October 10, 2024 • 36 mins
What exactly constitutes a bribe? The Georgetown Massacre continues, and the defense calls a surprise witness.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
On the fifth day in the trial of US v. Kouri,
right after the defense left the fundraiser for the Georgetown
University Athletic Department in small pieces on the floor of
the courtroom, the attorneys for Amon Kurry asked the judge
for a sidebar. They wanted to call a witness, a
surprise witness who the defense team had somehow persuaded to
(00:42):
make an appearance. She's in the bathroom, Howard T. Shrebnick
told the judge. I just wanted to let you know.
They just whispered to me that she's coming. I didn't
want you too.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
His voice trailed off.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
The prosecutors in the case from the US Attorney's office
were there in the sidebar too, standing right beside Shrebnick.
And it is safe to say this sudden revelation came
as a shock to them. They weren't expecting this particular
witness to show up. They were counting on her not
showing up, and now she was here in the bathroom.
(01:19):
Fuck then, Howard says, and we're going to propose to
introduce text messages that she wrote back in May of
twenty fifteen, text.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Messages fuck.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
My name is Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to Revisionist History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part
two of the story of my favorite court case of
all time, usv.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Coory.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In part one, which you should listen to first if
you have not already, we talked about how Roy Black
and Howard Strebnick were presented with an impossible case a
client who openly admitted to giving one hundred and eighty
thousand dollars in cash in a brown paper bag to
the Georgetown University tennis coach in order to get his
daughter admitted to the school. Days one, two, three, and four,
(02:22):
the trial had been a disaster for the defense. Am
and Curry seemed destined for prison, but by the end
of the Georgetown massacre on day five, Howard and Roy
had managed to introduce an element of doubt into the
minds of the jury. What exactly is or isn't a bribe?
And are the dubious actions of a wealthy man worse
(02:44):
than the dubious actions of a wealthy university.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
This episode is.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
About what happened in the afternoon on day five, the
aftermath of the Georgetown massacre.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The mystery witness entered text messages.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What were the talk about the during the trial. What
you feel were the most significant turning points.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Most trials don't have one thing like that, but things
just developed. You know, the more you worked on it,
the more we got into the case, the more facts
we learned, the more details, the better it looked.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
I talked with Roy Black when we met at his
offices in downtown Miami. Roy is a trial lawyer. He
and his partner Howard are maybe the greatest defense team
of their generation. They construct elaborate narratives out of mountains
of complicated facts. They are not mystery novelists who tell
stories with a clever twist on the last page. Things
(03:45):
just develop. But then Roy Black thought about it a
little bit and he said, well, actually, I take it back.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There was a knockout bunch. It was the mystery witness.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I mean to me, that was like an extraordinary event
at the trial.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
From the very beginning. And Howard had a problem. They
could show that Georgetown was a corrupt institution where the
lines between admissions and fundraising had been all but obliterated.
That was the point of the Georgetown massacre. But that
didn't resolve their problem.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
If we say, okay, the whole system's corrupt and our
client took advantage of the corrupt system by paying money,
what are we doing. We're admitting that our own clients corrupt.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
The Georgetown massacre, in other words, didn't win them the case.
It simply leveled the playing field. They needed something more,
another layer to their argument, proof that Georgetown was worse
than Amon Curry. And in the first few difficult days
of the trial, when the government was running roughshod over
at Amon Curry, Howard and Roy began to drop little
(04:58):
bread crumbs.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
They were cryptic.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Chances are the jury missed them. But if you read
through the trial transcripts, all twelve hundred pages of them,
and you pay attention, it's obvious something is afoot. The
first inkling came during an offhand moment in Roy's cross
examination of a Georgetown admissions officer named Meg Licy. Once again,
(05:23):
we have our wonderful voice actors dak Shephard and britt Marling.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Listen, isn't it a fact that at Georgetown you have
a software called Salesforce? Don't you.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Not that? I remember?
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Isn't it a fact that you have an investigation into
the net worth of the parents of potential students.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
The prosecution jumps up immediately objection, which in retrospect was weird.
What was it about the mention of that word sales
force that led the government to stand up abruptly and
say stop no. But the judge won't have it overruled.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
I don't know about that.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Lyce denies any knowledge. Roy moved on.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Then, at the end of the Georgetown massacre with Brenda Smith,
he tries again. He leads Brenda through a long series
of questions about fundraising. She's evasive in her answers. Then
Roy asks, out of the blue.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Does Georgetown use a program sales force?
Speaker 5 (06:29):
It is my understanding that they do.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
And what is salesforce?
Speaker 5 (06:36):
It's a customer relations management tool.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Roy follows with a few more questions than he says.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
All right, well, let me then show you a document
marked in you.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Roy is just about to put a document on the screen,
a document that he is desperate to show the jury.
His finger is literally on the clicker, but just as
he does, the prosecutor jumps up again objection. The judge
agrees sustained under the rules of a trial, if you
have evidence you want to show to the jury. You
(07:11):
have to find a witness to authenticate it, someone who
will say it's real. That's what Roy is trying to
do with Brenda Smith, get her to say, yes, I
know all about that, but he's shut down. Your honor
objection sustained. You have what you think is a knockout punch,
and you can't show it to the jury. Plan A foiled.
(07:35):
So what do you do? You go to Plan B.
The mystery witness and the text messages a little bombshell
dropped in the middle of the sidebar.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Your honor, we call Katherine Coury.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
There had never been any indication during the first few
days of usv. Coory that the person at the heart
of the case, the person on whose behalf Aman Curry,
had paid one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash
to the coach of the Georgetown tennis team, would show up.
The government's lead prosecutor made this clear in his opening statement.
(08:20):
He told the jury, we're not here because of the
defendant's daughter. You're going to hear about her grades and
her test scores, the fact that she wasn't very good
at tennis. But to be clear, we're not here because
of Katherine. We are here talking about Catherine because of
the crimes the defendant committed outside of her formal application process.
(08:42):
So during the trial, we're going to ask you to
focus on the defendant's actions and his words and those
of his co conspirators. In other words, the prosecution wanted
to make a case about Katherine Courry's shortcomings as a
tennis player and student without the awkwardness of actually having
(09:02):
Katherine speak for herself. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
we would prefer if katherine career remains an abstraction. But
of course, if you are the legal team of Black
and Shrebnik and you sense a certain reluctance on the
part of your adversaries to confront the person at the
heart of the case, what do you do You convinced
(09:23):
the person at the heart of the case to make
an appearance.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I would say the one thing that stands out that
really made a huge difference was the daughter testifying, introducing
the text messages with her father. I mean, to me,
that was like an extraordinary event at the trial, and
(09:53):
I thought it was really a great part of the case.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Why is that? Explain to you why you think that
testimony would have been so powerful for the jury a
couple of reasons.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Number one, in terms of POI and speaking, she had
such authenticity about her. I know that authenticity is like
a cliche these days, but she came across very well
as a witness Number one. Number two, The government amazingly
(10:28):
change after her testimony. Never changed their theory of the case.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, the theory of the case, the explanation given for
the nature of the crime. The government laid out their
plan of attack with their very first witness, Timothy Donovan.
Remember him from the Boozy Dinner at the Capitol Grill.
He played on the Brown tennis team way back when
with Amon Curry and Gordy Ernst. He ran and still
(10:55):
runs by the way an outfit called Donovan Tennis Strategies,
whose goal, according to its website, is to help parents
with quote successfully navigating the college recruiting process end quote.
Donovan helps tennis players avail themselves of the back door
that elite colleges reserve for tennis players. In the Coury case,
(11:18):
that meant he was the bagman who picked up the
money for Aymond. Coury got twenty k for himself and
delivered the brown paper bag to Gordie Ernst's wife. The
government gave immunity to Timothy Donovan, and Donovan in return
provided them with their theory of the case. Listen to
this excerpt from Donovan's testimony on day two of the trial.
(11:42):
He's being questioned by one of the prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Did there come a time when you discussed with the
defendant whether Catherine would in fact play on the Georgetown
tennis team. Yes, what did you discuss about that?
Speaker 4 (11:57):
He said that she didn't have any plans to play
in that as a matter of fact, that you know,
her old shoulder injury would kick in and she'd be
unable to play for that reason.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
And based on how the defendant described Catherine's old shoulder injury,
what was your understanding as to the nature of that injury.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
That was not legitimate, that it was a story that
would allow her to not play.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The prosecution painted a picture of a conspiracy, Gordy Ernst,
Timothy Donovan, and Amon Curry conspiring to deceive Georgetown into
thinking they were getting a real tennis player. And what's more,
Amon Curry and his daughter Catherine conspiring to fake an
injury so she would never have to reveal how unworthy
(12:43):
she actually was of playing tennis at Georgetown University.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
So when the daughter gets to the school as a
tennis admission, she then doesn't play tennis.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
This is Jackie Purchek, one of the Black Shrebnik partners
who worked on the case.
Speaker 7 (13:00):
She doesn't go to practice and never practices with the team,
and never play tennis. And so the government fed off
of that to come up with this theory that she
knew all along that this was paid for admission, because
otherwise she would have shown up to play tennis.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
This was the theory on which the prosecution based its case,
and it came gift wrapped and tied with a bow
from Timothy Donovan. Why would they advance the theory about
the daughter having never talked spoken to the daughter because
they had the fact that she never as Jackie just said,
she never went to play tennis, So they just assumed.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
See what I think what happened with the case is
that remember they have a slam dunk all along, you know,
fifty five or fifty six cases, how many They didn't
think that this was going to be a problem at all.
They thought the client was going to plead guilty to
begin with, and then then he didn't. Then I guess
they got ready for Troyal. I don't think they took
(13:58):
it that serious.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I don't think they took it that serious. On some
unconscious level. I think Howard and Roy were offended by this.
It was a slight People from Miami take particular umbrage
at the condescension of fancy lawyers from Boston with their
high falutint manner and Ivyley pedigrees. Thus the dramatic sidebar
(14:23):
when the stiletto that they had brandished during the Georgetown
massacre was inserted a little deeper. We have Catherine Coury,
the person you didn't think belonged to her, and we
have her text messages which you somehow didn't think were
going to be an issue.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Then a long.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Pause when the news registers with the prosecution, a sharp
intake of breath, and a silent scream that echoes across
the courtroom full The direct examination of Katy Curry was
(15:12):
conducted by Howard, not by Roy, which makes sense. Roy is,
as I've said, an apex legal predator. You don't let
the grizzly bear play with your grandkids. This one was
Howard's responsibility. Howard is not just the intellectual half of
Black Shrebnik. He is the warm and fuzzy half. Howard
(15:34):
is the one most likely to address as Santa at
the Black Shrebnik Christmas Party. Howard has a daughter of
his own, whom I'm quite sure has Howard wrapped around
her little finger. Katy Curry was twenty five at the time, tall,
long brown hair, generous smile when she's smiling, but she's
nervous when she emerges from the bathroom. She clearly does
(15:57):
not want to be there. The adults in her life
have made a dreadful mess of things.
Speaker 8 (16:02):
The momentum continued to build when the daughter gets on
the witness stand, the government having married itself to a
theory that the daughter was a fraud, essentially that her application.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Was a fraud.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Howard starts quietly and calmly, tell us how old you are?
Easy questions to answer, where do you work? You went
to graduate school? Where only when she seems comfortable does
he get to the heart of the matter. Once again,
we've asked our voice actors to read from the transcript.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Okay, Catherine, growing up, did you play tennis?
Speaker 5 (16:40):
I did yes, okay?
Speaker 4 (16:43):
And who taught you how to play tennis?
Speaker 5 (16:45):
My dad?
Speaker 4 (16:47):
And how old were you when you learned to play tennis?
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Oh, I want to say I was maybe about five
six years old.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Her voice is soft. At one point, the judge tells
her to speak up.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Okay, And your dad, when you said you would play
tennis with your dad, was it just hitting the balls
or was there anything more instructive about the relationship the
tennis relationship with your dad?
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Well, so, yeah, my dad is an amazing tennis player.
He did play at Brown and so I guess in
a way we had not only a father daughter relationship,
but in a lot of ways he was my primary coach.
I mean he would help me with the drills, techniques,
My serve, which was the weakest part of my game,
was set up cones around the tennis court and try to,
(17:38):
you know, would boost my tennis skills. So it was
something he enjoyed and also something he encouraged me to
work hard on.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
How passionate was he about playing tennis with you.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I think it was one of our favorite things we
did together.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Howard pauses and has one of his paralegals put up
a photo on the screen. It's Catherine and her father
side by side at the tennis court at their country club.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Of all the people on the planet Earth, who is
the person with whom you played most hours of tennis
in your lifetime?
Speaker 5 (18:18):
My dad.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
They talked about high school. She went to a very
small private school in Massachusetts. Eight players on the tennis team.
She was number six, mostly played doubles. Her grades were good,
not great. Then they get to the subject of college.
Where did she want to go? Boston College or Northeastern?
Did she think she would play tennis at those schools?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
What about Georgetown? Well, she had never thought about Georgetown
until she ran into Gordy Ernst at a July fourth party.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
I mean he basically said, you know, I'm Gordy Ernst,
a friend of your dad's, and I'm a tennis coach
at Georgetown, and you know you should like, have you
ever thought about playing tennis at Georgetown? It could be fun?
Speaker 4 (19:06):
And what did you tell them?
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Wow, that sounds amazing and I we'd love that, but
I don't think I'm good enough.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
And what did he say?
Speaker 5 (19:17):
He said, Well, you know, train hard and maybe you could.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
She began playing more tennis. She began to take her
tennis more seriously. She got excited. The idea was that
she would practice with the team, but red shirt for
a year. She got an acceptance letter from Georgetown, Howard
put it on the screen for all the court to see.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
She was in.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
She thought it was all her doing, her talent and
hard work. The back and forth between Howard and Catherine
is building slowly. Everyone on the jury must know something
is about to happen, but they don't know what it is.
And Howard is in no hurry to tell them. He's
just content to let her talk and let her credibility,
(20:02):
her authenticity, sink in. And then finally, I.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Want to talk to you now about some of your
family circumstances that arose in May of twenty fifteen, this
after you've been accepted at Georgetown. Do you know what
time period I'm talking about? During the months of April,
in the first week of May, your parents, Melanie and Amon,
(20:31):
did you understand them to be still married and living
as a family.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
I did until like the second week of May.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you
learned in the second week of May.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
So in the second week of May, I was actually
in a tennis match. I believe it was a match
and not a practice. My mom had flown from Florida
to Middlesex, which wasn't uncommon. She liked to visit us
a lot. But you know, I could tell that something was.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Wrong up until that moment moment in time. Did you
have any idea that your parents were divorcing? No? How
did it affect your feelings towards your father?
Speaker 5 (21:17):
I was really very angry with him for that decision
to leave the marriage.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
And how did you express yourself to.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
Your dad with tears and anger and some mean words.
I had lost respect for him at that moment in
time and was Yeah, I felt I felt betrayed.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
How was your mom handling it?
Speaker 5 (21:44):
She was not handling it well at all. She was
you know, it broke her, for lack of a better word.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And then Howard puts the text messages Catherine said to
her dad up on a big screen for the whole
court to see.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
I made tent you described your dad to directly to
him that he's pathetic, yes, and hoping there will be
a day when he'll be strong again.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Next page, Keith. This is two days later, on May twelfth,
you write to him, I wasn't the one who traded
our family for the feelings of being young again. You're
a grown man. Don't equate my actions with yours. Just
from that statement, it's a parent how selfish you are?
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Is that how you felt at the time?
Speaker 5 (22:39):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Had you ever felt that way about your father before? No, Keith,
go to the next page. Do you recall your dad
trying to explain himself in you telling him you have
not done anything wrong? Lol? Laugh out loud. Yeah, next
(23:01):
page you tell your daddy's clueless and you have no
interest in associating with him. Is that right?
Speaker 5 (23:09):
That's correct, Keith?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
If we could go to the next page.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
At which point the judge interjects how many pages is this?
And Howard says fifteen more. The judge says fifteen more, Yes,
your honor, fifteen pages, And when it ends, Catherine Corey
explains where her anger left her.
Speaker 5 (23:33):
Well, you know, tennis was something that my dad and
I shared. When I thought of tennis, I thought of
my dad and I wanted nothing to do with him.
At that point, I was disgusted and hurt, and I
was basically like, you know, screw it. I feel like
(23:56):
you've ruined the sport for me. I think of you
when I'm out there, and I'm not going to follow.
You know, we keep on following your leads and everything
when you don't set good examples. To be honest, it
was just too painful to be out there with those reminders.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
So when she got to Georgetown, she didn't join the
tennis team. She didn't play the sports she loved. And
it had nothing to do with her shoulder. It had
to do with her heart.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
When was the last time you played competitive tennis?
Speaker 5 (24:35):
May like right before?
Speaker 4 (24:39):
And did you have you ever since played tennis?
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Not really? Maybe one day I want to love the
sport again, you know, like I don't want to just
I used to love it. And you know, one day,
when hopefully we've found peace and a stable, you know,
familial unit, I will be able to be at peace with,
(25:06):
you know, playing the sport that reminds me of my dad,
that does hold so many good memories again.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
The lawyers for the US Attorney's Office called Katie Coury
a mediocre tennis player when Georgetown's specialty was mediocre tennis players.
They said she got into Georgetown because her dad was rich.
But recruiting rich kids for the Georgetown tennis team was
what Georgetown did as a matter of course. And then
(25:39):
they threw her under the bus a third time. They
said that she had been involved in a conspiracy with
her father to fake an injury, and that just wasn't true.
Back at the top of episode one, I said that
I asked the US Attorney's office to talk to me
about the Coury case and they refused.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Now I know why.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Because they went home and tried to wash their hands
and the stink wouldn't come off. Closing arguments in the
case of USB Coory came the next day. Roy did
the honors for the defense.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
I came up with this walking over to the courthouse,
goes trying to figure out how to make these text
messages as dramatic as possible, And it doesn't come across
in the transcript. But what I did is I picked
up the exhibits and I walked over to the defense
table and stood in front of Corey and read every
one of those text messages, looking him.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
In the eye.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean the text is from his daughters.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah, where she's calling him every name in the book
and how I hate you and all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And I'm andy as you did. That was in tears.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
Yes, yeah, all of us.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
So there's the jury.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, there, this is Roy Black.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
There's the jury. There's the judge.
Speaker 8 (27:02):
Corey is standing sitting right where you are. By the way,
my daughter was sitting right behind him and Corey. Sophie
was watching the trial and my son okay.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
And your son yeah.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
And Roy who's talking to the jury.
Speaker 9 (27:13):
And it's right there we have the transcript and stands
literally the distance four feet from Am and Corey, and
he's reading to Am and Corey and they're right here.
Speaker 8 (27:21):
You can read him out loud into the.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Micro into the tape each one of those texts.
Speaker 8 (27:27):
Roy stands up, Well, why don't you read it?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Roy?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
This is the actual closing heartment quote.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
The night of my graduation is supposed to be a
fun celebration. I don't think it will be of you. Come,
Lexi and I are not doing that well. I hope
that you know that your family won't be able to
exist peacefully together, and don't spend another holiday together. I
will forever blame and resent you and have zero interest
(27:55):
in sharing vital parts of my life with you. That's
what Katie Corey was saying in the summer of twenty fifteen,
not making up some story about her shoulder injury.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
The courtroom is absolutely still, and royg just keeps going
right in front of his client, face to face. And
so what's happening, Well, the jurors were crying, but the jurorsy,
you didn't see that, but we did.
Speaker 8 (28:22):
The juror cry.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So there, so explain to me psychologically, what's happening with
the jerks the cry? What conclusion are they drawing from
the from the emotion in that moment?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Well, I think that they're all parents. Can you imagine
getting messages like that from one of your children about
how catastrophic, how tragic, how emotional that would be. And
the reason why I wanted to do that is to
show that there was simply no way that this girl
(28:59):
was being controlled by her father and would go and say, Okay,
we're now getting into Georgetown on this fake admission, and
I'm going to fake a shoulder injury. It's just that
it was just such a powerful, tragic thing to get
from a child.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
What I thought happened was it now became a contest
between this prosecutor and Katie Kury, who was the jury
going to rule.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
For Roy's closing argument didn't last very long. It didn't
have to. He just said, you know why the prosecution's
case makes no sense because they didn't know about the
text messages. The jury acquitted Am and Kury on all counts.
They couldn't distinguish between what Am and Cury did and
(29:47):
what Georgetown did. I think they must have wondered what
they had been dragged into a full on trial in
a federal courthouse that ended up being about a daughter's
broken heart and a father's tears. Oh and all taking
place on a tennis court, Which is the question that
got me interested in usv. Koury in the first place.
(30:09):
The other half of the case, the half I write
about in Revenge of the Tipping Point. Since when do
we care so much about games like tennis that prosecutors
and elite universities and rich men and their daughters make
at the staging ground for their ambitions.
Speaker 9 (30:25):
By the way, one more moment that no one knows
about because we were there and it didn't happen in
the courtroom. We walk out of the courtroom with a
not guilty verdict, we encounter some of the jurors right
outside the courtroom.
Speaker 8 (30:41):
Aim and Corey is standing next to me. The juror
is standing five feet away. She looks over to mister
Corey and she says, take care of your daughter.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Vision's history is produced. Wait, we're not done. What about
the mysterious Salesforce document? The document Roy kept trying to
get Georgetown witnesses to say, yes it exists or yes
it's real. What was it?
Speaker 6 (31:12):
Yeah, Salesforce they kept a database where people were and
they have like they had like targets. So if this
person is worth this amount of money, my target is
to get them to donate this amount. And they would
keep track of contact with the family and what they're
(31:32):
going to ask for it, And they kept us in
a database internally in a Salesforce database at the school
for each parent.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
It uses a sophisticated set of software to analyze thousands
of people and figure out who among them is the
best target for a fundraising call and what that person's
and this is the term that is used, capacity might be.
It looks at patterns. Families that have given a lot
tend to be those who will continue to give a lot.
(32:05):
Then there's a question of the individual's ties to the institute.
Do they have a child at school there that helps
a lot, or if they are an alum, what did
they do while on campus. Turns out a connection to
athletics is a top indicator for future giving. Needless to say,
this kind of algorithm would really really like Aim and Kouri.
(32:30):
After Catherine was admitted, before she had even set foot
on campus, the admissions officer who handled her application sent
an email to someone in the development office, are you
able to give me giving for aim and Kuri? Meaning
can we run him through the algorithm? And they do
and put it all in an internal document. Why was
(32:53):
Georgetown so reluctant to admit to the existence of the
mysterious salesforce capacity report because their capacity estimate for the
Kouri family was, shall we say awkward, one to five
million dollars. When the so called victim Georgetown is lining
(33:16):
up the so called perpetrator for one to five million.
The victim doesn't really look like a victim anymore, do they.
It looks more like they're in on the grift.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
So yeah, they were.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
They nobody would agree to it, So we mentioned that
the jury, the jury knew it existed, but never got
to see it.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, way, so for you, you you.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Saw you did you have the docum?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yes, we have the document.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Then after the trial.
Speaker 10 (33:44):
There's the not guilty verdict, and that night or the
next day, the New York Times or somebody calls Roy
for a comment and Roy comments on the trial, and
in part the comment was, there was this Salesforce.
Speaker 6 (33:57):
Document and the target for the corries was one to
five million.
Speaker 11 (34:01):
And now Georgetown, who during the trial, is saying, I
don't know what document you're talking about, and no witness
will own to the document, and no witness is prepared
to testify about it. After Roy makes the comments, the
lawyers for Georgetown send an email saying, Hey, why are
you talking about our Salesforce document. There's a confidentiality order
(34:22):
in the case and you're not supposed to be talking
about our documents. And at the trial, nobody's owning the document.
After the trial they're all upset that Roy's talking about
their document. Roy writes back, I mentioned it in opening
and can I And he writes back to the group
(34:42):
in capital letters, sore.
Speaker 10 (34:45):
Loser, to the lawyer, to the Georgetown lawyer, Oh my god.
Speaker 11 (34:50):
When we all got that email, I was like bagging
the desk. That's hard.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
It was awesome.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Usv.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Courry, best trial ever or maybe second best trial ever,
because there was another federal case that I fell in
love with while writing my book, Revenge at Sipping Point.
It's the basis for the chapter entitled The Trouble with
Miami usv. S Forms, involving a shadowy nursing home operator
(35:26):
from Miami Beach who looked like Paul Newman, drove around
town in a one point six million dollar Ferrari dated supermodels,
and in a weird coincidence, was so obsessed with getting
his diminutive son onto the University of Penn basketball team
that he gave large amounts of cash in a gym
bag to the Penn basketball coach who represented that shadowy
(35:50):
Paul Newman look alike in a Ferrari handing out bags
of cash to IVY League coaches.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Ten Guesses.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Region's history is produced by Nina Birdlowawrence with ben ad A. F.
Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Fact
checking by Sam Russick, original scoring by Luis Gerra, mastering
by Echo Mountain Engineering by Sarah Buguer and Nina Bird Lawrence.
Production support from Luke LeMond. Voice acting by Dak Sheppard
(36:28):
and Britt Marlin.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Thank you, guys.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Our executive producer is the incomparable Jacob Smith. Special thanks
to Sarah Nix. I'm Malcolm Bobwell.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
On the fifth day in the trial of US v. Kouri,
right after the defense left the fundraiser for the Georgetown
University Athletic Department in small pieces on the floor of
the courtroom, the attorneys for Amon Kurry asked the judge
for a sidebar. They wanted to call a witness, a
surprise witness who the defense team had somehow persuaded to
(00:42):
make an appearance. She's in the bathroom, Howard T. Shrebnick
told the judge. I just wanted to let you know.
They just whispered to me that she's coming. I didn't
want you too.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
His voice trailed off.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
The prosecutors in the case from the US Attorney's office
were there in the sidebar too, standing right beside Shrebnick.
And it is safe to say this sudden revelation came
as a shock to them. They weren't expecting this particular
witness to show up. They were counting on her not
showing up, and now she was here in the bathroom.
(01:19):
Fuck then, Howard says, and we're going to propose to
introduce text messages that she wrote back in May of
twenty fifteen, text.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Messages fuck.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
My name is Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to Revisionist History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part
two of the story of my favorite court case of
all time, usv.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Coory.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In part one, which you should listen to first if
you have not already, we talked about how Roy Black
and Howard Strebnick were presented with an impossible case a
client who openly admitted to giving one hundred and eighty
thousand dollars in cash in a brown paper bag to
the Georgetown University tennis coach in order to get his
daughter admitted to the school. Days one, two, three, and four,
(02:22):
the trial had been a disaster for the defense. Am
and Curry seemed destined for prison, but by the end
of the Georgetown massacre on day five, Howard and Roy
had managed to introduce an element of doubt into the
minds of the jury. What exactly is or isn't a bribe?
And are the dubious actions of a wealthy man worse
(02:44):
than the dubious actions of a wealthy university.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
This episode is.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
About what happened in the afternoon on day five, the
aftermath of the Georgetown massacre.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The mystery witness entered text messages.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What were the talk about the during the trial. What
you feel were the most significant turning points.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Most trials don't have one thing like that, but things
just developed. You know, the more you worked on it,
the more we got into the case, the more facts
we learned, the more details, the better it looked.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
I talked with Roy Black when we met at his
offices in downtown Miami. Roy is a trial lawyer. He
and his partner Howard are maybe the greatest defense team
of their generation. They construct elaborate narratives out of mountains
of complicated facts. They are not mystery novelists who tell
stories with a clever twist on the last page. Things
(03:45):
just develop. But then Roy Black thought about it a
little bit and he said, well, actually, I take it back.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
There was a knockout bunch. It was the mystery witness.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I mean to me, that was like an extraordinary event
at the trial.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
From the very beginning. And Howard had a problem. They
could show that Georgetown was a corrupt institution where the
lines between admissions and fundraising had been all but obliterated.
That was the point of the Georgetown massacre. But that
didn't resolve their problem.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
If we say, okay, the whole system's corrupt and our
client took advantage of the corrupt system by paying money,
what are we doing. We're admitting that our own clients corrupt.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
The Georgetown massacre, in other words, didn't win them the case.
It simply leveled the playing field. They needed something more,
another layer to their argument, proof that Georgetown was worse
than Amon Curry. And in the first few difficult days
of the trial, when the government was running roughshod over
at Amon Curry, Howard and Roy began to drop little
(04:58):
bread crumbs.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
They were cryptic.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Chances are the jury missed them. But if you read
through the trial transcripts, all twelve hundred pages of them,
and you pay attention, it's obvious something is afoot. The
first inkling came during an offhand moment in Roy's cross
examination of a Georgetown admissions officer named Meg Licy. Once again,
(05:23):
we have our wonderful voice actors dak Shephard and britt Marling.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Listen, isn't it a fact that at Georgetown you have
a software called Salesforce? Don't you.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Not that? I remember?
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Isn't it a fact that you have an investigation into
the net worth of the parents of potential students.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
The prosecution jumps up immediately objection, which in retrospect was weird.
What was it about the mention of that word sales
force that led the government to stand up abruptly and
say stop no. But the judge won't have it overruled.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
I don't know about that.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Lyce denies any knowledge. Roy moved on.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Then, at the end of the Georgetown massacre with Brenda Smith,
he tries again. He leads Brenda through a long series
of questions about fundraising. She's evasive in her answers. Then
Roy asks, out of the blue.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Does Georgetown use a program sales force?
Speaker 5 (06:29):
It is my understanding that they do.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
And what is salesforce?
Speaker 5 (06:36):
It's a customer relations management tool.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Roy follows with a few more questions than he says.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
All right, well, let me then show you a document
marked in you.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Roy is just about to put a document on the screen,
a document that he is desperate to show the jury.
His finger is literally on the clicker, but just as
he does, the prosecutor jumps up again objection. The judge
agrees sustained under the rules of a trial, if you
have evidence you want to show to the jury. You
(07:11):
have to find a witness to authenticate it, someone who
will say it's real. That's what Roy is trying to
do with Brenda Smith, get her to say, yes, I
know all about that, but he's shut down. Your honor
objection sustained. You have what you think is a knockout punch,
and you can't show it to the jury. Plan A foiled.
(07:35):
So what do you do? You go to Plan B.
The mystery witness and the text messages a little bombshell
dropped in the middle of the sidebar.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Your honor, we call Katherine Coury.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
There had never been any indication during the first few
days of usv. Coory that the person at the heart
of the case, the person on whose behalf Aman Curry,
had paid one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash
to the coach of the Georgetown tennis team, would show up.
The government's lead prosecutor made this clear in his opening statement.
(08:20):
He told the jury, we're not here because of the
defendant's daughter. You're going to hear about her grades and
her test scores, the fact that she wasn't very good
at tennis. But to be clear, we're not here because
of Katherine. We are here talking about Catherine because of
the crimes the defendant committed outside of her formal application process.
(08:42):
So during the trial, we're going to ask you to
focus on the defendant's actions and his words and those
of his co conspirators. In other words, the prosecution wanted
to make a case about Katherine Courry's shortcomings as a
tennis player and student without the awkwardness of actually having
(09:02):
Katherine speak for herself. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
we would prefer if katherine career remains an abstraction. But
of course, if you are the legal team of Black
and Shrebnik and you sense a certain reluctance on the
part of your adversaries to confront the person at the
heart of the case, what do you do You convinced
(09:23):
the person at the heart of the case to make
an appearance.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I would say the one thing that stands out that
really made a huge difference was the daughter testifying, introducing
the text messages with her father. I mean, to me,
that was like an extraordinary event at the trial, and
(09:53):
I thought it was really a great part of the case.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Why is that? Explain to you why you think that
testimony would have been so powerful for the jury a
couple of reasons.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Number one, in terms of POI and speaking, she had
such authenticity about her. I know that authenticity is like
a cliche these days, but she came across very well
as a witness Number one. Number two, The government amazingly
(10:28):
change after her testimony. Never changed their theory of the case.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, the theory of the case, the explanation given for
the nature of the crime. The government laid out their
plan of attack with their very first witness, Timothy Donovan.
Remember him from the Boozy Dinner at the Capitol Grill.
He played on the Brown tennis team way back when
with Amon Curry and Gordy Ernst. He ran and still
(10:55):
runs by the way an outfit called Donovan Tennis Strategies,
whose goal, according to its website, is to help parents
with quote successfully navigating the college recruiting process end quote.
Donovan helps tennis players avail themselves of the back door
that elite colleges reserve for tennis players. In the Coury case,
(11:18):
that meant he was the bagman who picked up the
money for Aymond. Coury got twenty k for himself and
delivered the brown paper bag to Gordie Ernst's wife. The
government gave immunity to Timothy Donovan, and Donovan in return
provided them with their theory of the case. Listen to
this excerpt from Donovan's testimony on day two of the trial.
(11:42):
He's being questioned by one of the prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Did there come a time when you discussed with the
defendant whether Catherine would in fact play on the Georgetown
tennis team. Yes, what did you discuss about that?
Speaker 4 (11:57):
He said that she didn't have any plans to play
in that as a matter of fact, that you know,
her old shoulder injury would kick in and she'd be
unable to play for that reason.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
And based on how the defendant described Catherine's old shoulder injury,
what was your understanding as to the nature of that injury.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
That was not legitimate, that it was a story that
would allow her to not play.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The prosecution painted a picture of a conspiracy, Gordy Ernst,
Timothy Donovan, and Amon Curry conspiring to deceive Georgetown into
thinking they were getting a real tennis player. And what's more,
Amon Curry and his daughter Catherine conspiring to fake an
injury so she would never have to reveal how unworthy
(12:43):
she actually was of playing tennis at Georgetown University.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
So when the daughter gets to the school as a
tennis admission, she then doesn't play tennis.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
This is Jackie Purchek, one of the Black Shrebnik partners
who worked on the case.
Speaker 7 (13:00):
She doesn't go to practice and never practices with the team,
and never play tennis. And so the government fed off
of that to come up with this theory that she
knew all along that this was paid for admission, because
otherwise she would have shown up to play tennis.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
This was the theory on which the prosecution based its case,
and it came gift wrapped and tied with a bow
from Timothy Donovan. Why would they advance the theory about
the daughter having never talked spoken to the daughter because
they had the fact that she never as Jackie just said,
she never went to play tennis, So they just assumed.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
See what I think what happened with the case is
that remember they have a slam dunk all along, you know,
fifty five or fifty six cases, how many They didn't
think that this was going to be a problem at all.
They thought the client was going to plead guilty to
begin with, and then then he didn't. Then I guess
they got ready for Troyal. I don't think they took
(13:58):
it that serious.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I don't think they took it that serious. On some
unconscious level. I think Howard and Roy were offended by this.
It was a slight People from Miami take particular umbrage
at the condescension of fancy lawyers from Boston with their
high falutint manner and Ivyley pedigrees. Thus the dramatic sidebar
(14:23):
when the stiletto that they had brandished during the Georgetown
massacre was inserted a little deeper. We have Catherine Coury,
the person you didn't think belonged to her, and we
have her text messages which you somehow didn't think were
going to be an issue.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Then a long.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Pause when the news registers with the prosecution, a sharp
intake of breath, and a silent scream that echoes across
the courtroom full The direct examination of Katy Curry was
(15:12):
conducted by Howard, not by Roy, which makes sense. Roy is,
as I've said, an apex legal predator. You don't let
the grizzly bear play with your grandkids. This one was
Howard's responsibility. Howard is not just the intellectual half of
Black Shrebnik. He is the warm and fuzzy half. Howard
(15:34):
is the one most likely to address as Santa at
the Black Shrebnik Christmas Party. Howard has a daughter of
his own, whom I'm quite sure has Howard wrapped around
her little finger. Katy Curry was twenty five at the time, tall,
long brown hair, generous smile when she's smiling, but she's
nervous when she emerges from the bathroom. She clearly does
(15:57):
not want to be there. The adults in her life
have made a dreadful mess of things.
Speaker 8 (16:02):
The momentum continued to build when the daughter gets on
the witness stand, the government having married itself to a
theory that the daughter was a fraud, essentially that her application.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Was a fraud.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Howard starts quietly and calmly, tell us how old you are?
Easy questions to answer, where do you work? You went
to graduate school? Where only when she seems comfortable does
he get to the heart of the matter. Once again,
we've asked our voice actors to read from the transcript.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Okay, Catherine, growing up, did you play tennis?
Speaker 5 (16:40):
I did yes, okay?
Speaker 4 (16:43):
And who taught you how to play tennis?
Speaker 5 (16:45):
My dad?
Speaker 4 (16:47):
And how old were you when you learned to play tennis?
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Oh, I want to say I was maybe about five
six years old.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Her voice is soft. At one point, the judge tells
her to speak up.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Okay, And your dad, when you said you would play
tennis with your dad, was it just hitting the balls
or was there anything more instructive about the relationship the
tennis relationship with your dad?
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Well, so, yeah, my dad is an amazing tennis player.
He did play at Brown and so I guess in
a way we had not only a father daughter relationship,
but in a lot of ways he was my primary coach.
I mean he would help me with the drills, techniques,
My serve, which was the weakest part of my game,
was set up cones around the tennis court and try to,
(17:38):
you know, would boost my tennis skills. So it was
something he enjoyed and also something he encouraged me to
work hard on.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
How passionate was he about playing tennis with you.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I think it was one of our favorite things we
did together.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Howard pauses and has one of his paralegals put up
a photo on the screen. It's Catherine and her father
side by side at the tennis court at their country club.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Of all the people on the planet Earth, who is
the person with whom you played most hours of tennis
in your lifetime?
Speaker 5 (18:18):
My dad.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
They talked about high school. She went to a very
small private school in Massachusetts. Eight players on the tennis team.
She was number six, mostly played doubles. Her grades were good,
not great. Then they get to the subject of college.
Where did she want to go? Boston College or Northeastern?
Did she think she would play tennis at those schools?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
What about Georgetown? Well, she had never thought about Georgetown
until she ran into Gordy Ernst at a July fourth party.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
I mean he basically said, you know, I'm Gordy Ernst,
a friend of your dad's, and I'm a tennis coach
at Georgetown, and you know you should like, have you
ever thought about playing tennis at Georgetown? It could be fun?
Speaker 4 (19:06):
And what did you tell them?
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Wow, that sounds amazing and I we'd love that, but
I don't think I'm good enough.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
And what did he say?
Speaker 5 (19:17):
He said, Well, you know, train hard and maybe you could.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
She began playing more tennis. She began to take her
tennis more seriously. She got excited. The idea was that
she would practice with the team, but red shirt for
a year. She got an acceptance letter from Georgetown, Howard
put it on the screen for all the court to see.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
She was in.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
She thought it was all her doing, her talent and
hard work. The back and forth between Howard and Catherine
is building slowly. Everyone on the jury must know something
is about to happen, but they don't know what it is.
And Howard is in no hurry to tell them. He's
just content to let her talk and let her credibility,
(20:02):
her authenticity, sink in. And then finally, I.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Want to talk to you now about some of your
family circumstances that arose in May of twenty fifteen, this
after you've been accepted at Georgetown. Do you know what
time period I'm talking about? During the months of April,
in the first week of May, your parents, Melanie and Amon,
(20:31):
did you understand them to be still married and living
as a family.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
I did until like the second week of May.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you
learned in the second week of May.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
So in the second week of May, I was actually
in a tennis match. I believe it was a match
and not a practice. My mom had flown from Florida
to Middlesex, which wasn't uncommon. She liked to visit us
a lot. But you know, I could tell that something was.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Wrong up until that moment moment in time. Did you
have any idea that your parents were divorcing? No? How
did it affect your feelings towards your father?
Speaker 5 (21:17):
I was really very angry with him for that decision
to leave the marriage.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
And how did you express yourself to.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
Your dad with tears and anger and some mean words.
I had lost respect for him at that moment in
time and was Yeah, I felt I felt betrayed.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
How was your mom handling it?
Speaker 5 (21:44):
She was not handling it well at all. She was
you know, it broke her, for lack of a better word.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And then Howard puts the text messages Catherine said to
her dad up on a big screen for the whole
court to see.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
I made tent you described your dad to directly to
him that he's pathetic, yes, and hoping there will be
a day when he'll be strong again.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Next page, Keith. This is two days later, on May twelfth,
you write to him, I wasn't the one who traded
our family for the feelings of being young again. You're
a grown man. Don't equate my actions with yours. Just
from that statement, it's a parent how selfish you are?
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Is that how you felt at the time?
Speaker 5 (22:39):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Had you ever felt that way about your father before? No, Keith,
go to the next page. Do you recall your dad
trying to explain himself in you telling him you have
not done anything wrong? Lol? Laugh out loud. Yeah, next
(23:01):
page you tell your daddy's clueless and you have no
interest in associating with him. Is that right?
Speaker 5 (23:09):
That's correct, Keith?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
If we could go to the next page.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
At which point the judge interjects how many pages is this?
And Howard says fifteen more. The judge says fifteen more, Yes,
your honor, fifteen pages, And when it ends, Catherine Corey
explains where her anger left her.
Speaker 5 (23:33):
Well, you know, tennis was something that my dad and
I shared. When I thought of tennis, I thought of
my dad and I wanted nothing to do with him.
At that point, I was disgusted and hurt, and I
was basically like, you know, screw it. I feel like
(23:56):
you've ruined the sport for me. I think of you
when I'm out there, and I'm not going to follow.
You know, we keep on following your leads and everything
when you don't set good examples. To be honest, it
was just too painful to be out there with those reminders.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
So when she got to Georgetown, she didn't join the
tennis team. She didn't play the sports she loved. And
it had nothing to do with her shoulder. It had
to do with her heart.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
When was the last time you played competitive tennis?
Speaker 5 (24:35):
May like right before?
Speaker 4 (24:39):
And did you have you ever since played tennis?
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Not really? Maybe one day I want to love the
sport again, you know, like I don't want to just
I used to love it. And you know, one day,
when hopefully we've found peace and a stable, you know,
familial unit, I will be able to be at peace with,
(25:06):
you know, playing the sport that reminds me of my dad,
that does hold so many good memories again.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
The lawyers for the US Attorney's Office called Katie Coury
a mediocre tennis player when Georgetown's specialty was mediocre tennis players.
They said she got into Georgetown because her dad was rich.
But recruiting rich kids for the Georgetown tennis team was
what Georgetown did as a matter of course. And then
(25:39):
they threw her under the bus a third time. They
said that she had been involved in a conspiracy with
her father to fake an injury, and that just wasn't true.
Back at the top of episode one, I said that
I asked the US Attorney's office to talk to me
about the Coury case and they refused.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Now I know why.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Because they went home and tried to wash their hands
and the stink wouldn't come off. Closing arguments in the
case of USB Coory came the next day. Roy did
the honors for the defense.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
I came up with this walking over to the courthouse,
goes trying to figure out how to make these text
messages as dramatic as possible, And it doesn't come across
in the transcript. But what I did is I picked
up the exhibits and I walked over to the defense
table and stood in front of Corey and read every
one of those text messages, looking him.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
In the eye.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean the text is from his daughters.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah, where she's calling him every name in the book
and how I hate you and all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And I'm andy as you did. That was in tears.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
Yes, yeah, all of us.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
So there's the jury.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, there, this is Roy Black.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
There's the jury. There's the judge.
Speaker 8 (27:02):
Corey is standing sitting right where you are. By the way,
my daughter was sitting right behind him and Corey. Sophie
was watching the trial and my son okay.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
And your son yeah.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
And Roy who's talking to the jury.
Speaker 9 (27:13):
And it's right there we have the transcript and stands
literally the distance four feet from Am and Corey, and
he's reading to Am and Corey and they're right here.
Speaker 8 (27:21):
You can read him out loud into the.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Micro into the tape each one of those texts.
Speaker 8 (27:27):
Roy stands up, Well, why don't you read it?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Roy?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
This is the actual closing heartment quote.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
The night of my graduation is supposed to be a
fun celebration. I don't think it will be of you. Come,
Lexi and I are not doing that well. I hope
that you know that your family won't be able to
exist peacefully together, and don't spend another holiday together. I
will forever blame and resent you and have zero interest
(27:55):
in sharing vital parts of my life with you. That's
what Katie Corey was saying in the summer of twenty fifteen,
not making up some story about her shoulder injury.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
The courtroom is absolutely still, and royg just keeps going
right in front of his client, face to face. And
so what's happening, Well, the jurors were crying, but the jurorsy,
you didn't see that, but we did.
Speaker 8 (28:22):
The juror cry.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So there, so explain to me psychologically, what's happening with
the jerks the cry? What conclusion are they drawing from
the from the emotion in that moment?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Well, I think that they're all parents. Can you imagine
getting messages like that from one of your children about
how catastrophic, how tragic, how emotional that would be. And
the reason why I wanted to do that is to
show that there was simply no way that this girl
(28:59):
was being controlled by her father and would go and say, Okay,
we're now getting into Georgetown on this fake admission, and
I'm going to fake a shoulder injury. It's just that
it was just such a powerful, tragic thing to get
from a child.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
What I thought happened was it now became a contest
between this prosecutor and Katie Kury, who was the jury
going to rule.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
For Roy's closing argument didn't last very long. It didn't
have to. He just said, you know why the prosecution's
case makes no sense because they didn't know about the
text messages. The jury acquitted Am and Kury on all counts.
They couldn't distinguish between what Am and Cury did and
(29:47):
what Georgetown did. I think they must have wondered what
they had been dragged into a full on trial in
a federal courthouse that ended up being about a daughter's
broken heart and a father's tears. Oh and all taking
place on a tennis court, Which is the question that
got me interested in usv. Koury in the first place.
(30:09):
The other half of the case, the half I write
about in Revenge of the Tipping Point. Since when do
we care so much about games like tennis that prosecutors
and elite universities and rich men and their daughters make
at the staging ground for their ambitions.
Speaker 9 (30:25):
By the way, one more moment that no one knows
about because we were there and it didn't happen in
the courtroom. We walk out of the courtroom with a
not guilty verdict, we encounter some of the jurors right
outside the courtroom.
Speaker 8 (30:41):
Aim and Corey is standing next to me. The juror
is standing five feet away. She looks over to mister
Corey and she says, take care of your daughter.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Vision's history is produced. Wait, we're not done. What about
the mysterious Salesforce document? The document Roy kept trying to
get Georgetown witnesses to say, yes it exists or yes
it's real. What was it?
Speaker 6 (31:12):
Yeah, Salesforce they kept a database where people were and
they have like they had like targets. So if this
person is worth this amount of money, my target is
to get them to donate this amount. And they would
keep track of contact with the family and what they're
(31:32):
going to ask for it, And they kept us in
a database internally in a Salesforce database at the school
for each parent.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
It uses a sophisticated set of software to analyze thousands
of people and figure out who among them is the
best target for a fundraising call and what that person's
and this is the term that is used, capacity might be.
It looks at patterns. Families that have given a lot
tend to be those who will continue to give a lot.
(32:05):
Then there's a question of the individual's ties to the institute.
Do they have a child at school there that helps
a lot, or if they are an alum, what did
they do while on campus. Turns out a connection to
athletics is a top indicator for future giving. Needless to say,
this kind of algorithm would really really like Aim and Kouri.
(32:30):
After Catherine was admitted, before she had even set foot
on campus, the admissions officer who handled her application sent
an email to someone in the development office, are you
able to give me giving for aim and Kuri? Meaning
can we run him through the algorithm? And they do
and put it all in an internal document. Why was
(32:53):
Georgetown so reluctant to admit to the existence of the
mysterious salesforce capacity report because their capacity estimate for the
Kouri family was, shall we say awkward, one to five
million dollars. When the so called victim Georgetown is lining
(33:16):
up the so called perpetrator for one to five million.
The victim doesn't really look like a victim anymore, do they.
It looks more like they're in on the grift.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
So yeah, they were.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
They nobody would agree to it, So we mentioned that
the jury, the jury knew it existed, but never got
to see it.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, way, so for you, you you.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Saw you did you have the docum?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yes, we have the document.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Then after the trial.
Speaker 10 (33:44):
There's the not guilty verdict, and that night or the
next day, the New York Times or somebody calls Roy
for a comment and Roy comments on the trial, and
in part the comment was, there was this Salesforce.
Speaker 6 (33:57):
Document and the target for the corries was one to
five million.
Speaker 11 (34:01):
And now Georgetown, who during the trial, is saying, I
don't know what document you're talking about, and no witness
will own to the document, and no witness is prepared
to testify about it. After Roy makes the comments, the
lawyers for Georgetown send an email saying, Hey, why are
you talking about our Salesforce document. There's a confidentiality order
(34:22):
in the case and you're not supposed to be talking
about our documents. And at the trial, nobody's owning the document.
After the trial they're all upset that Roy's talking about
their document. Roy writes back, I mentioned it in opening
and can I And he writes back to the group
(34:42):
in capital letters, sore.
Speaker 10 (34:45):
Loser, to the lawyer, to the Georgetown lawyer, Oh my god.
Speaker 11 (34:50):
When we all got that email, I was like bagging
the desk. That's hard.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
It was awesome.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Usv.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Courry, best trial ever or maybe second best trial ever,
because there was another federal case that I fell in
love with while writing my book, Revenge at Sipping Point.
It's the basis for the chapter entitled The Trouble with
Miami usv. S Forms, involving a shadowy nursing home operator
(35:26):
from Miami Beach who looked like Paul Newman, drove around
town in a one point six million dollar Ferrari dated supermodels,
and in a weird coincidence, was so obsessed with getting
his diminutive son onto the University of Penn basketball team
that he gave large amounts of cash in a gym
bag to the Penn basketball coach who represented that shadowy
(35:50):
Paul Newman look alike in a Ferrari handing out bags
of cash to IVY League coaches.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Ten Guesses.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Region's history is produced by Nina Birdlowawrence with ben ad A. F.
Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Fact
checking by Sam Russick, original scoring by Luis Gerra, mastering
by Echo Mountain Engineering by Sarah Buguer and Nina Bird Lawrence.
Production support from Luke LeMond. Voice acting by Dak Sheppard
(36:28):
and Britt Marlin.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Thank you, guys.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Our executive producer is the incomparable Jacob Smith. Special thanks
to Sarah Nix. I'm Malcolm Bobwell.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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