Warning: You might consider the audio of this domestic dispute upsetting.
New Jersey couple Kate McClure and Mark D’Amico were charged Thursday with homeless man John Bobbitt for allegedly making up a heart-warming story to cheat donors on GoFundMe. On Monday, however, a lawyer for McClure said she was duped by both men.
“From the start, Kate thought she was helping a veteran who was homeless, and that Mr. D’Amico was the one behind this, and he was calling all the shots,” her attorney James Gerrow told Good Morning America on Monday. He said the couple relationship was abusive, and he provided ABC tape, which he says helps proves his client was used.
This whole fiasco started with McClure and D’Amico claiming that Bobbitt gave the woman his last $20 when she was stranded without gas. To return the favor, they raised money for him via GoFundMe. Plot twist: Bobbitt claimed they kept some of the money from him to make extravagant purchases. Plot twist number two: Prosecutors charged all three of them last week, and claimed the trio made up the story.
“Ok, so wait,” McClure allegedly wrote a friend, according to prosecutors in an NBC Philadelphia report. “The gas part is completely made up. The guy isn’t.”
On Monday, Gerrow acknowledged this text, but said this showed that his client believed she was helping someone. He downplayed evidence of McClure’s purchases, and said she went to Las Vegas at D’Amico’s insistence because his father lived there.
“I don’t know how Kate is playing the victim now,” an attorney for D’Amico told NBC News. “I will be curious to see how this defense plays out for her in court.”
Gerrow provided ABC audio that ostensibly shows her argument with D’Amico over the fallout of the Bobbitt situation. The network said it censored the tape for language.
“You started the whole [censored] thing,” she says. “You did everything. I had no part in any of this, and I’m the one [censored] taking the fall.”
“You don’t go to jail for lying on TV, you dumb [censored],” says a man that Gerrow identified as D’Amico.
“You heard what he said. If this turns into a criminal thing,” says McClure.
“You don’t go to jail for lying on TV,” he says.
“But who made me lie on TV?” she says.
“Who cares?” he says.
The argument escalates. It’s not entirely clear what happens, but in the audio, McClure repeatedly asks him to “please stop.” Unidentified sounds are heard at this point. Finally, she shrieks and apparently cries. The man identified as D’Amico asks repeatedly and rhetorically yells, “You’re blaming me?!”
He calls the woman identified as McClure a “dumb [censored]” and “weak slob.” He refers to another man–ostensibly Bobbitt–as a “junkie.”
[Screengrab via TODAY]
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