Two of Mr. Rosario’s sisters, whom he introduced to Mr. Ray, also testified. One, Felicia Rosario, said that Mr. Ray had directed her to have sex with strangers while she was in a romantic relationship with him.
He then told her she owed him large sums, in part because she had “cheated” on him, she testified, and said during a trip to Washington, D.C., in 2012 that he would arrange for his law enforcement friends to “come after” her if she did not do as he directed.
Ms. Rosario testified that she tried to kill herself during that trip.
“I felt so guilty, because of the things that he was saying that I had done or had participated in that I hadn’t,” she said. “I was completely overwhelmed and terrified.”
Ms. Drury said that Mr. Ray created an atmosphere in which people were pressured so often into false confessions that they became easy. “Once I sort of started confessing to those things, each one was like further proof of all the others,” she said.
Mr. Ray demanded payments from her after she falsely confessed to poisoning him, she testified, and threatened her, too, with prison. In 2015 she became a prostitute at Mr. Ray’s suggestion, she said, working seven days a week for four years and giving him about $2.5 million in proceeds.
She fled New York, she said, after an incident in 2018 in which Mr. Ray came to a hotel room in Midtown where she was staying, handcuffed her naked to a chair, choked her with a leash and collar and repeatedly placed plastic bags over her head, causing her to gasp for oxygen.
Mr. Ray was taunting her all the while, Ms. Drury said.
When he was not using the bags to cut off her breathing, Ms. Drury said, Mr. Ray held them in his hands, toying “very delicately” with them and creating “rustling” and “snapping” sounds.
“He did that throughout the course of the night,” she testified. “It was terrifying.”