In 2006, Vince McMahon walked into the Tanzabar salon, located in a strip mall in Boca Raton, Fla.
The 22-year-old woman who worked at the salon didn’t recognize McMahon when he asked her to take a photo of him with his phone. She certainly didn’t recognize him when he started showing him nude and semi-nude photos of himself.
She asked him to stop, but he didn’t, according to a police report filed at the time of the incident. She asked him to stop trying to kiss her, she asked him to stop groping her chest and the rest of her body. She asked him to stop when she pushed him away from her.
While McMahon waited in a his black Hummer for 20 minutes, she ran from the salon to a Papa John’s Pizza located in the same mall. Crying, bawling, upset – she had just been sexually assaulted.
A Papa John’s employee who had waited with the victim at the salon recognized McMahon in a lineup, as did another customer who was at the salon. The victim didn’t. The Boca Raton Police Department said there was enough evidence to charge McMahon with simple assault, but prosecutors decided there wasn’t enough evidence.
In Florida at the time, there had to be photo evidence, another witness or law enforcement on hand to witness the simple assault – a case where to charge McMahon they needed evidence above a reasonable doubt, which is the usual standard for which someone is found guilty in a criminal court proceeding. Instead, McMahon was found “exceptionally cleared” and the case, filings made by prosecutors disappeared, and only a few articles of the incident remain online, most prominently one on the Daily Beast’s website from 2018, which remarked McMahon’s return of the XFL and how he was looking for “exceptional human beings” for his football league.
McMahon is certainly an exceptional human being. The civil complaint, filed last week in federal district court in Connecticut by Janel Grant, alleges the exceptional lengths McMahon will go to groom, manipulate, humiliate, and assault a person.
Rumors of McMahon’s bad behavior existed for years. As an investigative reporter, I’ve kept a spread sheet of McMahon’s sexual predatory behavior, potential victims, cases, settlements and other items detailing the alleged criminal activities of McMahon toward women. Even in the sordid details of the dozens of cases, nothing suggested the type of monstrous behavior – listed detail after nauseating detail – in the 67 pages of Grant’s civil complaint.
As someone who has covered crime and courts in the past, it’s one of the most sickening documents I’ve ever read.
The complaint itself is exceptional for more than just the demented behavior of McMahon. Even though it’s a civil complaint, almost all of the offenses it accuses McMahon are criminal. Rape, sex trafficking, assault – this complaint was laid out like a criminal court proceeding.
The only non-criminal complaint in the civil filing is McMahon violating the terms of the non-disclosure agreement he sign with Grant while he was being investigated by WWE’s board in 2022. McMahon, for all his ego and his billions, made one $1 million payment to Grant for all that she suffered, and he refused to make the subsequent payments of the $3 million payment McMahon decided was a fair sum for her dignity, sexuality, humanity and mental well-being.
The complaint is what a lawyer would describe as rock solid. Dates, times, places, text messages and possible video evidence – against McMahon, WWE and John Laurinaitis, the former head of WWE talent, whose alleged role in Grant’s torture is as sick as McMahon’s. Laureinaitis claims he was a victim of McMahon, not his former boss’ partner in crime.
William Tong is the attorney general for the State of Connecticut. Timothy Shaw is the chief of the Stamford Police Department. Colonel Daniel Loughman runs the Connecticut State Police. Everyday this case isn’t made a criminal investigation is a criminal case of apathy by the state of Connecticut, the federal government and any place Grant suffered abuse.
Where are the criminal charges against McMahon?
Six months ago, World Wrestling Entertainment announced during a quarterly report that McMahon was the subject of a federal grand jury inquiry. He was being investigated and warrants had been issued.
What that inquiry is about is unknown, probably until the grand jury decides to indict McMahon or not. At the time, it was assumed by many following the fiscal end of the pro wrestling business that McMahon was under further investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission after he made payouts to other victims following his payout to Grant.
At some point, in the coming months, that grand jury is going to come down with an indictment.
At some point, law enforcement will have to look at the case made by Grant and her attorney’s, the mountains of evidence they have against McMahon.
At some point, law enforcement, McMahon’s family, past victims, female wrestlers and employees, his friends and his loyal employees, will read this complaint and realize much of this they’ve read before.
Predators and rapists work in patterns. McMahon was accused by former WWE referee Rita Chatterton of trying to force her to have a certain sex act with him. If you read previous accusations against McMahon, or the Grant complaint, the same patterns are here.
There’s no more excuses – McMahon is who is actions have said he has been for the last 40 years. It’s time for law enforcement – at the local, state and federal levels – the courts, prosecutors and the people in charge in Connecticut to protect their citizens, file a criminal case against McMahon and put him away. Women aren’t safe with McMahon free. He’s Harvey Weinstein with a wrestling company instead of a movie company. He may be more deranged.
It’s all over
The civil suit states Stephanie McMahon, when she temporarily replaced her dad as head of WWE, never interviewed Grant when they investigated their relationship during McMahon’s initial removal from WWE’s board.
The company has said it had reached out to Grant, but didn’t get a response. That won’t save any member of the McMahon family with TKO’s board. It won’t save Paul Levesque, who was on the road and backstage with McMahon through his most sordid days.
Levesque’s performance before an even milquetoast group of questioners at the Royal Rumble press conference shows how little he understands the reality of the situation he’s in. He’s done. Nick Khan is done. Bruce Pritchard is done.
Mike Johnson of PWInsider reported most of those in the company with ties to McMahon expect to be gone – and soon. Top level employees like Jim Cornette and Eric Bischoff, were sickened by the details of the civil suit, believe this is the end. And they’re right.
WWE’s employees have been quiet. Ronda Rousey spoke out, going to twitter and calling Bruce Pritchard an avatar for McMahon, saying if he’s there then McMahon is running WWE. That Rousey would take a stand isn’t surprising – she isn’t from the twisted world of pro wrestling that views McMahon as untouchable. She’s like Grant, where they come from reality, where even the guy who hands out checks has to follow the law.
Nikki and Brie Garcia – the former Bella Twins – voiced support for the victim on their joint Twitter account. Garcia’s step-father is John Laurinaitis, the other party in the civil complaint. If the timetable in the suit is correct, Laurinaitis was having forced sexual favors with Grant while the Garcia’s mother was undergoing cancer treatment.
Linda McMahon will be filing for divorce at some point. Their marriage was a business arrangement for years, maybe decades. They make Bill and Hillary Clinton look like an old fashion romance. She won’t risk her financial well-being on waiting out her husband’s perversions.
Levesque may believe he’s irrepla
ceable in WWE as its creative head, but he’s not. Nick Khan is not irreplaceable. What they are is open sores from an investigation that found McMahon should not return to WWE’s board, but voted for him to do so anyway. There’s the same people who wrote in an SEC filing – reported by CNN – that McMahon was a massive financial and litigation risk for WWE if he were to remain on its board.
Yet there he was, until last week, as the Executive Chairman of TKO – both UFC and WWE – having just finished negotiating UFC TV rights with Saudi Arabia.
McMahon’s next deal will be pleading guilty. Grant and her attorneys have expressed their goal with their suit is to shine a light on McMahon, WWE and other victims who are out there. They won’t be settling. And this won’t be passed on by law enforcement.
Prosecutors will have to stand up this time. There won’t be shrugging at the goofy, ridiculous pro wrestling guy, an act McMahon has perfected since the 1980s to ward off journalists, until Bob Costas took him out. Weinstein fell, Bill Cosby fell, McMahon is falling and he’s going to jail, and it’s only a matter of time.
Something this bad can’t be ignored.
One lesson we all should have learned through recent years is to take bad actors at their word. When they say they will do bad things, or have, take them at their word. McMahon’s actions have spoken the same thing for decades, as far back as 1986 when Rita Chatterton had a life-breaking experience in a limo with McMahon. He told us who he was then, we just never listened.
For the victims, for the future women in pro wrestling, for those not yet walking or born, it’s time we take him at his word.