sex with her while she was passed out, which motivated her to report him to the Church of Scientology, she testified.

But it was an earlier, November 2001, incident that her criminal charge is actually based on, and that is very different: She testified about yanking Masterson’s hair in order to get him off her when he wouldn’t stop having unwanted sex with her.

Cohen argues that the two separate incidents were confused by the jury, and he wants the unconscious sodomy excluded since it isn’t being charged.

He goes on to list numerous other “inflammatory” statements by the Jane Does that he wants excluded, most of which were also kept out of the first trial.

Also at the morning’s hearing, we’ll be interested to see if there is any suggestion of the trial start date being moved back to later in the month of April. We’ve heard that this might be a possibility, but for now jury selection is still scheduled to begin on April 11.

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