Original subtitles

Emotions, especially with exes, bring out the absolute worst in people.

I've seen instances where exes... kill each other.

But as far as this elaborate plot, it was just gut-wrenching.

Horrible. Plain and simple.

In 2006, I was a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley

and opening a restaurant at the same time.

I was always busy. There was always something I was doing,

and it... it seems like that's all I knew how to do.

Work, work, work.

My family are all from Guyana, which is in South America.

I came to the US when I was about 11 years old.

It was my parents, my brother, my sister. I'm the oldest of three.

When I was growing up in Long Island, we basically grew up in the same house,

and we lived there for years until I purchased the house from my parents.

In my mind, that house, it was always going to be mine,

I guess, or in the family type of thing.

I saw my dad do so much.

My dad worked for Steinway piano company, and he also had his own business.

He had a taxi company.

So in my mind, I always wanted to have my own business.

After school, I first worked for a broker on Wall Street.

And I learned fast and moved up fast.

I used to work ridiculous hours.

After a couple of years that I was working there,

I thought I had enough time to try to have my own restaurant, both simultaneously.

Got all my savings and everything together.

Finally decided on a Golden Krust.

Golden Krust is a franchise that serves Jamaican cuisine.

Growing up, I ate that food a lot.

I knew about that cuisine

and even had experience in cooking the food and everything.

I was very busy.

I worked x amount of hours at Morgan Stanley.

When I was off from there, I'm at the restaurant

trying to get everything up and running, permits and whatnot.

And taking care of Chiara at the same time.

I have the most amazing daughter.

Chiara's sweet, honest.

She's just the best thing that ever happened to me.

It amazed me how much she knows or she sensed,

and she's always been like that.

It was a lot of work, but at the time, I just wanted to just do so much.

So I wasn't seeing anyone for quite a bit

because I've been adamant that I was never going to get married.

That's not something that I want to sacrifice, my freedom.

So that conversation I dodged at all times.

I was supposed to open in the beginning of March of 2006.

And my dad...

died.

He actually committed suicide.

So it was tough.

After that happened, I, um...

I pushed back the opening of the restaurant

till after all the prayers and everything was done

and gave myself enough time.

So it was opened in the very last week of March.

A few months after the restaurant opened is when I met Jerry.

He came by the restaurant.

He purchased food and struck up a conversation with me.

He was wearing a suit and he had a holster, and he had a gun on the side.

He told me he was a cop and a detective for the Brooklyn DA's office,

and he did consulting work,

which... which was conveniently right down the street

from where my restaurant is.

So in the day, he could pop by anytime.

He pointed out that my cameras were positioned wrong.

And he volunteered to stop by during the week

to look at my camera system, which I thought was amazing. You know?

That's... that's what good people do.

He showed up just to do random things for me.

If it's to just take my car to the car wash,

little things like that to make my life on a daily basis easier.

And then, I guess we became friends.

We were going out, maybe a movie here or there

or whatever free time that I had, which I had not much of.

I was seeing a lot more of him.

By somewhere in 2007, we were... we were dating. Yeah.

Seemona is my dad's sister.

I was close to Auntie Seemona. I worked at her restaurant with her.

The family's overall impression of Jerry,

we all kind of looked up to him in a sense

because, you know, he was this guy that worked for the NYPD.

He showed us his gun before.

He used to always have it with him.

And then, like, we always thought he was so cool.

Just a cool guy. He was just a cool guy. The way he talks, walks.

And we liked him. And he cared for Seemona.

Jerry used to be in the restaurant, doing things and whatever.

So to tell you the truth, I was so happy for her.

I'd say, "You know, at least you have somebody to help around."

He just fit himself right there.

As far as my family goes,

I think they were worried about me, as me being alone and for my safety.

I was out and about late at night, it's a cash business,

and they saw him as this cop,

that he was the one to protect me in a way.

I didn't really introduce Chiara to him at all.

Because he was around the restaurant.

Jerry was there so much,

and Chiara never really questioned anything about him.

Although I sensed that she didn't care for him very much.

Jerry's mother was living with him.

So Jerry started to spend a lot of time at my house.

First, it would start as get me home safe, but then he would stay over.

Timing was convenient as well.

I think he was probably the only person,

you know, I... I could talk to about my dad

because my dad passed the way he passed.

It's not easy...

to have that conversation with family.

I knew I was angry all the time.

Because I didn't understand

that... that my dad would do something like that.

And there weren't anybody to talk to except for him.

It was one of the reasons why we became so close.

While I was working at the restaurant,

this phone call came in...

...just random middle of the day.

I had a, like, a little office in the basement at the restaurant.

I took the call.

This girl, she asked me if I'm such and such,

and I said, "Yes,"

and she said, "Well, I have something to tell you. Are you sitting down?"

And I was like, "Okay."

She said, "You're not going to like what I'm going to tell you."

"Jerry's been lying to you."

She said that she was married to him,

and she had two kids.

I'm so confused. I'm like, "Oh my God."

I didn't know what to do.

I did ask her about what he did for a living,

and she said, "Oh well, let me guess."

"Is he telling you that he's a detective or he's a cop?"

And I'm like, "Yes, both. So which one is he?"

And she says, "None."

"If you guys are married, where do you live and where does he live?"

"Because he's spent a lot of time at my house,

even when I'm not there sometimes."

And she said, "I live in Brooklyn."

"He does live mostly at his mother's house."

So quite an earful I got from her to confirm that he was definitely lying.

What's going on in my mind, at that time, is that, "How are you so stupid?"

I should have known.

When I did actually, finally calm down, I went back upstairs to the restaurant.

"I got a phone call from your wife."

Jerry said, "Oh, don't believe a thing she says."

And I'm like, "Okay, is she or is she not your wife?"

"Like, it's that simple."

"Oh, well, no, but yes."

And then he says that they were still married

because she had to get a green card.

And I said, "Okay, fine. People need to get their green card."

"You have to stay married a certain time."

"I get it, but you have two children with this woman."

Even when I confronted him about how I knew that he's really not a cop

and he's really not a detective,

he tried to spin it to make it seem like it's not really what it is.

I made it clear to him that it's... it's over between us,

and I don't have any hard feelings.

I thought that was it.

I have to ask, why do you want to be anonymous today?

Well, basically, you know, I don't want no one to think

I... I was associated with... with this... this lowlife Jerry,

but I... I feel that, you know, everyone has a right to know another part of the story,

and I just wanted to say my part.

When I first met Jerry, we both enjoyed going out, having drinks,

of course girls, you know.

And we started hanging out, becoming friends.

Jerry was married with two kids.

But, you know, on the side, he would go out.

He had this security company.

So he provides services to these nightclubs, these bars.

He would make believe he was a ladies' man.

He'd have all these girls here and there.

I never asked questions, you know.

He was a person that we'd go out, have drinks, so I don't really care.

The first time I met Seemona,

she opened a new restaurant at the time, a Golden Krust.

Seemona was on a different level than Jerry.

She's a successful woman. She has her own restaurant.

So I guess, you know, I think that's what drew him to her.

Sometimes he would be all, "Yeah, I'm gonna see my wife,"

but then other times, he would go hang out with Seemona.

I don't even know why Seemona would have wasted time

with someone like Jerry. Like, seriously, it's Jerry.

He would tell me he's an undercover detective

with the NYPD for years.

Jerry would walk around with a badge in his wallet,

but you would never see the badge.

You would just see the imprint of the badge through his wallet.

On one particular occasion, I had an expired sticker on my plate.

So we're driving, and the cops pulled me over.

While I was talking to the cop, Jerry was talking to the cop on the passenger side,

and he showed his wallet with the shield hidden.

And the both cop's like, "Okay, have a good day,"

without going further into asking me for a driver's license or anything.

Every time he would see cops, he would talk to them like he know 'em.

Jerry knew everybody.

I... I've heard him on the phone multiple times

talking to other people at the DA's office in Brooklyn.

Other people referred to him as a cop,

or he was paid to be an informant or something.

He did definitely know some people here or there.

However he's connected to them, that part I don't know.

I had a fallout with Jerry 'cause I couldn't really trust him.

He'd go behind my back and make me look bad in front of people.

Oh, he was a sketchy character.

After so many months, I told Jerry that I needed him to return the keys.

It was a Sunday around nine o'clock in the morning.

Nobody was in the house.

Jerry shows up at my back door, asking to talk to me.

I told him through the door, I didn't open the door,

no, I didn't want to talk to him.

I'm tired. I have a headache.

But he obviously do not know how to take no for an answer.

He agreed that he was gonna give me the keys,

and I won't have any trouble with him.

And I'm like, "All right, that's good."

"I'm glad that, you know, we don't have to fight over this."

So I opened the door.

As I turned around,

he pushed me face down.

I heard the damn duct tape.

I heard it.

Now I'm angry, and I'm cursing, really angry.

So I'm getting loud, and he just put a piece on my mouth.

Then he's trying to plead that we could still get back together,

you could take all the time you need.

And I saw Jerry's gun is there.

At one point, he was crying.

He was saying that he was gonna use the gun on himself.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, "Is he gonna commit suicide in my house?"

"Is he gonna shoot me and then do something to himself?"

And then he picked me up and, um...

pulled me down the stairs...

through the basement door,

pushed me down on the floor.

I was face down.

And that's when

the rape happened.

After the rape,

instead of me sitting there crying, he sat there crying

and begged me not to say anything or report it.

He got up and left,

and I ran upstairs and I locked the door.

And I ran to the front window

to make sure that I actually see him driving off.

I grab the phone. I call the cops.

After I made the 911 call, the police showed up.

They took me to the hospital right away.

There was a rape kit done there.

When I found out, I was very shocked.

That's, like, one of the worst things that could happen to a woman

and then in the way it happened.

He even resorted to using a gun,

a gun that we were all impressed that he had.

Sick.

Jerry was arrested.

Got put on 150,000-dollar bail, and his mother paid his bail.

And he was released.

When I was assigned the case against Jerry Ramrattan

I was working at the Queens District Attorney's office.

The case came into my office in March of 2009,

and it came in as a forcible rape case.

I brought Seemona Sumasar, the complainant,

into my office to meet with her.

She was highly composed in her conversation with me.

She was able to compellingly, uh, retell the details of what had happened to her.

All the evidence that we had at that point seemed to support her account,

as opposed to contradict it.

And we had a DNA match between Jerry Ramrattan

and the swab taken from Ms. Sumasar.

Seemona came across very credibly.

So it was a case that I felt very comfortable prosecuting.

The case was presented to the grand jury.

We secured an indictment against the defendant.

And, we were... at that point, we were waiting for the trial to launch.

I would get visits from random people that we knew

or mutual friends or some friend of his.

His mother called me.

They were pleading for him, asking me to drop the charges against him.

But I... I... I knew he... he... he sent them.

It was obvious.

I did get a restraining order, and then the calls stopped.

I remember Frank the ADA calling me,

telling me that by August of 2010,

we should be having some hearings for trial.

I remember thinking the sooner I get a trial out of this,

the sooner some decision is made.

It's gonna be over.

There's no way that he's gonna go to trial and get off of this. There's no way.

I think it was a Friday.

I was working at the restaurant.

A friend asked me to prepare a fish dish for him

and drop it off at his work,

which was just a few blocks away.

I was pulling up right in front of, um, the school where he worked.

As I'm pulling up, I hear sirens.

Of course, I didn't think it was for me.

So I thought I was safe.

But it was for me.

I was told to step out of the car.

Did I run a stoplight? Did I signal?

I just stepped out of the car

because I'm still thinking this is a big mistake.

Let me just do what they want, and handcuffs go on.

They just escort me to another vehicle,

and they started to drive towards Long Island.

At that point I'm like, "Why are we going to Long Island?"

And they were like, "When we get there, you'll understand."

I get to the precinct.

I was in the interrogation room with Detective Charles and Detective Nill.

Do I have anything to confess? Do I have anything to say?

And I said, "No. Like, clearly, you made a mistake. I shouldn't be here."

They are like, if I tell them now, it's going to be much easier later on.

"Did you think that I did something?"

"I didn't do anything, so I'm not thinking like that."

"You know exactly what you did."

I was pleading to her, like, "Why can't you people just tell me

what it is that you think I did, so I could say yes or no?"

But... but nothing.

For hours it went by.

At one point, Detective Charles brought a file,

and it was Jerry's picture in it.

And I ask, "Does this have something to do with Jerry?"

"If... if you think I did something, then he's behind it. I didn't do it."

And she brushed that off like, "No, this has nothing to do with him."

I worked for the New York City Police Department

in the division of the Police Impersonations unit.

I was working two crimes that happened in Queens

within the NYPD jurisdiction.

The cases were police impersonation robbery cases.

Victims were giving the description as one female committing these crimes.

We received a call from Nassau County.

They had a pattern similar to our pattern in Queens.

I was told, "We just arrested this person."

"And we believe that this is the same perpetrator that NYPD was looking for."

When I went to the Fourth Precinct in Nassau County,

Detective Charles showed me a photo array.

She said the complainant picked her out.

I asked Detective Charles, "Do you want to come inside with me?"

She says, "No, I don't need to." I said, "Okay," so I went in there myself.

During the interrogation,

I had no idea what it is that I was being accused and charged with.

By the time Marisa came,

it was... it was late, and I was worn out.

Like I was... I was done.

I didn't know what else to say.

I could see that she was crying.

I explained to her the two crimes that happened in Queens.

Marisa, she told me about an incident

that happened seven months ago or something like that.

Impersonation of a cop and robbery at gunpoint.

That's the two things that stuck out to me.

What I'm thinking at that point is impersonating a cop.

That's just like Jerry,

so I figured Jerry's obviously behind this.

And she starts to tell me about this person named Jerry

and that she was raped.

And she said, "I'm here because my ex is setting me up,"

because she was going to trial for the rape.

That's not what I expected.

From what I could see and how Seemona was acting

and, of course, what Seemona was telling me,

Seemona was not being heard.

And plus, the woman was raped, and I believe her.

And I remember how she held my arm as she kept saying,

"Please don't leave me here."

That's stuck with me until today. I still can't...

It's still very, um...

There's nothing we could do. It's not our case.

This is Nassau County.

When Detective Charles took me out of the room,

I said, "What's gonna happen to her?"

There's a lot of information here that needs to be investigated.

I could feel by the way Seemona described the cases

that supposedly she was supposed to be part of in Nassau County

that she didn't know what she was talking about.

She just didn't know how to do...

She didn't know how to do a robbery. She didn't know how to stop a car.

I was assured that she would be let free

if she did not do the crime in Nassau County,

but I knew she definitely did not do the crime in Queens.

I can't even remember in between, like,

how I got from point A to point B,

from the precinct to the courthouse,

but it was that same very morning a few hours later.

I was sure when I saw the judge,

they're gonna realize they really don't have anything

and they have no choice but to let me go home.

And then the next thing I remember, I'm being read charges.

In my mind, I'm like, uh, "Is this some type of joke?"

Now that you're telling me what I did, I know I absolutely didn't do that.

None of that even happened.

And then the next thing you know,

I'm being transported to Nassau County Correctional Facility.

I was at the store working.

My cousin comes up to me and he's crying.

All he keeps saying is, "Auntie Seemona."

So I'm like, "What happened?"

He was like, "She was locked up."

We closed the store and we left.

Nobody knew what was going on.

All we know is they have her for armed robbery.

Armed robbery? You gotta be kidding me.

It's like, "What the hell?"

Chiara, I talked to on the phone on the very first day.

I tried to give Chiara some hope because she's a child.

"Bear with me. I'm not gonna be home for a couple of days."

"No matter what, just listen to your grandmother and your aunt,

and that's it."

I became involved in Seemona's case at the request of a colleague

who knew me from representing people

who were arrested and convicted for crimes they had not committed.

Seemona was arrested on two separate felony complaints.

She faced catastrophic jail time.

I mean, her exposure was immense.

These two armed robberies carried 16 separate felonies

with a maximum exposure of up to 50 years in jail.

Seemona's bail was set at a million dollars.

At that point in time, the court was well aware that

Seemona could not make that bail unfortunately,

but it was a very serious charge, and it reflected that.

All I thought about at the time,

I keep on playing over and over again,

is that you could rape somebody and get away with 150,000 dollars bail,

but I'm... I'm sitting here, and I didn't do anything.

And I... I can't go home.

Seemona immediately professed that she was innocent of any of these crimes

and that she was convinced that Jerry was behind this

and was attempting to frame her,

to discredit her from his upcoming rape trial in Queens, New York.

As soon as I received the phone call and I learned what the allegations were,

I immediately thought, "This is a little surprising."

It didn't compute.

It didn't, uh, match what I had known of Seemona,

which made me very concerned for the viability of my prosecution.

At that point, the rape case was ready for trial.

But the jury in the rape case could be interpreting her credibility

in a very different light as someone who is convicted of those robberies,

which could be devastating to our ability to get a conviction in this case.

And so the rape case was kind of at a standstill,

while that case played out.

I'd like to say that I always believe my clients,

but you know, what's so important is to get down to the facts.

On September 15th, there was a call

by an individual by the name of Rajive,

and he claimed that he was stopped randomly,

robbed at gunpoint by a dark female, gold shield around her neck,

and also brandishing a black handgun.

It was investigated by New York PD, and then the case was dropped.

And then on March 2nd, 1:30 in the morning,

Terrell Lovell claimed that he was stopped randomly

by a dark Indian woman, approximately five feet,

gold shield around her neck, holding a black semi-automatic gun.

Handcuffed him, steals a hundred dollars US cash,

removes his Movado watch, a pinky ring.

Terrell was able to give a partial plate number of the Jeep.

On May 19th, 2010, Luz Johnson called 911

and reported a similar gunpoint robbery in Inwood, New York.

She also stated that this was executed by a dark-skinned Indian woman

brandishing a black handgun with a bulletproof vest, gold shield.

The thief steals allegedly 1,400 dollars from her purse.

In this case, Luz Johnson was able to give the full plate number,

and the police linked the car back to Seemona.

And they had conducted a photo array of Seemona Sumasar,

and Seemona was identified

by both Terrell Lovell and Luz Johnson,

resulting in her arrest.

Now according to Luz Johnson,

she called 911 at 1:30 a.m. on May 19th in Inwood, New York.

But the problem with her account is that

Seemona's over 100 miles away at the time of the robbery.

She was at the Mohegan Sun,

so it would be physically impossible for her to have committed this robbery.

One o'clock in the morning, if it's really May 19th,

I was in the casino, and I could prove this easily.

I made phone calls from up there.

Anything you do at... at... at... a gambling table is recorded.

They have those footage. I know enough to know that.

Between the surveillance footage placing her at the Mohegan Sun,

and, you know, if you make a call, you're going to ping off of cell towers.

It was just an ironclad alibi

that presented a host of problems for the prosecution.

Seemona testified in the grand jury under oath.

Not only was the alibi presented, proof for the alibi described it.

She was at... at the Mohegan Sun.

This was her and that, you know, she was with relatives

and arrived back at her place of business at 3:00 in the morning.

She couldn't have done this.

But in court, I heard that the picture wasn't clear enough.

It was grainy.

So that didn't really help me.

And then, even the cell tower actually picked up

the calls that I made to Chiara.

Apparently, anybody could have had my phone in Connecticut

while I'm in New York.

So that didn't help me either.

They had enough evidence, I guess, to put me on trial.

This is when I really started to panic.

I'm absolutely freaking out because I am trying to figure out

if they have all these things they concocted, all this falsified stuff,

what... what... what is going to be my defense?

A month goes by. Two months goes by.

The strip-downs, the pat-downs.

Every day seems like a lifetime when you're in a place like that.

I'm repeating myself over and over,

"This is all Jerry's doing and blah blah blah."

It... it doesn't help... it doesn't help because nobody is looking into him.

Seemona testified before the grand jury

she was being set up by Jerry.

So all you have to do is cross-reference phone records

of Luz Johnson, Terrell Lovell, and Jerry Ramrattan

for the cases in Nassau County

to at least be able to verify if there was any contact

and these people know each other.

I wrote a letter to the DA and adamantly argued

that I should be entitled to one year's worth of phone records,

uh, between Johnson, Lovell, and Jerry.

However, in this particular case, that was denied.

And I was nervous about the reality that I was not receiving any discovery

to link Jerry to any of these other individuals,

which was the core of Seemona's defense and without that, it was troubled.

One time, I was looking at the news,

saw that Seemona was locked up in Nassau County.

I was like, "Oh my God, this guy's plan actually went through,

and people actually believe his bullshit."

One day, Jerry messaged me, and he was like,

"We have to hang out. We have to, you know, catch up."

Jerry did mention that Seemona found out about his wife and kids.

At the time, Jerry did say he was trying to get back with his wife,

and Seemona was going to call Child Services to mess that up.

To be honest, I didn't think that was something she would do.

Then he went on to say, "I need you to do me a big favor."

"I need you to call the cops and tell them that Seemona pulled you over,

and she came up to your car with a gun and a badge."

At that moment, I'm like, "Wait a minute. Is he really serious?"

Like, "I'm not gonna do something like that."

He didn't want to take no for an answer.

I was like, "Oh my God, what the hell's wrong with this guy?"

After that, we went to meet a friend of his.

Rajive.

I overheard them saying something about the plan to frame Seemona.

That's when I kind of realized everything was real.

Like, this guy is really crazy.

So that kind of spooked me, and that's what kind of, like,

made me stay away from Jerry after that.

He's, like, someone you don't wanna mess with.

You don't want to be on their bad side.

We honestly thought she wasn't gonna get out

because of the way... the way everything was stacked against her.

We just felt like there was nothing we could do to prove her innocence.

The store didn't last.

I... I would say maybe less than a month after Seemona was arrested.

We just didn't know what to do because she... she handled everything.

I lost everything I worked for.

Every single thing.

When I found out that the house was gonna to go into foreclosure, I was angry.

It was always going to be mine, I guess, or in the family type of thing

because that house is the house I came into this country and I lived in.

When Seemona was in jail,

you see Chiara looking with the sad eyes.

So we would tell her, "Your mom is okay. She gonna be out soon."

But she looked so depressed.

You could see it in her face.

But I... I did not give up hope. I did not give up hope.

I said she didn't do it. One day, she will get out of there.

One day, one day somebody gonna prove her innocent.

So five months after Seemona was arrested and was jailed,

I went out with my friends to a bar in Queens

and Rajive, one of the witnesses that Jerry paid off,

he walked into the bar.

I greeted Rajive. I'm like, "Hi. How you doing?"

"You remember me?" You know.

And then he was talking to me and I'm like, "Listen."

"I know what you did."

"You said that Seemona robbed you, which we know is a lie."

"You need to... to tell the truth."

"And if you don't tell the truth, I'm gonna go to the DA and tell myself."

So he's like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I feel bad about it."

"I want to tell them the truth too."

"I'll call you, and we'll take care of it."

Instead of him calling me, Rajive called the cops.

And then a couple days later...

...the cops called me.

I went to the precinct and met with internal affairs.

I told them that Jerry was the mastermind behind this.

Seemona didn't do anything.

She was innocent, and Jerry paid off witnesses to lie

and say she robbed them.

The detective did not believe me.

He told me, "No, Seemona was guilty. Jerry has nothing to do with it."

And I was working alongside with Seemona and I was threatening the witnesses.

The detective threw the handcuffs on me and takes me to jail.

It took a while, but eventually we learned that

Rajive reported the conversation to Jerry.

Uh, Jerry then had Rajive Mohanlal file a police report,

uh, stating that somebody had tampered with him,

and he had the informant arrested for tampering with the witness.

Well, when I saw the charges, I was like,

"Oh my God, they're actually charging me with a felony for something I didn't do?"

At that point, I was trying to defend myself.

I had to hire a lawyer.

Financially, it was draining.

I lost time out of my job.

Emotionally, I was, like, depressed, and, um, I was angry.

I just had to get... I had to get these charges dropped.

The last time I went to see Seemona,

it seemed like she had lost hope too,

that she just didn't know what to do, what to say.

It was... it was just weird. It was mostly silence.

It took a lot of energy just to be there, to, like, have a visit.

It was bad. It was bad.

I got sick. I couldn't eat.

I lost a lot of weight.

My skin was breaking out.

My hair was coming out in clumps.

I had ear infections.

Everything was just spiraling down, one by one.

It was... it was hard because he...

Jerry took everything, everything away from me. I lost everything.

And even... even... even seven months of being with my child.

In December of 2010,

Sophia Lewis walked into the Nassau DA's office

and asked to speak to somebody about, um, Seemona's case.

Um, could you tell us, first of all, how did you come to know Jerry Ramrattan?

I met him in a nightclub in Queens.

After you met him, um, you developed a relationship with him?

Yes.

Okay. Is it fair to say you became boyfriend and girlfriend?

Yes.

Okay. Did you hear anything about, uh, something that Jerry wanted to do?

He said that he wanted to set his ex up because she had threatened to set him up.

So he was going to get her first before she sets him up.

She brought to light the fact that there had been no robbery

and that it had all been staged.

And who was that person that he got to do it?

He told me it was his cousin Rajive.

And he said, "This is how it's gonna go down."

"You're gonna say that, you know, this person robbed him or whatever."

Jerry drove Rajive around,

and Sophia Lewis was in the car, uh, with him at this time.

Jerry asked Rajive to, uh, help him stage a robbery against an ex-girlfriend.

Uh, Jerry, uh, pulled out his handgun, put it on his lap,

and told Rajive that, you know, something could happen to his family

if he didn't help Jerry out.

I think Rajive took it seriously.

Did you remember anything else he said to Rajive about this at all?

He said before how it was all gonna go down.

He was gonna have people in Queens to say they got robbed,

and the last place that he would want to pick her up

would be Nassau County because their rules are stricter than Queens.

Now what about Terrell Lovell and Luz Johnson?

- Do you know those two individuals? - Yes.

Jerry offered Terrell Lovell and Luz Johnson

20,000 dollars to cooperate with him and stage this robbery.

They were never paid the money.

As the details of what had happened became clear,

I was stunned at the machinations that Jerry had gone through

in order to, uh, try to derail the rape prosecution.

In the first staged robbery,

very cleverly, there was no license plate given.

It sounds very reasonable.

Rajive was scared. He doesn't get a license plate.

And then the incident in Nassau with Terrell Lovell...

He got a partial license plate.

By the time of the third incident, we were much closer to trial,

and I think Jerry knew that, you know, he had to close the loop.

And so when the fake robbery that was staged with Luz Johnson occurred...

...you get the full license plate,

and there's no way that the police couldn't put two and two together

and end up with Seemona.

And so it was actually really devious and incredibly clever on Jerry's part.

Jerry, at various points, had been a confidential informant

for a number of different units within the NYPD.

He knew how the police operated, he knew how the detectives operated,

and he was able to leverage that knowledge

to make these accusations look better than they were.

Did Jerry ever say anything else to you about these false robberies or...

No, 'cause after the first two, I told him I didn't want to know anything.

I told him I didn't want to know anything, don't tell me anything.

I don't wanna know what you're doing.

And he was pissed off about that.

Sophia Lewis was becoming increasingly fed up with his behavior.

And she deserves a lot of credit for trying to do the right thing.

I get called down that I have a visitor.

I thought that somebody was coming there to tell me something terrible happened

because no family member were scheduled to visit me.

But it ended up being Tony, and he came with good news.

And he told me I was gonna be released.

You know, here we are, preparing for the trial of her lifetime,

and all the charges were being dropped.

It's oh my God. Thank you that the truth has finally come out.

I had never had so much energy in my life,

jumping up and down for joy.

He had Chiara there, so I got to see her right away.

Didn't have to wait.

If she wasn't as strong as she was throughout the entire seven months,

I don't think I would have made it.

So yeah, I can't think of a better day.

The first time we saw Seemona was really emotional.

It was a lot of crying.

We... we just wanted to celebrate everything.

We just wanted to make a big deal.

If she was going to go eat a meal, we wanted to make it a big deal.

It was... it was... it was great.

She was framed.

A Long Island woman spent months in jail for a crime she did not commit,

and now police are finally admitting that she was set up by her ex-boyfriend.

Once the conspiracy unraveled,

the first thing to do is build the case against Jerry.

We were able to flip the three co-conspirators,

Rajive Mohanlal, Terrell Lovell, and Luz Johnson,

and use them as witnesses to testify against Jerry.

They gave statements that there were, in fact, no robberies,

that Jerry had coached them,

that Jerry had shown them photographs of Seemona

so that they could identify her, that Jerry had provided them plate numbers

and they sang like canaries.

And the gig was up.

As the case was moving towards trial,

the defense provided to us an informant who knew Jerry and who also knew Rajive.

When Frank asked me to testify,

automatically, I knew my case would have been dropped.

So I started, like, jumping up for joy.

I felt like I hit the lottery. You know, that's how happy I was.

What Jerry did was wrong, and he needs to pay.

He needs to face justice. That was my closure to move forward.

The evidence of the conspiracy, when we went to trial, was overwhelming.

We had each of the co-conspirators testifying for the prosecution.

We had his ex-girlfriend Sophia Lewis getting onto the witness stand,

testifying against Jerry.

The conspiracy case and the rape case were joined as one indictment.

Um, and that was primarily because

in order to tell the story of the conspiracy,

the rape was necessary.

Uh, the rape was the motivating factor for Jerry, uh,

conspiring to bring false charges against Seemona.

Seemona was superb on the witness stand.

She was as compelling as any single witness

I have ever seen testify in a court of law.

During her testimony, jurors were crying.

You could hear a pin drop.

She gave a chillingly detailed account

of what happened with her and the defendant.

At the end of this case, the jury came back with a verdict.

It was the only time in my career I got a standing ovation from the jury.

The evidence showed him to be a violent rapist,

an evil and vindictive schemer,

a sinister manipulator, a diabolical conniver.

And he deserves no mercy from me,

and he won't get it.

Jerry was sentenced to 25 years, which was the maximum on the rape,

plus seven years consecutive for the conspiracy,

for a total of 32 years of incarceration.

After he was convicted, he made a rant as to how, you know,

the true story was still gonna come out.

It's fine, you know, whatever has to happen today has to happen.

But it's nowhere done and over.

I maintain my innocence, and there's more to come.

It's not done.

How evil someone can be to do something like this?

She has a kid, and she was in jail for so long.

And he was out there, like, having the time of his life.

Well, that's evil. Just pure evil.

When I found out that he was found guilty,

to me, it's like, "I told you so."

Like, I was more angry about it, you know what I mean?

Why... why couldn't anybody listen to me?

Why did it have to take seven months for us to go through this, you know?

For me, like, I knew it all... all... all along.

So I decided to pursue a case against Detective Charles and Nassau County.

When Seemona was arrested and interrogated,

Detective Charles had a folder with information about Jerry in it.

How did they have Jerry's folder on their desk

if they didn't really believe he was somehow involved with this?

So they knew at the date of her arrest

that Jerry may have been involved in these cases.

That is probably the only time in my career

that I've ever seen anything like that.

In my professional opinion, the prosecutors were asleep at the wheel.

The detectives were bumbling buffoons, as well as, unfortunately, dishonest.

They knew that Jerry was an informant with the NYPD.

They knew that Jerry purported to many, many people

that he was in law enforcement when he wasn't.

Detectives knew you could absolutely not trust a word that came out of his mouth.

He would tell you with a straight face it's Sunday when it was Monday.

And failure to really investigate him and look into this further

was just pure malfeasance.

I never said, "Oh, I wanted x amount."

I never relayed that to anybody else or "I deserve that amount."

I just wanted to win, I think.

Admit that you all were way out of line and wrong

because I didn't want to have to go to testify,

have Chiara go to testify.

Any settlement they probably would have gave me,

I probably would have just said yes to, just for it to be over.

So yes, that was a relief, and I couldn't have asked for a better outcome.