Dershowitz accuser eyes Kid Vic suit
Manhattan jurors heard horrific details Monday of how a 6-year-old boy from Harlem endured months of torture at the hands of his mother’s partner before he was beaten with a broken broomstick and hung to die on the back of a bathroom door.
Zymere Perkins was killed Sept. 26, 2016, in the roachand maggot-infested apartment where he lived with his mother Geraldine Perkins on W. 135th St., according to authorities.
In her opening argument at Manhattan Supreme Court, Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell told jurors an enraged Rysheim Smith killed his girlfriend’s son — who had bed wetting and other issues — after the little boy defecated in the living room and tried to hide the waste.
“He picked up Zymere, held him by the arm and began to beat him with a stick like a piñata,” she said.
O’Connell told the court of how Smith allegedly took the limp boy to the bathroom, where he “waterboarded him in the shower,” dropped him to the floor, beat his head with a shower rod and when he finally lost consciousness hung him on the back of the bathroom door by his T-shirt.
O’Connell also told jurors they’ll learn how Perkins waited hours to check on Zymere after the beating and then hastily carried his dead body to the hospital long after he could be saved.
Pictures were shown of Zymere’s badly beaten, lifeless body that were taken by investigators on the day of his death at St. Luke’s Hospital. The graphic images showed bruises and cuts on the emaciated-looking little boy’s head, neck and ribs.
Michael Nelson, an ER nurse at St. Luke’s who took the stand Monday, testified that Perkins ran inside the hospital “screaming” with
Zymere in her arms.
“He was extremely cold. I felt the coldness of him through his clothes,” he said. “This child was dead for a while.”
As hospital staff tried in vain to revive Zymere, they discovered bruises and cuts all over his body, Nelson said, prompting an immediate investigation.
“There was no bringing this child back,” he said.
O’Connell painted a disturbing picture for jurors of the hellish existence Zymere endured the last year of his short life. In gruesome detail, she described how flies had laid eggs in the fecal matter embedded in the apartment’s carpet, and that the floor was crawling with maggots.
“That’s the room Zymere Perkins slept in,” she said. “In a makeshift bed in a corner of the living room.”
She also said little Zymere was “deprived of food as punishment” and given bread for dinner while Perkins and Smith “ate like kings and queens.”
“When he was caught eating from the garbage because he was so hungry, the defendant beat him mercilessly,” O’Connell said. “He had broken ribs on broken ribs. This child had more fractures than he had ribs.”
O’Connell said Zymere was so malnourished, his thymus gland — which plays a vital role in immunity — disappeared altogether.
Perkins, 28, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in 2017. She has been in custody for three years and is expected to receive a two-tosix year sentence in exchange for her cooperation.
Smith, who met Perkins on the street, began beating little Zymere early in the couple’s relationship, and forced his mother to “emulate” the same violence against her son under the guise of discipline, O’Connell said.
“Zymere was disciplined by Rysheim Smith because he thought it would make a man out of a boy,” O’Connell said.
The prosecutor said a fragile Perkins entrusted her new boyfriend with her Lupus medication, her welfare card and her cellphone.
“And disciplinary authority over Zymere,” O’Connell added. “She put a man’s importance to her ahead of the life and welfare of her child.”
A victim of Jeffrey Epstein plans to bring new claims against the perv’s famous former personal attorney, Alan Dershowitz, under New York’s Child Victims Act.
Virginia Giuffre’s attorney Charles Cooper said she would likely take advantage of the new law that allows victims of child sex abuse to sue their alleged abusers. Giuffre has sued Dershowitz (inset) for defamation, charging that the noted Harvard Law professor smeared her name by calling her a liar.
Giuffre claims that Epstein lent her to Dershowitz for sex. Dershowitz adamantly denies he slept with any of Epstein’s victims, including Giuffre. He dismissed her plan to sue under the Child Victims Act as a publicity stunt.
“She wasn’t a child,” Dershowitz said after the hearing in Manhattan Federal Court, adding that she has testified she wasn’t underage when Epstein began trafficking her for sex.
“She changes her facts to fit the law,” Dershowitz said.
“She has a long record of lying about prominent people.”
Giuffre’s attorney did not specify when they would file the Child Victims Act claims in an amended lawsuit. Her legal team plans to dig into Dershowitz’s representation of Epstein around the time he negotiated a sweetheart plea deal in 2008. Under the agreement, Epstein avoided serious jail time for his alleged international sex trafficking scheme.
“If Mr. Dershowitz was involved with Mr. Epstein in the activities alleged … his motivations to negotiate the plea deal that has become so controversial will be relevant,” Cooper said.
Dershowitz, meanwhile, will dig into into the legal tactics used by Giuffre’s famous former attorney, David Boies.
Dershowitz’s legal team claimed that a recent New York Times article on a mystery man claiming to have access to surveillance footage from Epstein’s many mansions backed up the law professor’s claim he is the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by Boies.