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Ono: Former assistant was no friend
NEW YORK (Court TV) -- Yoko Ono continued her public battle to take control of her husband's last private moments Tuesday, lashing out against a former personal assistant while on the stand in federal court. "How could he be a friend when he was indicted for grand larceny and took so many things from us?" Ono said of Frederic Seaman, who worked for the Lennon family from 1979 to 1981. Wearing a burgundy blazer over a black T-shirt, Ono, 69, took the stand for the second day Tuesday and told the court in a calm, confident voice about her contentious relationship with Seaman. Ono filed suit against Seaman in 1999 for publishing intimate photos of the family in a 1991 book, "The Last Days of John Lennon," despite a confidentiality agreement she says he signed with the family. She wants Seaman to relinquish the 374 pictures he took of the family and to turn over $75,000 in profit from letters and lyrics he allegedly sold. Ono and Seaman have battled for two decades over materials the personal assistant gleaned from his time with the family. After Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota apartment building in 1980, Seaman continued working for Ono a year. During that year, he allegedly carried out what he called "Project Walrus," smuggling diaries, letters and other personal effects belonging to Lennon out of the home in shopping bags. In 1981, Ono let him go with a $10,000 severance. The items he stole soon turned up missing, and in 1983, Seaman pleaded guilty to second-degree larceny for stealing Lennon's diaries. He received five years' probation on the condition that he return all property belonging to Ono. At issue Tuesday was Seaman's relationship with the Lennon family. Was he merely an employee whose job was to run errands and photograph the family during the former Beatle's most secluded time of life? Or was he a friend who shared time with Ono, Lennon and their son Sean? Squaring off against Seaman's attorney, Glenn Wolther, Ono left little room for speculation. "You're mixing up friendly and friend," she said. "Both John and I were very friendly with our employees. That's how we were." As Wolther noted, Ono granted a shared copyright to a previous personal assistant who also took photographs of the family. But Ono explained that she was doing a favor for the assistant, who was a professional photographer and "a sweet man." "If he had been a person that had stolen so many things from me and wearing my husband's clothes when he died and flaunted them in front of me, I would not have allowed him to put out anything," she said in a flash of anger. John Lennon was killed December 8, 1980. According to Ono's lawyers, Seaman reaped great rewards from the materials he pilfered from Lennon. A philologist, or buyer and seller of letters, testified Tuesday that he paid Seaman more than $65,000 for nine letters, including a letter from Lennon to Paul and Linda McCartney discussing the breakup of the Beatles and a letter to Eric Clapton inviting him to form a supergroup music tour. The letter to McCartney, testified Gary Zimet, was the "most extraordinary letter I'd ever seen." After purchasing it in 1984 as part of the package, he resold it for $90,500 at Butterfield's, a San Francisco auction house. Shown in court Tuesday were approximately 20 photos taken by Seaman depicting the family at their Manhattan apartment and at homes in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Lennon and Ono are seen relaxing with Julian, Lennon's son from a previous marriage, who was about 17 at the time, and Sean, who was 5. Sean, now 26, accompanied his mother to court Tuesday and sat on the edge of his seat in the front row jotting notes in a small, bound book and glancing sidelong at the courtroom artists' hurried sketching. One video made at their Cold Spring Harbor home in 1980 and shown in court shows Lennon fascinated with the video camera, a rarity at the time. "You're out of the shot," he says from behind the camera to Ono and Sean, who are rolling in the grass. "Do you mind playing a little nearer to the camera?" As the video rolled, Ono locked eyes with her son. On Wednesday, Seaman presents his defense to the jury of eight that will decide the case.
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