The Italian businessman who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured in NYC for nearly 3 weeks, wasn't always in distress during that period ... according to a bizarre video of him cooking crack in an air fryer.
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00:00Welcome to TMZ Live, the crypto torture case in New York City.
00:14If you thought that was bizarre, and it has been, everything that we've seen up to this
00:20point, even one of the suspects, John Waltz, being arrested in his bathrobe, it is about
00:25to get even more bizarre with this video that we've obtained showing the alleged victim,
00:31the Italian businessman who they were allegedly holding captive, torturing for almost three
00:37weeks in order to get his Bitcoin password.
00:41Right.
00:42Well, there's a video we've obtained, and the information we have is that this video was
00:48shot in that townhome during the time, in fact, five days after his cash flow.
00:55Capture.
00:56Okay.
00:57But what you're going to see here is not someone who seems to be in, under any sort
01:02of duress.
01:03Nope.
01:04Instead, he seems to be partying with his captors.
01:06He's playing a .
01:07That's a wheelchair crew.
01:08.
01:09Oh, that's so loud.
01:10.
01:11Oh, that's so loud.
01:12Put his hood on.
01:13Put his glasses away.
01:14.
01:15Oh, I think that's awful.
01:19This is going to suck at him.
01:22.
01:23So what you are seeing there, the guy in the chair.
01:30And it's hard to see because he's wearing a dark hoodie.
01:34Right.
01:35But there's a white, looks like a rope or a cable around his chest.
01:39Oh, right.
01:40So he's tied to a wheelchair.
01:41His hands are free.
01:42And it's an air fryer in front of him.
01:45And it's also hard to see because obviously we blurred it because he's allegedly a victim
01:51here.
01:52But obviously we've seen the unblurred.
01:53He is smiling.
01:54He is kind of laughing and joking around, which is a little concerning.
01:58But you also have to think, I mean, the counterpoint to that could be it's like he's being tied
02:03up and allegedly tortured.
02:05And obviously he's not trying to piss off the people who are doing this to him.
02:09So, you know, he's kind of like just doing what they tell him to do.
02:12And the air fryer is also interesting because you can hear, it's hard to make out there,
02:17but there are people in the room talking about using the air fryer to cook crack.
02:23And that's allegedly what's happening there.
02:25And they're yelling at him saying that the crack isn't going to be good.
02:28He doesn't know what he's doing.
02:30And that also lines up with what prosecutors said in court last week because he told cops
02:35that one of the things that he was told to do was he was forced to smoke crack cocaine
02:41and then they were taking videos of him that they were going to allegedly use to blackmail him.
02:46It's like, what's the right way to act when you've been kidnapped and you're allegedly being tortured?
02:50I don't know.
02:51You want to try and keep things friendly, I guess.
02:53Right. Does it sound like a light atmosphere, like they're having fun?
02:56They've got like young Jeezy on in the background.
02:58I mean, it's a party atmosphere, seemingly.
03:00I just find so strange is that the other people in the background we blurred are actually not the two guys
03:06who are actually arrested.
03:08So this just shows what we've been hearing that, you know, they would be having these parties at this condo
03:13and there's a bunch of people rolling through that clearly knew that this guy was tied up there.
03:17Yeah. You see the guy in the white sweater who is not Waltz, John Waltz or William DuPlessis.
03:22And then we hear other voices there.
03:26Now, one of those voices or both could be Walter DuPlessis.
03:29Walter DuPlessis, we don't know, but it is strange.
03:33You're right, Devin, that there were clearly people in and out who were watching what was happening.
03:38And we even hear one person say, don't get me in the crack video, which, you know,
03:46and I think it's a guy in the white sweater as he steps out of camera view.
03:51It is just a bizarre thing, especially as this is, remember, the way it was when he escaped,
03:58the Italian businessman, when he escaped and went to police,
04:02he said that they had held him starting on May 6th and it was May 23rd when he escaped.
04:08So on May 11th and the metadata, by the way, on this video matches up with the address of Waltz's townhome there in Soho.
04:18And it says the date says May 11th at one forty five in the morning.
04:23You know, Charles, they are his, you know, the defense attorneys who are absolutely going to use this and try and blow up the prosecution's case.
04:30It might it might blow up the kidnapping charge.
04:32It doesn't necessarily blow up the torture part. Right. Because this is just 20 seconds.
04:37Right. He said of more than two weeks. Right.
04:40He was in that. He says, you know, he was hung over the balcony.
04:42I mean, electrocuted. There were horrible things that he says happened to him that still might have happened.
04:47Right. Because he seems playful in this video. Right.
04:51But they are facing kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon.
04:58So it doesn't prove any doesn't disprove anything.
05:02But, you know, they're going to try and paint the picture that, no, this guy was having fun.
05:06They're all having a blast together.
05:08Hi, Amy in Ohio. And at first I was really surprised to see this victim allegedly cooking drugs.
05:14But it does make sense, like you said, that anyone who is in such a situation will kind of do anything to survive, to make it through.
05:21I also believe that law enforcement will tell us what happened, including who else is in the room.
05:25But I did have to Google whether you can cook drugs in an air fryer.
05:29And according to Reddit, you can. Yeah.
05:31You learn something every day. And listen, I got to say, one thing that we have learned about these,
05:36the two suspects that have been arrested already, that they led a very wild party lifestyle in New York City and going to this club, The Box.
05:44Right. Shirtless all the time at the club.
05:47Things that were happening there that are not normal to the common people.
05:54Right.
05:55But cooking crack in an air fryer, I don't know.
05:58But we are trying to get, obviously we will bring you more information once we find out what's going on here.
06:03We've tried to reach Carturin, who is the Italian businessman.
06:07We tried to reach an attorney for him, have not been able to find one yet.
06:11But I would imagine he is going to have a lot to say about what's going on in that video.
06:15We'll see you next time.
06:16Bye.
06:17Bye.
06:18Bye.
06:19Bye.
06:20Bye.
06:21Bye.
06:22Bye.