The Annals of Unsolved Crime

by Edward Jay Epstein

  DSK had no time to do anything else about it that morning. He had scheduled an early lunch with his twenty-six-year-old daughter, Camille, who wanted to introduce him to her new boyfriend. After that, he had to get to the JFK airport in time to catch his 4:40 p.m. Air France flight to Europe.

  DSK finished packing his suitcase at around noon, according to his own account, and then took a shower in the bathroom, which is connected to the suite’s bedroom by an interior corridor. Just minutes later, there were several entries to his suite. The first entry was at 12:05 p.m., according to the hotel’s electronic key-swipe records (which are accurate only to the nearest minute). The key belonged to Syed Haque, a room-service waiter. According to Haque’s police statement, he had come to the suite to remove DSK’s breakfast dishes. If so, he turned left on entering the suite and proceeded through the living room to the dining room, where he would collect the breakfast dishes on his cart.

  It is not clear how long Haque spent in the suite, or when he left, because the electronic key system records only entries, not exits.

  The second entry came only about a minute later, at 12:06 p.m. This time, the key belonged to a hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, who was a thirty-two-year-old immigrant from Guinea. Ordinarily, cleaning personnel do not enter a room to clean when a guest is still in it. The presidential suite, however, is a large four-room apartment, so Diallo may not have known that DSK was in the suite when she entered. If her purpose was to clean the suite, she would need the cleaning equipment on her cart. But, according to her own testimony, her cart was locked in room 2820. (According to hotel records, the guest in 2820 had checked out at 11:36 a.m.) Diallo then left DSK’s suite, and the door locked behind her. The third entry was also made by Diallo. It was also recorded at 12:06 p.m., so she had spent very little time in the hall. We do not know why she returned, but when she did, she still lacked her cleaning equipment. At this time, depending on whether or not the room-service waiter had yet exited, there was either one or two staff in the presidential suite.

  Shortly after her second entry, she encountered DSK. What followed, and where it happened, is a matter of dispute, but there is no doubt about the sexual nature of the encounter. DNA evidence found just a few feet outside the bathroom door showed a combination of her saliva mixed with his semen. DSK does not deny that a sexual encounter occurred. The prosecutors determined that this encounter, whether forced or not, was “hurried,” because DSK’s phone records show that by 12:13 p.m. he was speaking to his daughter on his IMF BlackBerry—a call that lasted for thirty-six seconds. Since it was not a call that Diallo witnessed, according to her own account, she must have already left the room. If so, the sexual encounter had lasted no more than seven minutes.

  In the maid’s account, she encountered DSK in the entrance area when he emerged naked from the bedroom. He then dragged her first to the bedroom and then to the end of the interior corridor across from the bathroom, and there, after molesting her, he forced her to perform oral sex on him.

  In DSK’s version, the maid was already standing just outside the bathroom door when he opened it. If so, she had crossed through the bedroom before she encountered him. The sex act then took place and, according to him, was consensual.

  What is known from phone records is that DSK completed his call before 12:14 p.m. He then dressed, put on a light black topcoat, and left the suite with his bag and briefcase (which contained his iPad and several spare cell phones). As he recalled, when I later discussed it with him, he left no gratuity for his one-night stay in the $3,000-per-night presidential suite. He left the room at about 12:26 p.m.

  At 12:27:08, he was recorded by the ground-floor CCTV cameras arriving in the lobby. On the twenty-eighth floor at 12:26 p.m (just moments after DSK got into in the elevator), Diallo used her electronic key to reenter the presidential suite. It was her third entry to the presidential suite in just twenty minutes, and she remained there very briefly before encountering another maid in the hall at 12:30 p.m. or shortly after.

  Like many hotels built in the twenty-first century, much of what happens at the Sofitel hotel is recorded by CCTV cameras. Outside, they are located at both the main entrance on 44th Street and the employees’ entrance on 45th Street. On the ground floor, they are located, among other places, in the concierge area, the main lobby, the lounge, the reception area, the elevator entranceway, the security-office corridor, and the loading dock. They are also located in the sub-basement. There are no cameras in the upper-floor corridors, elevators, or rooms. The photos from these cameras are digitally stored, and they can be viewed on a state-of-the-art monitor in the security office, located in the corridor between the employee entrance and the lobby.

  These cameras show DSK’s departure at 12:28:20 p.m. on May 14. DSK emerged from the elevator at 12:27:12 p.m. Fifty seconds later, at 12:28:03, the head engineer, Brian Yearwood, emerged from another guest elevator. DSK reached the reception desk at 12:28 p.m. At 12:28:30 p.m., Yearwood moved toward a vantage point in the lobby from which the reception area was visible. By 12:28:50, DSK had checked out and walked through the lobby exit to 44th Street.

  Yearwood, a former corrections officer at the Mid-Orange Correction Center in Warwick, New York, was also visible in CCTV footage from the previous night, when DSK arrived in a taxi from JFK airport. The time-stamped video showed DSK’s taxi arrive at the 44th Street entrance of the Sofitel at 7:08 p.m. on May 13. Just before that, Yearwood came out of the hotel with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He walked out into the street and handed the phone to a doorman. They both looked down 44th Street. Yearwood then returned to the sidewalk and continued speaking and gesturing to the doorman, who then walked down 44th Street (out of the range of the camera) and then ran back with DSK’s cab. The doorman then unloaded DSK’s bag and briefcase as DSK paid. DSK then carried his own baggage to the hotel, pulling a small wheeled bag behind him, while Yearwood was standing in the entranceway, and then Yearwood appears to have followed DSK to the reception area, which is on the 45th Street side of the building. As DSK signed in at 7:11 p.m. and provided his passport for the reception clerk, Yearwood can be seen framed in the lounge doorway looking toward him. Then, at 7:12:16 p.m., DSK, accompanied by the reception clerk, walks to the elevator lobby. Three seconds later, Yearwood comes out of the doorway, walks past the reception desk. These near-encounters with DSK may have been pure coincidence, or Yearwood may have been assigned by the hotel the task of making sure that DSK’s arrival—and his departure the next day—went smoothly. Such a task could be a perfectly proper precaution, since DSK, a possible future president of France, was one of the hotel’s most important clients. But if Yearwood was assigned that role, how did he, or the person on the telephone, know when DSK’s cab was arriving?

  Yearwood also became part of the unfolding drama on the 28th floor shortly after DSK’s departure on May 14. At 12:39 p.m., he can be seen on the CCTV video receiving a phone call while talking to a woman in a pink cardigan in front of the hotel. The call was from Renata Markozani, the head of housekeeping. At that time, according to key records, she was in the presidential suite, and according to police reports, she was with Nafissatou Diallo, with whom DSK had had the encounter about a half-hour earlier. Diallo had by now told the head of housekeeping that she had been attacked in the suite. At 12:43 p.m., Yearwood got into a guest elevator. He was joined on the 28th floor by Derek May, a security guard (and the hotel’s union representative). May, a large, muscular man wearing an earpiece, and Yearwood appear to have been working closely together that afternoon, since they are frequently shown together on the CCTV videos.

  At 12:45 p.m. Yearwood used his electronic key to enter the presidential suite, where Markozani was with Diallo. About fifteen minutes earlier, Diallo had encountered another maid near the 28th-floor linen closet, and she asked a hypothetical question about what a hotel guest could do to a maid. After that, Diallo said she had been sexually attacked by a guest, which led this maid to call the head of hou
sekeeping. It is not known what was said at this meeting, but it could not have lasted long. At 12:51:56 p.m., Diallo and Markozani, along with May, got out of the elevator on the ground floor, as recorded by a CCTV camera. May stayed with them as far as the main lobby, and the head housekeeper and Diallo continued to the corridor used by employees, located at the 45th Street entrance. The hotel’s security office is there. It has a set of Dutch doors, the upper half of which were opened.

  Behind the doors sat Adrian Branch, the Sofitel’s head of security. Diallo stood next to a solitary bench just across the corridor from this half-opened door. She remained standing or sitting there for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Yearwood did not immediately accompany Diallo downstairs. He remained behind on the 28th floor and, according to the electronic key records, reentered the presidential suite at 12:51 p.m.

  Whatever his reason for this second visit, it was brief. By 12:53 p.m., the cameras recorded him leaving the elevator on the ground floor. He walked briskly through the lobby to the security area, where he spoke briefly to Diallo; thirty seconds later, he returned to the reception area, where he rejoined May in a curtained office to the right of the reception desk. As there was no CCTV camera in this office, we do not know what they did there for the next five minutes. Possibly, they were checking the records to verify Diallo’s story. If they had consulted the hotel’s computerized guest records, they would have seen that the client in the presidential suite was DSK, and that he had checked out at 12:28 p.m. (which Yearwood may have himself seen him do). If they checked electronic key records, they would have ascertained that only two employees had entered the suite prior to his checkout—the room-service waiter Haque at 12:05, and Diallo three times, twice at 12:06 and once at 12:26 p.m. They would also have seen that both before and after her visit to the presidential suite, Diallo had gone to another room across the hall, room 2820.

  By 1:00 p.m., both men had returned to the security area. They would spend a good part of the next hour there, either talking on their cell phones or inside the security booth (which was not covered by the CCTV cameras). At 1:03 p.m., a call was made to the cell phone of John M. Sheehan (Sheehan’s cell-phone calls are a court document). Sheehan was the director of safety and security at the Sofitel’s parent company, Accor, which is a part of the French-based Accor Group. He also had a similar position and office at the Sofitel (the Accor Group’s only hotel in New York). He was off that day at his home in Washingtonville, New York. Nevertheless, he had been in frequent touch with the head engineer earlier that day, exchanging no fewer than thirteen text messages with him between 10:21 and 10:35 a.m., according to the log of his cell phone.

  After receiving the 1:03 p.m. call, Sheehan headed to the Sofitel, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive from his house. While en route, according to his cell phone records, he called the number 646-731-4400 in the United States. When I called the number, a man with a heavy French accent answered and asked whom I wanted to speak with at Accor. The man I asked to talk to—and to whom I was not put through—was René-Georges Querry, Sheehan’s ultimate superior at Accor and a well-connected former chief of the French anti-gang brigades, who was now head of security for the Accor Group. Before joining Accor in 2003, he had worked closely in the police with Ange Mancini, who then became coordinator for intelligence for President Sarkozy. At the time that Sheehan was making his call to the 646 number, Querry was arriving at a soccer match in Paris, where he would be seated in the box of President Sarkozy. Querry denies receiving any information about the unfolding drama at the Sofitel at this time or until after DSK was taken into custody about four hours later.

  Another person at the Accor Group whom Sheehan (or the operator at Accor) might have alerted was Xavier Graff, the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris. Graff was responsible that weekend for handling emergencies at Accor Group hotels, including the Sofitel in New York. His name only emerged five weeks later when he sent a bizarre email to his friend Colonel Thierry Bourret, the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down” DSK. After the email was leaked to Le Figaro, which reported that he had said that he had “faire tomber DSK” (made DSK fall), Graff described it as a joke. (It resulted, however, in his suspension as director of emergencies by the Accor Group.) Jokes can often have a basis in fact. In this case, the joke was made by the person who was directly responsible for passing on information to his superiors, including the head of security at Accor, René-Georges Querry—information that, if Querry acted on it by informing the American authorities, could have helped destroy DSK’s career. But like Querry, Graff denied receiving any calls or messages from New York until later that evening, telling a French newspaper that the failure to inform him was an incredible blunder.

  Whatever communications might have passed between New York and Paris, the victim in the drama received no medical attention. The CCTV video shows Diallo repeatedly pointing to different parts of her body and making a series of hand gestures. It appears to be a reenactment of her story. At one point, she uses the head housekeeper Markozani to play the part of her attacker. At 1:07 p.m., the room-service waiter, Haque, who is the only known person who could have witnessed her entry into the presidential suite, and who was in the room only a minute before she entered, was brought into the apparent reenactment. He can be seen in a discussion with the head engineer and Diallo. The CCTV videos contain no sound component, so we do not know what was said, but, if this was part of the reenactment, at least two potential witnesses—the room-service waiter, who had preceded Diallo in the room, and the head housekeeper, who had heard her outcry on the 28th floor—had an opportunity to hear Diallo’s version of the incident and refresh their memory before the police were called in.

  It is not clear who finally made the decision to call the police. At 1:28 p.m., the Accor safety director, Sheehan, who was still on the way to the hotel, called the head engineer, who had entered the security office. After that, the Sofitel’s head of security, Branch, made the 911 call.

  The 911 operator recorded the time as 1:31 p.m., which was just over one hour after Diallo had first reported that she had been assaulted by the client in the presidential suite.

  The call can be heard in its entirety on a 911 tape. After giving the address of the hotel, Branch reported only that a “room attendant” had been assaulted in a “sexual manner” by a hotel guest. When the 911 operator asked him if an ambulance should be sent, he replied that it was unnecessary because the victim had “no sustained injuries.” Even though the records were available at the hotel, the security officer provided a timeline that falsely minimized the amount of time that had elapsed before the 911 call was made. He stated that the incident had taken place “thirty or forty minutes ago,” when in fact it had occurred eighty minutes earlier, and that the guest had checked out of the hotel “twenty minutes ago,” when in fact, DSK had checked out sixty-four minutes earlier. In any case, at about 1:32 p.m. the 911 operator said she would dispatch a “squad car.” So the police were now on their way.

  By this time, Yearwood, who was on and off his cell phone, had received another text message from Sheehan. He briefly went outside then returned just as the 911 call was concluding.

  At 1:34:40, he walked past May, who then followed him through a door leading to the loading area. Here Yearwood and May were observed by another CCTV camera. The men speak for a moment. Then they high-five each other, clap their hands, and briefly dance. The security guard then actually lifts the head engineer off the floor. This performance, which spans about thirteen seconds, looks very much like the sort of victory dance seen in a football game after a touchdown is scored.

  While the celebratory dance was taking place at the Sofitel, DSK was lunching seven blocks away at McCormick & Schmick’s, a restaurant on 52nd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. When he left the hotel at 12:28 p.m., he had caught a taxi, which then became delayed by heavy traffic and a street fair on Sixth Avenue. By the time he got to
the restaurant, as its CCTV camera showed, it was 12:54 p.m. His daughter Camille and her boyfriend were already there. Because it was to be a short lunch, DSK deferred to his daughter’s request that he not use his cell phone. At 2:15 p.m., DSK hailed a taxi to go to the airport. Almost immediately, when he sought to make a call, he discovered that his IMF BlackBerry was missing. It was the phone he had arranged just that morning to have examined for bugs after he arrived in Paris, and it was the phone that contained the earlier text message warning him about the interception of his messages.

  At 2:16 p.m. he called Camille, who had also just left the restaurant, on one of his spare BlackBerrys. He asked her to go back to the restaurant and search for his missing phone. CCTV footage at the restaurant shows her crawling under the table. At 2:28 p.m., she sent him a text message saying that she could not find the phone. Meanwhile, as DSK continued on to the airport, he was still attempting to locate the missing phone. At 3:01 p.m., he was calling it from his spare phone. He received no answer.

  What DSK did not know was that his phone had remained at the Sofitel after he had left the hotel. As late as 12:51 p.m., which was twenty-three minutes after DSK left the hotel, the GPS on the phone showed that it was still at the Sofitel, according to the records of BlackBerry parent company Research In Motion. The company could determine this time because a BlackBerry, like many other smartphones, continues to send a signal as to its location even when it is turned off. BlackBerry could also electronically determine that the GPS signals on DSK’s phone had abruptly stopped at 12:51, indicating either that the battery had run out or that the GPS had been intentionally disabled. (A forensic expert later concluded from the strength of the previous signals that the latter most likely occurred.) So, either the phone was still in the presidential suite or someone at the hotel had taken it from the Sofitel after 12:51 p.m. (when it was no longer traceable).