This photograph of Johnny Depp was entered into evidence during the star’s defamation trial against Amber Heard.
Two of Johnny Depp’s medical care providers explained the divergent accounts about how they learned the star’s fingertip became severed. One doctor confirmed in a video deposition that Depp’s digit had been “found on the floor of the kitchen in the home.”
The March 2015 incident occurred in Australia, where Depp had been on location for the fifth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Depp now claims that he sustained that injury because his ex-wife Amber Heard threw a bottle at him, but David Kipper, a concierge doctor who directed the search for the missing fingertip, testified that Depp told an emergency room doctor that he sliced it off with a knife.
“There was a downstairs below the kitchen area,” Kipper said, expressing some uncertainty about exactly where the fingertip was found. “So this would be on the main floor. The kitchen was on the main floor as he went into the home.”
Kipper testified that there was broken glass in the home, but he did not specifically recall seeing blood on it.
The doctor’s testimony—and that of Debbie Lloyd, a nurse who worked with him—explore a central claim of Depp’s $50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard, depicting him and not his ex-wife as the abuser. Both Kipper and Lloyd’s accounts paint an inconclusive portrait about how Depp lost his finger.
“I heard different stories from people,” Lloyd said, when asked if she learned how Depp cut his finger. “I had heard that Amber threw a bottle of vodka at him. I had heard that he slammed it with a phone.”
Text messages showed a warm relationship between Lloyd and the actor. Depp called her “Little Debbie” and was effusive in telling her goodbye.
“I cannot ever thank you enough [for] all you’ve ever done for me… On the junky side and the broken heart side!! You’ve been a lifesaver… Literally!!!” Depp wrote in one message. “We’ll be seeing each other again, sweetheart…..!!!!”
Shown the message, an emotional Lloyd said: “I’m gonna cry.”
A bluer message Depp sent to Lloyd compared attempting to thank her adequately to a “monkey trying to fuck a football.”
“It’s just simply impossible,” Depp explained.
Depp also asked Lloyd to thank “The Doc” for the Motrin and Baclofen, his pain reliever and muscle relaxant.
“They work a treat for amputated fingertips,” he gushed.
Depp’s long-time lead security agent Sean Bett did not observe the fingertip incident specifically, but he did tell a jury that he saw Heard throw a bottle at him and identified photographs of Depp’s alleged bruises.
“It was a water bottle or a coffee cup,” Bett testified. “It was something plastic.”
When asked whether he ever saw Heard throw anything else, Bett replied that he did not, though he heard from Depp about the alleged broken bottle incident severing his finger. Heard’s attorneys objected to the hearsay portion of that answer, which the judge struck from the record.
Asked about physical injuries he had seen on Depp, Bett replied: “Yes, he had scratch marks around his nose area, I believe on one of the sides of his face, in the cheek area, and then on his forehead.”
Depp’s account reverses a narrative that took hold half a decade ago.
In 2016, Heard sued for a restraining order obtained just a year before her divorce with Depp, and she was photographed bruised, in images that received relatively little attention outside Hollywood gossip. Two years later, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Heard’s allegations found their moment when she portrayed herself as a survivor in a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post. Depp sued over that piece in a courthouse in Fairfax County, Virginia, even though he was not named in it. Heard countersued for defamation after Depp’s lawyers described her allegations as a “hoax.”
In the United Kingdom, Depp lost a libel lawsuit against The Sun calling him a “wife-beater,” with a British judge crediting the abuse allegations even in a country with less expansive free speech protections.
A source close to Depp says that he is expected to testify on Tuesday, with cross-examination likely to continue into Wednesday.
(Screenshot via the Law&Crime Network)