ACCUSER CALLS COSBY ‘SERIAL RAPIST’

NORRISTOWN, PENN. A former actress who has accused Bill Cosby of rape drew gasps from the courtroom audience Wednesday when she declared, “I want to see a serial rapist convicted.”

The blunt statement from Heidi Thomas served as a dramatic exclamation point to a cross-examination that stretched over two days.

Thomas, who is in her late 50s, is the first of five women prosecutors may call as witnesses in hopes of persuading jurors that Cosby engaged in a years-long pattern of drugging and sexually assaulting women.

Thomas testified that Cosby had offered to mentor her in the mid-1980s, and that he raped her after pressuring her to take a sip of wine during an acting exercise that left her incapacitated. Prosecutors bolstered Thomas’s testimony with a cache of mementoes that the former actress had kept in a scrapbook for many years.