FOURTEEN times: Over three years, Heard claims this is the tally of attacks Depp launched on her

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Amber Heard has claimed Johnny Depp launched a tally of 14 attacks on her – including ‘throwing glasses at her’ and ‘pushing her against a wall’.

Depp is suing the publisher of The Sun for libel after it labelled him a ‘wife beater’. He has called the accusation ‘utter falsity’ and ‘fraudulent’ and has claimed Heard abused him throughout their marriage. 

The hearing continues on Monday before Mr Justice Nicol with evidence from witnesses including Depp’s screenwriter Stephen Deuters.   

1. Early 2013

Miss Heard says Depp was completely sober until early 2013. Around that time he allegedly hit her for the first time when they were in Los Angeles. She claims Depp later cried and apologised, telling her that he sometimes turns into ‘the monster’ when he snaps.

Depp has expressly denied hitting Miss Heard and said that around that time he had confined himself to ‘drinking wine and using marijuana, having been sober from around December 2011 to August 2012’.

2. March 8, 2013

Miss Heard claims Depp was angry she had hung a painting, by her ex-partner Tasya Van Ree, by her bed in her LA home. He tried to set the painting on fire and hit her so hard that blood from her lip ended up on the wall.

Depp, however, says he simply asked Miss Heard to move the painting from the bedroom ‘as a courtesy’ and that she had an ‘ex-treme reaction’. He also says a text he sent later, describing the evening as a ‘disco bloodbath’, was to placate Miss Heard and not an apology for alleged violence.

3. June 2013

Miss Heard and Depp were in Hicksville, US, with a group including her sister Whitney and his assistant Nathan Holmes.

Miss Heard says Depp, who was taking drugs, became ‘enraged’ and ‘jealous’ when one of her friends touched her. He threw glasses at her, ripped her dress and damaged the cabin they were staying in.

Depp says he drank and took magic mushrooms, as did Miss Heard and her friends who also took MDMA.

He claims Miss Heard’s friend touched her in an ‘extremely sexual manner’ and he spoke to her to ask her to stop.

4. May 24, 2014

The pair took a private plane from Boston to LA. Miss Heard says that during the flight Depp, who had been drinking heavily, threw objects at her, pushed a chair at her, slapped her and kicked her in the back before passing out in the toilet.

Depp says Miss Heard ‘began to harangue him’ as he was sketching in a notebook, he then tried to ‘playfully tap her on the bottom with his foot’, at which Miss Heard took ‘great offence’ and continued to verbally berate him.

5. August 17, 2014

The couple went to the Bahamas – Depp says to cure his dependence on painkillers, although Miss Heard claims he was trying to give up other drugs too.

She says he had ‘several manic episodes’ and his private doctor had to be flown over to help. She alleges that he slapped, kicked and grabbed her by the hair during an attack.

Depp alleges that Miss Heard stopped a nurse from giving him treatment while he was going through withdrawal.

6. Dec 17, 2014

Miss Heard says Depp was violent towards her in LA and later texted, calling himself a ‘****ing savage’ and a ‘lunatic’. Depp denies any allegation of violence and says The Sun’s publisher has ‘failed to provide any particulars of the alleged violence’.

7. January 25, 2015

While the couple were in Tokyo, Miss Heard claims, Depp shoved and slapped her and grabbed her by the hair, before standing over her and shouting while she was on the floor. Depp denies this.

8. March, 2015

Depp is said to have repeatedly assaulted Miss Heard after an argument over his alleged use of MDMA during a three-day trip to Australia. She says he stayed up all night, taking pills and drinking, and then attacked her again the next morning.

The following night, he pushed her into a table tennis table, tore off her nightgown and attacked her, before smashing a telephone into a wall and severing the top of his middle finger.

She claims he wrote messages to her around the house in a mixture of paint and blood from his finger – which Mr Depp admits doing while ‘in shock’ – as well as having ‘urinated all over the house in an attempt to write messages’, which he denies.

Depp says Miss Heard was in ‘a prolonged and extreme rage’ following an argument over a post-nuptial agreement. He says he then ‘broke my sobriety’ with several glasses of vodka, before Miss Heard threw a bottle at him, severing the top of his finger, and stubbed a cigarette out on his cheek.

9. March 2015

Miss Heard says Depp became enraged when they were in LA with her sister and began destroying things in the house before hitting her ‘hard and repeatedly’. She also claims he tried to push her sister down the stairs before hitting her again.

Depp says Miss Heard was ‘berating him in a rage’ as he tried to leave, threw a can of Red Bull at him and punched him in the face before he left.

10. August 2015

While they were on the Eastern and Oriental Express in south-east Asia, Miss Heard alleges Depp picked a fight with her, hit her and pushed her against a wall by the throat, causing her to fear for her life. This is denied by Depp.

11. Nov 26, 2015

In LA, Depp is alleged to have ripped Miss Heard’s shirt and ‘threw her around the room’, throwing a wine glass and a heavy glass decanter at her, as well as pushing her over a chair which caused her to bang her head against a wall.

Depp says they were in LA for Thanksgiving, but denies any abuse.

12. Dec 15, 2015

Miss Heard claims Depp threw a decanter at her in their penthouse in LA, then slapped her and dragged her through the apartment by her hair, pulling ‘large chunks’ from her scalp.

She says he then followed her upstairs and pushed her to the floor while shouting ‘you think you’re a ****ing tough guy’ before headbutting her. Miss Heard says that when she told Depp she wanted to leave him, he grabbed her and screamed: ‘I ****ing will kill you – I’ll ****ing kill you, you hear me?’

Depp says Miss Heard fabricated the alleged violence, falsely claiming that blonde hair on the floor was her hair.

He also claims that the only violence committed on that date was by Miss Heard, who ‘violently attacked’ him.

13. April 21, 2016

Miss Heard says Depp arrived home late for her birthday party ‘drunk and high on drugs’ and they had an argument after the guests had left.

She claims he threw a bottle of champagne at her and shoved her to the floor several times before leaving a note reading: ‘Happy ****ing Birthday.’

Depp says he arrived around two hours late following a meeting with his new business manager and accountants, and that he was not on drugs but ‘shocked from what he had learnt at the meeting about his business affairs’.

He claims Miss Heard had been drinking heavily and attacked him while he was reading in bed, punching him in the face four times before he grabbed her arms to stop her.

The next day, he says, Miss Heard or one of her friends defecated in their bed, with Miss Heard later telling the building manager Kevin Murphy that it was ‘just a harmless prank’ – at which point Depp ‘resolved to divorce Miss Heard’.

14. May 21, 2016

Depp arrived at their LA apartment, allegedly ‘drunk and high’ while Miss Heard was there with friends. She said he became very angry, throwing her phone at her and hitting her in the eye before smashing ‘everything he could’ with a magnum of champagne.

He says he went to the apartment with two security guards to collect his belongings after Miss Heard and her sister repeatedly tried to contact him. Depp claims his two security guards entered the room when they heard Miss Heard shouting, and saw her repeatedly screaming ‘Stop hitting me, Johnny’ while he was 20ft away in the kitchen.

He says that two police officers who attended the apartment after the incident ‘saw no injuries or bruising or swelling’.

Depp wife Amber’s violent birthday party from hell: He hurled champagne bottle, threw phone at her face and taunted her for soiled bed ‘joke’, court told

By Sam Greenhill, Chief Reporter for the Daily Mail

Johnny Depp hurled a phone at his wife’s face and called her ‘Amber T**d’ for soiling their bed after a blazing row on her 30th birthday party, it was claimed yesterday.

The High Court was shown a photograph of Amber Heard’s bruised face, which the Hollywood star agreed showed a red mark.

Depp had been late for his wife’s party on April 21, 2016, and after a booze-fuelled row he allegedly threw a magnum of champagne at her and shoved her to the floor several times before leaving a note reading ‘Happy ****ing Birthday’.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star is suing The Sun newspaper for calling him a wife beater in a 2018 article. Miss Heard is the newspaper’s star witness and claims he attacked her on 14 occasions before and during their turbulent marriage, including a terrifying incident in Australia in which Depp’s finger was severed.

Yesterday, on the actor’s fourth day in the oak-panelled witness box, Sasha Wass QC, for The Sun, asked him about the ‘defecation incident’ and whether it could be blamed on the couple’s tiny teacup Yorkshire terrier Boo.

Depp, 57, said he had been two hours late for the party at the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse after receiving some bad news about his financial affairs from his accountants and smoking cannabis to relieve his stress.

When the party finished, Depp said he went to bed to read a book, but his wife ‘was venting how upset she was that I was so late for her birthday dinner and that I had made a fool of her and that I didn’t care… she was very, very angry.’ He claimed Miss Heard had punched him in the face four times before he grabbed her arms to stop her.

Miss Wass said Depp had picked up a bottle of champagne and thrown it at Miss Heard, missing, with the glass smashing, which he denied. She also alleged he grabbed her by the hair and pushed her on to the bed, which he said wasn’t true. When she asked if he had left the ‘Happy ****ing Birthday’ note, he replied: ‘I don’t know that I did, but it is very, very possible.’

He says the next day, Miss Heard or one of her friends ‘defecated’ in their marital bed, and he believed his wife was responsible after she told the building manager it was ‘just a harmless prank’. Depp ‘resolved’ to divorce her, describing it as a ‘strangely oddly fitting end to the relationship’.

Miss Wass claimed Depp had found the faeces incident ‘hilarious’ and that ‘there were jokes like “Amber T**d”, and “Amber in the dumps” ’. Depp agreed that ‘initially I did laugh, because it was so strange’. He said the mystery of the mess could not be blamed on Boo. ‘It was not left by a three or four-pound dog,’ he said.

He told the court he believes Miss Heard, 34, was responsible but admitted it could have been one of her friends.

A month later, Depp came to collect his things from their apartment after deciding to divorce Miss Heard and another row began. In his rage, Miss Wass said Depp hurled a phone at his wife’s face ‘like someone throwing a baseball’. Depp replied: ‘No, ma’am, not true.’ The court was shown a text message Depp sent Miss Heard saying: ‘I loved you more than anything but you never ****ing loved me… I was merely convenient for you.’

The day after their divorce settlement in 2016, Depp sent a text to Miss Heard’s agent Christian Carino saying: ‘She’s begging for global humiliation. I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market.’ Depp tried to get Miss Heard thrown off the sequel to her hit movie Aquaman, Miss Wass claimed.

A recording of Depp in July 2016 begging Miss Heard to ‘cut him’ while he wielded a knife was played to the court. Depp said: ‘I was asking her to cut me… I felt that was what she was doing anyway.’ Under re-examination by his barrister David Sherborne, Depp said his ex-wife was a heavy drinker and said ‘all hell would break loose’ if he dared breach her rules. Miss Heard drank two bottles of wine a night and ‘liked the idea I was the monster’, he said.

He accused her of sabotaging his efforts to go sober by keeping a bottle of whisky in the fridge.

She was a ‘creature of habit’ who liked to chop up his lines of cocaine and then sample some herself, he told the court.

She kept secretly filming him, was having an affair and would fly off the handle if he did not feed her constant ‘need for attention’.

He said Miss Heard would go ballistic at ‘small, mundane issues’.

‘It was almost as if there were rules, she has a routine and if that routine isn’t met to her standards then there was going to be a problem.’ Mr Sherborne asked what would happen if he broke his ex-wife’s ‘rules’, to which Depp replied: ‘An argument would ensue and all hell would break loose.’

The case continues, with Depp, who had been expected to finish his evidence yesterday, returning to the witness box on Monday.

JAN MOIR: Johnny Depp was like a cowboy in Dead End Gulch for a showdown with the law 

Day 4 of the Johnny Depp libel trial and matters turned once more to the difficult issue that has dominated this torrid case so far.

Barristers on £300 an hour struggled to solve the central conundrum of which tootsie did the whoopsie on the bed in the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse.

Can anyone name the nincompoop who pooped on the 500 Thread Count Sheets? It was like a game of celebrity Cluedo, but with a distressingly feculent whiff. 

Johnny was convinced that the deed was done by Amber in the master suite with the dodgy piping — because she was furious that he had ruined her birthday party by turning up late. 

And if not his ex-wife, then the 57-year-old actor aired his belief that it was her friend iO Tillett Wright who was born a woman but does not recognise gender (and who, utterly remarkably in the circumstances, is not an anagram).

Sasha Wass QC — acting for News Group Newspapers whom Depp is suing after The Sun described him as a ‘wife beater’ — started referring to the matter as ‘The Defecation Incident’ as if it were right up there with the Boxer Rebellion and the Moon Landings in terms of international importance.

Speaking with a no-nonsense Mary Poppins authority, Wass suggested that the culprit might have been Boo, one of the couple’s two Yorkshire terriers, who apparently ‘had problems with her toilet habits’.

Well, we all know what that means, little Boo hoo! Mr Depp countered that the dogs ‘were very well trained’ although ‘Boo was not as trained as Pistol’ which made me suspect that Pistol might well be that smartest member of this blighted little household.

In the overspill court, where socially distanced journalists were corralled watching the court feed on a monitor, we learned that Depp was convinced that whoever was responsible, it was not a ‘three or four-pound dog’.

Do you know, I went right off my morning pain au chocolat after that.

During another long day on the witness stand, Johnny issued rebuttal followed by denial as the accusations came thick and fast.

It was exhausting testimony, but there were sparky moments. Miss Wass tried to make something of the fact that Johnny ordered magnums of wine at a party, not bottles.

‘If there is a group of 12 or more, magnums just make more sense,’ he patiently explained.

There was a flash of arrogance when asked if a Hollywood agent was trying to court his favour. ‘Courting my favour? An agent in Hollywood? Sure, yes,’ he said, almost with a snort.

Depp had arrived in Court 13 before 10am, smartly dressed in a brown suit with a shirt and dark tie. A white handkerchief was folded into his breast pocket. He took the stand, poured a glass of water and drummed his tattooed fingers on the desk.

With his clipped moustache and collar-length hair, he looked like a cowboy summoned to Dead End Gulch for one last showdown with the sheriff. It was notable that he was scrupulously polite at all times. ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he would reply to Miss Wass. ‘No, Sir,’ he would tell his own lawyer, David Sherborne.

It was impossible to see Amber’s expression, or if she even glanced in her former husband’s direction, or if those glances were filled with regret or antipathy or something else.

Everything about this case is astonishing. It has laid bare a restless world of the beautiful and the damned.

Sherborne, sporting a lockdown tan the colour of baked clay, began his questioning of his client before lunch yesterday, quickly establishing that Depp was a good guy who would help little old ladies across the road, ate all his greens and couldn’t help it if women such as actress Ellen Barkin, supermodel Kate Moss and French chanteuse Vanessa Paradis fell in love with him.

Gosh Sherborne talks a lot — a terracotta warrior of chat — and when Depp could get a word in edgeways, he sounded more fluent and confident than the sometimes stumbling man who’d read out his own oath-strewn texts earlier in the day.

Later, I wandered over to Court 13 in time to see Depp exit the first-floor courtroom, pop on his sunglasses and make his way down the corridor.

His waiting bodyguard swiftly folded in behind him, like a bald, muscular duckling. Johnny was wearing divine aftershave, was taller than expected and looked preoccupied.

Next week it is his ex-wife’s turn to tell her story, to lay out her own summer picnic of dread, distress and bruises that ripen like strawberries.

Whatever happens next in the Amber & Johnny Show, I suspect she will want to put The Defecation Incident behind her.

Like for ever.