Four Mysterious Visits to Suite 2820 by DSK's Accuser

The investigative writer Edward Jay Epstein, who is in the process of completing a new book, Annals of Unsolved Crime, has an article out at the Delay Beast, with a fascinating piece of new information.

The maid, who alleges that Dominique Strauss Kahn sexually attacked her, visited another suite on the same floor as DSK four times  Here's Epstein:

The maid gave conflicting accounts of what happened in the next 16 minutes [after the alleged attack]. She first testified under oath to a grand jury on May 18 that she hid in the 28th floor's main hallway until she saw DSK leave the Presidential Suite...and, once she saw him get on the elevator, immediately reported the sexual assault to her supervisor.

But as investigators determined from records of the use of her electronic key that the story could not be true, and that she had actually gone to suite 2820, she changed her story to say that after leaving the Presidential Suite she went to 2820, a suite on the other side of the elevator bank that she had visited three times previously that day, according to the electronic-key records. (When I asked Jorge Tito, the hotel’s general manager, who was in 2820 on May 14, he declined to comment.) In any case, as the key records show, the accuser returned to the Presidential Suite after about two minutes and immediately informed her supervisor.

Epstein also raises some concerns about the fact that hotel management did not call the police for more than an hour after the maid alerted her supervisor. This does not concern me as much, since as I have discussed before, the hotel was sure to know DSK was a VIP and it would likely have to be at least at the general manager level that approval to call the police would be sought. If the general manager then sought approval of higher ups in the hotel chain, an hour would not be out of the question.

But the fact that the maid visited suite 2820 four times, three before the alleged attack and even once  more after the attack---before she even reported the attack to her supervisor is, to say the least, very interesting. It becomes even more interesting given that it appears she may have even tried to cover-up at least the last visit to the suite. She told a grand jury that she hid in the main hallway until DSK left his room. She made no mention of hiding in suite 2820. The big question then becomes, who was registered as staying in suite 2820? Epstein puts it this way:

The person in a position to answer this intriguing question is Cyrus Vance Jr., since any intervention might constitute at minimum an obstruction of justice. As Manhattan D.A., he can question everyone at the Sofitel who was directly or indirectly involved with the accuser’s decision, including anyone in suite 2820 (where the accuser made four visits before and after her encounter with DSK).

There might be innocent explanations as to why she entered that suite four times, but it is a lot more times than a maid has ever entered any room I have ever stayed in. Given this entire odd affair, it not difficult to imagine that a control was in suite 2820, stick handling the entire event. Any author who plans on writing a book about the entire DSK affair needs to find out and report in such a book who was staying in that suite. There is no complete story without this information. Indeed, NYC newspapers, with their mammoth resources should have reporters on the same story trying to find out who was in that suite.

(Thanks to Lew Rockwell)