It Was Love, Federal Stalking Defendant Testifies

“I’m going to provide you with evidence that Ms. Doe was jealous of my own sons. This is a mother of a 4-year-old daughter, and she was jealous of my 3- and-5-year-old sons. She would hit me. She would verbally abuse me in the office to isolate me from my co-workers. She bit my hand, creating nerve damage in the middle of a Chuck E. Cheese [restaurant] in front of my sons. She stabbed me with a knife, and she vandalized vehicles,” Latigo said.

He said Doe is motivated by greed. That's clear, he said, from the defamation lawsuits she filed against him in Harris County Court in November 2014 and April 2015, each seeking $2 million in damages.

The first lawsuit ended with a nonsuit order, and the second was dismissed with an agreement between Latigo and Doe, court records show.

Latigo smiled throughout the proceedings Tuesday as prosecutors called their first three witnesses to the stand, employees of Yahoo, Google and Comcast, who testified about email and internet records the government says will prove that Latigo created a [email protected] account, from which he emailed threats to Doe’s personal email account.

The tech employees' number- and date-heavy testimony about IP addresses and email log-ins, through which investigators can tie computers and smart phones to specific locations on a given date, was a drab introduction to the scandalous testimony of the prosecution’s next witness, Kate Birenbaum.

Birenbaum said she was working in the law firm Seyfarth Shaw’s Houston office, as an outside counsel for Eni Trading & Shipping, when an Eni human resources manager called her about a situation at the office.

The HR manager said an Eni Trading contract worker was sitting at her desk crying because there was a relationship going on between two coworkers, and the woman in the relationship, Jane Doe, was so distraught she had tried to kill herself.

Birenbaum said that after Eni suspend Latigo, she interviewed him and Doe.

Federal prosecutor Sherri Zack stood next to Birenbaum at the witness stand, flipping through the pages of Birenbaum’s report about the investigation.

“Can you summarize what she told you about her relationship with Mr. Latigo?” Zack asked Birenbaum.

“She said Mr. Latigo was a peer at work, and they had entered into a relationship,” Birenbaum said, pulling her zebra-patterned sweatshirt tight in the chilly courtroom. “And at some point he had gotten controlling and he got upset with her because she had lunch with someone he didn’t like. So in response he set up a website, a Facebook account, and he sent her a link and the idea was that he was threatening her.

“He had posted nude pictures of her on this Facebook account. And he said, ‘If you don't give me a password to your email account, or if you don't let me in your house, I’m going to make this public, and share this Facebook page and all these naked pictures with your family and friends.’”

Birenbaum said Doe showed her several emails that Latigo allegedly had sent from [email protected] in 2014.

“What is the subject line there?” Zack asked.

“Have you seen my new big tits?” Birenbaum said as nonchalantly as if she were reading a grocery list.

“What is the content of the email?” Zack asked.

“I really love showing them off. Let me post some of my sexy selfies. I can be so dirty at times. I have some pics of me kissing girls too. Mmm,” Birenbaum read.

Zack asked: “It appears that [email protected] sent that to Jane Doe's legitimate account. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“Did you think it was odd that Ms. Doe would be sending herself pictures of her own breasts?” Zack asked.

“I didn’t think the emails were coming from Ms. Doe,” Birenbaum replied.

Birenbaum said Doe also showed her an email containing a screenshot of a Facebook page Latigo had set up under the name “Aborted Magdalena.”

On the Facebook post, Latigo assumed the voice of the aborted baby, Birenbaum said.

“From Magdalena aborted it says: ‘Thank you everyone for supporting me. I want to live. I think it’s important that everyone see what a brutal mom I have. Will be posting soon a video of her making her first attempt at aborting me because she doesn’t know who the father is,’” Birenbaum said.

Birenbaum said that when she interviewed Latigo he seemed defensive, which she found understandable, as he’d just been suspended from his job.

“At some point during the interview I said: ‘Let me ask you a question. If someone sends naked pictures to you and doesn’t want you to send them to anybody else, but you go ahead and send them to other folks, would you consider that harassment?’ And he paused for a minute and then he said, ‘I think it depends on the circumstances,’” Birenbaum testified.

She said she asked Latigo to delete the photos, but he indicated they were his and he was not going to delete them.

She recommended that the company fire Latigo immediately.

On cross-examination, Latigo told Birenbaum, who crossed her arms and peered at him with a quizzical look, that there was nothing in the SexyCatDoe emails to prove he sent them.

Birenbaum conceded that, but said the emails point to Latigo because at the same time Doe was getting emails from the SexyCatDoe account, Latigo was emailing her from his own account.

“So what I would say is: Did I see your name on any of the SexyCatDoe emails? No. But what I did find is when you lay out the emails in date order, what you find is that there's a harmony between what SexyCatDoe is talking about and what Mr. Latigo is talking about,” Birenbaum said.

The trial is to continue through Thursday and possibly into next week.

Follow @cam_langford

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