Sean “Diddy” Combs’ History of Violence Dates Back to College Days, According to New Investigation

Amid a blizzard of legal trouble, a new in-depth report has raised troubling claims of historical abuse against Sean “Diddy” Combs, and allegations from former friends, Bad Boy Records employees and artists claiming the scandal-plagued music mogul was a violent figure behind the scenes.

Rolling Stone published a bombshell report on Combs on Tuesday night, with the magazine claiming it spoke to more than 50 people in his social and professional orbit, covering his time in the music industry and stretching back to his college days. The report, six months in the making, details that Combs has an alleged history of using violence and intimidation, particularly toward women, and provides graphic descriptions about a series of harrowing incidents.

Several sources told Rolling Stone that Combs showed flashes of violent and controlling behavior during his time at Howard University. In one incident described by some of Combs’ college contemporaries, a “belligerent” Combs allegedly started screaming for his girlfriend to come outside Howard’s Harriet Tubman Quadrangle dorm. The student source said that several female students in the dorm were aware that Combs, known then by his nickname “Puff,” was allegedly attacking his girlfriend outside the building and began raising the alarm in the dorm. “Puff is out here acting crazy. He’s beating her,” the fellow students said, according to the first witness.

A second Howard student who witnessed the alleged attack told Rolling Stone that Combs used what appeared to be a belt to hit the woman “all over the place.” The second witness said Combs appeared “super angry” and was “screaming at the top of his lungs.” The witness said Combs “whupped her butt — like really whupped her butt” and that the woman was “trying to defend herself a little bit. She was crying. And we were telling him, ‘Get off of her.’ We were screaming for her.”

The woman that Combs’ is alleged to have attacked at Howard declined to comment, but Rolling Stone reports that a third source also recalled the incident.

In another incident, Kirk Burrowes, Bad Boy’s co-founding partner and president, claimed he saw Combs attack a woman inside the record label’s office in 1994. Burrowes, who was fired from Bad Boy in 1997, and another ex-employee claimed they had to separate Combs from the woman after they heard screams and the sound of glass shattering.

In separate account, Bad Boy employee Felicia Newsome alleged she once had to hold Combs back when he was about to “beat this girl’s ass” after a fight broke out between two women. “I’m holding him by his waist, saying, ‘You need to calm down. This is not your fight,’” Newsome recalled.

The Rolling Stone report alleges that Combs was a controlling figure, unwilling to let the women in his life move on after the end of a relationship. Combs is accused of assaulting late music executive Shakir Stewart at a wedding in Italy, after Stewart had begun a relationship with Combs’ on-and-off partner Kim Porter. During the alleged incident, which occurred in 2000 at music mogul L.A. Reid’s wedding, Combs is accused of seeking out Stewart in his hotel room and assaulting him. Stewart’s mother, Portia Labrie, as well as two of his close friends, said that Combs broke a chair over Stewart’s head. “He left him bleeding on a hotel floor in Italy,” Labrie said. “He had to have stitches and then [Combs] threatened him … ‘I’m going to kill you’ … That’s when I said, ‘You need to get out of this business. This man is crazy.’”

Ever since his former girlfriend Cassandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, filed a lawsuit in November 2023 alleging sexual and physical abuse over nearly a decade, Combs’ legal problems have continued to mount. After settling his suit with Cassie, Combs faced three more suits from women alleging sexual assault. In March, Combs’ homes in Los Angeles, New York and Miami were raided by federal agents amid a sex trafficking investigation.

Also on Wednesday, CNN and the L.A. Times reported that federal investigators are preparing grand jury subpoenas for witnesses to testify in the sex-trafficking investigation. The latter report noted that little is known about the federal probe, including the identities of alleged victims. Combs has previously called the probe “nothing more than a witch hunt” via his lawyer. (The Hollywood Reporter has reached back out to reps for Combs.)

Despite settling the suit with Cassie, Combs has denied assaulting her and also denied the claims in the other sexual assault suits. But he faced further intense scrutiny earlier this month after a 2016 surveillance video that showed him violently assaulting Cassie in a hotel was obtained and released by CNN.

Notably in the Rolling Stone report, three of the women who have accused Combs of sexual assault in recent lawsuits have spoken publicly for the first time and reveal that once they learned of Combs’ alleged pattern of abuse, they came forward in hopes of holding the mogul accountable for his actions. Joi Dickerson-Neal, Crystal McKinney and an anonymous “Jane Doe” spoke about their individual experiences.

Dickerson-Neal, who sued Combs for sexual assault in November 2023, said that her decision to come forward “isn’t about money. It’s about making sure the world sees that this man who rose to the level of an ‘icon’ is actually sick and has left so many victims in [the wake of his] unpunished disgusting behavior for years.”

Rolling Stone notes in the report that the magazine sent Combs a detailed list of questions about the new and pending allegations, but that he did not specifically address them. “Mr. Combs cannot comment on settled litigation, will not comment on pending litigation, and cannot address every allegation picked up by the press from any source, no matter how unreliable,” said his lawyer, Jonathan Davis, in the piece. “We are aware that the proper authorities are conducting a thorough investigation and therefore have confidence any important issues will be addressed in the proper forum, where the rules distinguish facts from fiction.”

THR has also reached out to lawyers for Combs.

May 29, 9:35 a.m. Updated to include reports of possible grand jury subpoenas.