The Yoko Ono Blackmail Letter
Back on the anniversary of John Lennon's death, we told you about how that tough day for Yoko went from sad to worse when her driver/alleged-lover Koral Karsan launched a plot to blackmail her for a cool two million dollars. Here's the recently released extortion letter, including a point-by-point list of recordings of her, Sean, and others that will "astound the world." Read at your own will (via WFMU):
December 2006Dear Ms. Ono,
As you know, I have loyally served you in many capacities as your driver, bodyguard, assistant, butler, nurse, handyman and more so your lover and confidant over the last ten years. During the course of these years, our relationship has also deepened into a very emotional and physical one as well.
Unfortunately, as you know, your mood swings and dependencies have drastically eroded our relationship, and led to a continual stream of abusive statements and treatment from you. Ranging from personal insults to demanding acts of great sacrifice by me, your systematic and continuous physical and psychological abuse has caused me to become a different person, stripped from any kind of dignity and self respect...
Your constant demands on my time, for both your and your family’s professional and personal needs have greatly and perhaps irrevocably hurt my relationship with my spouse and children. My wife has now left me because of the relationship between you and me. This is solely due to your excessive demands on my time, demanding my companionship for over 15 hours daily, seven days a week for the last six years. My life has been connected to yours to a point where basic chores and activities such as taking my wife to the doctor’s office or having an engagement party for my son had to wait for months on end for you to leave the country so that I could attend the needs of my family.
Additionally, our relationship both in the public eye and private has caused a significant degree of defamation to my character. People, including your own son and daughter have voiced their opinions regarding our relationship. Every day I endure countless demeaning looks and comments from people at work, on the street and most painfully at home. This continues and will continue to cause indescribable pain for me and more importantly my family.Any merit to Koral's allegations? Yoko's lawyer said flatly: "All of that is untrue." The legal process is deliberate, but the court of public opinion is already in overdrive. You're on the jury. What say ye?Under all these circumstances, I decided to contact my lawyer in order to put an end to this string of events. After discussions, we decided to pursue a “quid pro quo” sexual harassment suit against you. There is more than enough documented instances in which you harassed me in this manner and I’ve been advised that the case will be more than easy to file and prove. The case will not only involve you and I, but will also include Sean, Kyoko, Bijoux, Jan Wenner, Michiko Meyers, Sam Havatoy, Dakota residents, Paul and countless others as they will be forced to testify about things that will shock the world. I will make sure that upon filing of the suit, the NY media (members of which I have gotten to know very well over the years) will be all over it and we will all read the details on page six and other tabloid magazines for quite a while.
Such a trial, regardless of if I win or lose, will provide me with a significant amount of publicity that I will use to promote a number of books that will portray You, Sean and John.
These books will be written using information obtained from ten years of listening to you as well as pictures taken with hidden cameras and literally thousands of hours of recordings I have been compiling since 1996. Within these tapes, there are recordings such as the ones below that will quite frankly, astound the world.
- Sean, while speaking to his girlfriend Carmella, calling John “a wife beating a——”;
- Your political statements against the British and US Governments;
- Your numerous critical comments about your son, daughter, the Beatles, and your friends (such as Jan Wenner, J. Onasis Kenedy, Elliot Mintz, Brian Hendel, John Hendrics, Michiko Meyers and many more);
- The story of you getting raped during WW II in a Japanese farm and the effects of this act on your relationships with men including John;
- Your numerous fights with Sam Havatoy …
Depending on the outcome of our dealings, I will not only write about these recordings but will also distribute them to European Broadcasting Stations throughout the future. You and your legal advisors may think that I am bound by the confidentiality agreement. Be informed that I am moving back to Turkey permanently and will publish my book in Turkey and will distribute the prints through the internet where I have already secured e-commerce capabilities.
All of the above mentioned items will in fact become a reality unless you compensate me and my family for all of the pain and suffering you have caused. If you want all of these pictures, recordings, emails, conversations and memories to vanish from the face of the earth and never hear from me again, all you have to do is send me a certified cashiers check from a New York Bank for a total amount of $2 million.
Thank you very much,
Koral Karsan
Posted at 4:13 PM
Tags: Yoko Ono
What an awful man.
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Stereogum!
for shame. this is tabloid at its worst and I'm sorry to read it here. The man will never see his money (first priority) but as this bribe note is propogated he will succeed with his parallel wish to undermine her reputation and relationships with her friends and family. I don't know or have any particular emotional investment with anyone name checked above, but I do know that this man's intentions are disgusting and simply by reprinting the accusations and short quotes above you will contribute to public opinion based on his hearsay, and malintent cleared stated in the letter. Sure she's a public (and devisive) figure, and maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe people deserve privacy whoever they are and the intimate things printed here are not for the public to chew on over watercooler conversation. I'm sorry to see it here, you could easily be above this. I imagine you could develop many other worthwhile (or not) posts to generate a lively comment dialogue. Don't know why this has struck me as such, but it has... for your consideration.
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This guy will get a reality show deal really soon!
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yeah also it probably means more 'rare public appearences' from that wench. He should have married her and left with half.
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mat: wow, such rationale critique is refreshing around here. and your concern is valid, but the new york times article gum linked has huge quotes from the letter too. it's part of the discourse. yay sensible dialogue.
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the second poster, mat, is really sean.
i know it.
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Sounds like the guy should have considered his other job options a tad sooner.
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Fuck this guy. We all have secrets, we all have personal problems, and he's exploiting Yoko just because she has money, and a lot to lose in the public image arena.
If he was cheating on his wife, THAT is why she left him, for god's sake it isn't Yoko's fault if the guy's a bad husband.
"My wife has now left me (...) This is solely due to your excessive demands on my time(...)"
WTF?
This guy needs to grow a pair and take some responsibility!
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Quite possibly he is the only man in the world who thinks the concept of Yoko Ono being anti-Bush and Blair will "shock the world".
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Mal -- Why would someone think that just because a person is standing up in defense of a woman who has time and time again been slandered, and now has been terrorized once again, that they have to be related to her in some way?
It amazes me that so many people are still so inhumanely cold and cynical toward even things such as this, concerning Yoko Ono, a woman no one, frankly, should have any reason to automatically put down.
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because this someone was making a joke, jeeze.
love yoko, love sean,
they're right & he's wrong.
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I agree with Mat and Juliet here, It looks like his lawyers are just trying to make him look like he's not a nut, didn't he say he was trying to kill her with needles full of bleach? (Not to mention this was all done on the same day John was murdered, I think she can read between the lines.) As for all the "Yoko Bashing" that has and is to come, I swear to God that with each passing year the more "Hard-Core" Beatles fans are turning into "Trekkies". As a side note, I wonder if he got inspired (that is, greedy) by what is happening with Paul and Heather? I have no idea what her net worth is, but I know its has got to be worth more than 2 million. Considering all the crap she been through for the last 40 years you'd think she would look for any reason not to dragged thru the mud again, unless of course this guy is full of it and should be locked up.
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Who cares if stereogum posts this letter? This is a music blog, not US News and World Report. Don't be so goddamn dramatic. We're talking about YOKO ONO here. She's a useless bitch who lucked out by seducing Lennon with her out of key, eardrum-piercing siren's song. And by the way, you read it, didn't you? Or did you just see the tasteless headline and go straight to posting your stupid comments?
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/\/\/\ Case and Point /\/\/\
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What a douche.
I hope he doesn't get a cent. It's completely unfair for him to try to takeadvantage of Yoko's money simply because he was a lousy husband. IF those claims about her demanding presence in the relationship are true, he is the one who could have said no. He is the one who hurt his family by seeing her and spending so much time with her.
It's bullshit.
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if she was raped, that is sad. there really isn't a word that captures the full extent of how awful that is.
i don't give a good god damn about the rest of it.
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"simply by reprinting the accusations and short quotes above you will contribute to public opinion based on his hearsay, and malintent cleared stated in the letter."
I can only speak for myself, but after reading the rambling threats of this guy, my opinion has gone from a vague "Hmm...some guy who used to work for Yoko has a bunch of dirt on her" to "Oh, this guy's not just a jerk, he's a fuckin' nut, so who know how much of what he says is even true?" Reading all that has made me much more skeptical of his claims. Not that I've decided that nothing he says could possibly be true; I just don't feel like I have any particular reason to believe him.
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so
fucking
what
no one cares about these people. or should.
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so, is blackmail not illegal? or if the threatening letter comes through a lawyer it is okay?
yoko was raped - wow, how nice of you to bring that out to the public mr scumbag.
yoko opposes bush and blair - don't we all, imagine how john lennon would feel about them!
sean called john a wife beater - he was and it's hardly a revelation. lennon even sang about it in song!
yoko criticising her kids - are they perfect?
yoko criticising the beatles - they were pretty good but i'm sure not everyone likes them.
yoko criticising her friends - are they perfect too? like most friends i'm sure they can have their good moments and their asshole moments.
yoko responsible for his marriage break-up - so him cheating on his wife with yoko leaves him totally free of any blame (this is quickly turning into an episode of desperate housewives!).
all the pain and suffering he had to go through - if it was THAT bad he should have left years ago and got a job elsewhere.
I hope Yoko comes out on top, I have never really felt myself endeared to her in anyway but this is ridiculous.
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actually, I didn't bother to read the whole letter--but it's ridiculous to blame the other person in an affair for the breakup of your marriage.
I never thought much of Yoko Ono(except for "Walking On Thin Ice", which was pretty good)--just ask Cynthia and Julian Lennon how they were treated by her--but this guy is an ignorant slimeball who deserves nothing from her. Takes two to tango.
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the fact that he thinks its OK to threaten to expose the story of somebody's RAPE for money throws out everything he has to say. who knows, yoko may have done some terrible shit to him, but i guarantee nothing that bad.
the rest of the shit doesn't even seem that bad. as has already been said -- who the fuck cares if she doesn't support bush and blair. not many people do.
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Then again, she DID break up the Beatles...
Maybe karma isn't as instant as John thought.
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William Hung would never have done it that way
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I LOVE You Yoko!!!
Bremen, 13th of June
Oliver
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To those of you who "love Yoko", you are nothing but a bunch of assholes. Get a life! Or at least professional help! The acts described by this infamous letter are very similar to what John had to endure, especially the control part, and the humilliation. She already had gone through several men before she met john, but at least those men had enough self esteem to kick that bitch out of their lives, and her ex husband Tony Cox, as a man and as a good father, endured a jail sentence but never gave up Kyoko, knowing full well that releasing kyoko to the claws of Ono would ruin thatgirl's life forever. Yoko ono has the "love anbd admiration" of countless assholes who gawk at the site of anybody famous, and who like to masturbate at the thught of being artists themselves. My thoughts" Get a life! And move out of your parents' basements!
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