NY- An NYPD detective charged with snapping X-rated photos of rock legend David Bowie’s stepdaughter after she was raped trashed his accuser yesterday, claiming she tried to seduce him with the pornographic stills.
Detective Richard Vecchio, a 16-year-veteran, told the jury of four women and two men in Staten Island Criminal Court that he did not take the nude photos found in his stationhouse locker after the 2003 attack.
Vecchio testified that the victim, Stacia Lipka, gave him the photos of her posing nude in her hospital bed when he visited her Staten Island townhouse as part of an investigation. She answered the door, Vecchio said, with the greeting, “Here’s my sexy detective.”
Then, right in the doorway of her home, she dropped to her knees and offered to perform oral sex on him, Vecchio said. His wife sat in the courtroom jotting notes on a legal pad throughout his testimony.
Vecchio said he held onto the illicit photos “for safekeeping” and insisted the only Polaroid shots he took of Lipka were in the emergency room of St. Vincent’s Hospital Staten Island, where she was clothed in a gown.
Prosecutor Autumn Levine asked Vecchio to explain why his partner, Detective John Holbert, had testified Thursday that he recalled seeing camera flashes coming from the rape victim’s hospital room. Holbert said his view of Vecchio and Lipka had been obscured by a half-drawn curtain.
“He was mistaken,” Vecchio replied.
Vecchio did admit taking a photo of another woman’s tattoos and pierced nipple in January 2004 after he arrested her for leaving the scene of an accident. That woman, Kristina Sellers, reported the incident to her lawyer, and NYPD Internal Affairs investigators recorded a call she placed to Vecchio, asking him to return the photo of her breast.
Lipka, the daughter of Bowie’s ex-wife, Angela, and Sellers have filed lawsuits against the city and Vecchio and Holbert. Vecchio is charged with official misconduct. His partner has not been charged.