WWW- Barry Bonds’s former longtime girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, will appear nude in the November issue of Playboy, a spokeswoman for the magazine said yesterday in a telephone interview. The issue is expected to reach newsstands Oct. 1, right as baseball’s postseason is beginning.
Bell’s agent, David Hans Schmidt, said that in addition to the photographs would be an article detailing her “personal and sexual relationship” with Bonds.
Bonds is under investigation for charges he perjured himself in 2003 when he said he never knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs. The federal government is also looking into tax evasion charges.
Bell, who said she dated Bonds from 1994 to 2003, is one of at least two key witnesses to testify in front of an earlier grand jury about Bonds.
According to Daniel C. Richman, a former assistant United States attorney and now a professor at Columbia Law School, the government is not likely to be pleased that one of its potential witnesses has decided to pose nude for money.
“The government is generally interested in protecting the credibility of their witnesses, and if there is any reason to believe the witness is trying to profit from her involvement in the case, it is usually something defense lawyers seize on,” Richman said.
Michael Rains, Bonds’s lawyer, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
It is not known what Bell has told the grand jury, but she told The New York Times in 2005 that Bonds told her he used steroids.
Bell has also said that she saw Bonds inject himself with steroids and apply creams that she knew to be steroid related.
Bonds, according to Bell, asked her to move from San Francisco to Scottsdale, Ariz., the Giants’ spring training home in 2001. Bell said Bonds promised to give her $207,000 for a down payment on a house there but only gave her $80,000. She said that he instructed her to deposit the money in amounts of less than $10,000 to avoid having to report the money to the government.
Schmidt said that Bell, through her appearance in Playboy, was finally getting the money she was promised.
“This is a payday she deserves and that Barry Bonds never got her,” Schmidt said. “All she got from Bonds was being dumped and lied to. There was a settlement discussion on the table, and he pulled it off the table and said, ‘I don’t care.’ He never showed any class after he asked her to move out of San Francisco.”
Schmidt, who has arranged similar high-profile photo spreads, would not say how much money she would receive from the magazine.
Matthew Parella, one of the assistant United States attorneys overseeing the investigation in the Northern District of California, declined to comment.