Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America’s Dad

Excerpted from Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America’s Dad by Nicole Weisensee Egan. Copyright © 2019. Available from imprint, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. 

Like millions of other Americans who helped make the comedy one of the most popular shows in the history of television, I became a fan of The Cosby Show when it first aired in the 1980s. It debuted my senior year of high school, the same year my older brother died, and watching the show gave me an escape out of my own, fraught home and into the cozy normalcy of a family not traumatized by death. For me the Huxtables were a thirty-minute visit to a warm and stable world, where the kids would borrow each other’s clothes without permission and sneak out to concerts, all while the parents lovingly guided them with witty life lessons. My own mother was nearly paralyzed with grief over the loss of her only son, and my father had all he could do to hold her together while juggling the demands of a job that took him out of town two or three nights a week. The Cosby Show was steady. The Cosby Show made me feel safe.

Watching the show again brought me back for a moment to that time in my life, and I mean that in a good way. Cliff Huxtable’s tough- love parenting style, sprinkled with humor, also reminded me of my own father. And this episode was particularly tender—it revealed a dad who worried for his son while at the same time acknowledging his own flaws as a parent. When Theo tells his parents he is indeed dyslexic, Cliff and Claire erupt in cheers.

What I also appreciated, though I didn’t know it when I was a teenager, was that the show was never overly saccharine—funny, yes, but not hyper-sentimentalized. In this episode Vanessa chastises Cliff for calling Theo “lazy” all those years when it was really dyslexia holding him back, and Cliff doesn’t laugh her off; he knows she’s right. Then, when Theo later proudly reveals he got a B-plus on his next test, Cliff couldn’t be prouder. “I think he should probably finish undergraduate school in two years because there’s no sense in holding him back in going to medical school and becoming what? Dr. Huxtable Jr.!”

“Theo’s Gift” had heart, intelligence, and humor, a recipe that was the show’s hallmark. It was real and familiar. I’d watched my own father and brother engage in similar battles throughout my childhood— although, unlike Cliff and Theo, they were never able to resolve their issues before my brother’s death. When Bill Cosby’s son died young too, I couldn’t help but feel an emotional connection to him—his love for his family, the grief he must have felt. I mourned with him.

That night, watching the rerun while my husband, used to my fascination with Cosby by now, read a book, I found myself mesmerized, laughing along with the jokes, smiling at the warm-hearted moments. And horrified too. Because now, all these years later, I knew that the Bill Cosby on my screen—with his dad jokes and self-deprecating style of imparting wisdom to his kids, the man who left an entire generation wishing he was their father—was also a monster.

A monster who preyed on women, manipulating them into a false sense of security, drugging them, and assaulting them. And masquerading as Cliff Huxtable—the personification of the family-oriented, warm comedy he’d been performing for decades—was the perfect disguise.

For nearly half a century, enabled by a cadre of paid handlers and silencers who did their jobs protecting his carefully honed image, Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted women who thought he was their mentor. He slowly and carefully coaxed each one into feeling safe and cared for and then left them to pick up the pieces of their lives.

I was still a believer in the Bill Cosby/Cliff Huxtable myth in 2005, when Andrea Constand first told the police what Cosby had done to her. I was working as a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, a tabloid-style daily that was part of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, when I first heard that a woman had accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her. Along with the rest of America, I was shocked. And itching to disbelieve. Not the Cos! I thought. But then my boss assigned me the story, and I began reporting.

I made calls. I asked questions. I read files.

I grew more and more astounded.

With every conversation, every interview, every new source, the validity of the charges came to light. The women who spoke out were credible. Crimes had been committed, and it didn’t matter that the perpetrator was one of America’s most beloved cultural icons. The truth had to be revealed.

So I wrote about the case. I wrote and wrote—about Andrea Con- stand, the court filings, the evidence, the other accusers. The more I wrote about the case, the more the story spread and other news out- lets picked it up and broadcast the details I’d reported.

I was thrilled to see my stories go out on Knight-Ridder’s wire service. But Cosby, obviously, was not. It wasn’t long before Cosby’s attorney, Marty Singer, threatened to sue my newspaper. Then the prosecutor on the case made veiled threats to have me arrested.

Meanwhile other media outlets were stepping away from the scan- dal. Maybe they were too skeptical, I surmised at the time. Or maybe they were too afraid. Cosby had always had an uneasy, often adversarial relationship with the press, and few were eager to take him on. “Newspaper columnists have been . . . reluctant to join the fray,” wrote Tony Norman, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Who can blame us? Nobody wants to incur the wrath of Cos over what may turn out to be a frivolous charge.”

But I couldn’t give it up. I believed Andrea. And the lies that I believed Cosby’s attorneys were telling about her infuriated me. Cosby’s power and influence may have swayed other reporters and editors, but my editors supported me as I dug deeper into the research and the slowly unfolding truth: while Cosby was enjoying the adoration of a public who loved his down-to-earth, no-profanity comedy routines, television shows, and Jell-O pudding pop commercials, cementing his image as America’s Dad, he was also leading a dark, secret life cultivating friendships with young women by promising them mentorship and connections and then waiting until they felt secure to drug and violate them.

—

Nicki Egan is an award-winning journalist and former People magazine senior writer who was the first reporter in the country to dig deeply into the Bill Cosby scandal in 2005 when other reporters shied away. Starting from scratch she was able to quickly become sourced and began breaking exclusive stories. When the scandal bubbled up again in October 2014 she was able to quickly reconnect with those victims and sources and began breaking exclusive stories once again, including the news of Cosby’s arrest on Dec. 30, 2015. She continues to get interviews with accusers who have never spoken and develop leads on new angles.

Find out more about Nicole on her website https://www.nicoleweisenseeegan.com/

Follow her on Twitter @nweisenseeegan

CHASING COSBY, The Downfall Of America’s Dad

The definitive account of Bill Cosby’s transition from revered father figure to convicted criminal, told by a veteran crime reporter and former senior writer for People magazine

Bill Cosby’s decades-long career as a sweater-wearing, wholesome TV dad came to a swift and stunning end on April 26, 2018, when he was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. The mounting allegations against Bill Cosby–more than 60 women have come forward to accuse him of similar crimes–and his ultimate conviction were a shock to Americans, who wanted to cleave to their image of Cosby as a pudding-pop hero.

Award-winning journalist and former People magazine senior writer Nicki Weisensee Egan was the first reporter to dig into the story when Constand went to the police in 2005. Other news organizations looked away, but Egan doggedly investigated the case, developing ties with entrenched sources and discovering incriminating details that would ultimately come to influence the prosecution.

In her debut book, Chasing Cosby, Egan shares her firsthand account of Cosby’s 13-year run from justice. She tells us how Cosby planned and executed his crimes, and how Hollywood alliances and law enforcement knew what Cosby was doing but did nothing to stop him. A veteran crime reporter, Egan also explores the cultural and social issues that influenced the case, delving into the psychological calculations of a serial predator and into the psyche of a nation that fervently wanted to put their faith in the innocence of “American’s Dad.”

Rich in character and rife with dramatic revelations about popular culture, media power, and our criminal system, Egan’s account will inform and fascinate readers with its candid telling of humanity’s most enduring tale: the rise and fall of a cultural icon.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

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