Surprise Witness Tells of Encounter With Albert

ARLINGTON, Va. — A surprise witness testified Wednesday that Marv Albert, wearing white panties and a garter belt, bit her three years ago in a Dallas hotel room during a struggle that left her holding the sportscaster’s hairpiece.

The witness, Patricia Masden, said she got to know Albert during the early 1990s when she traveled with the New York Knicks and was the VIP liaison for Hyatt Hotels.

Her story was the most shocking yet in Albert’s forcible sodomy and assault trial. Albert is not on trial in connection with the alleged incident, but Circuit Judge Benjamin N.A. Kendrick let her tell her story to show what prosecutors say was a pattern of conduct.

She said he summoned her to his room in Dallas in 1994, saying he needed help sending a fax. When she entered Albert’s room and announced her presence, she heard him say, “Come on in.”

“I turned around and I saw him standing there,” she said. “I saw him standing there in white panties and garter belt. He was exposed and he was aroused.”

She said she stood there in shock as Albert approached her and began to rub against her.

“He told me he was tense and he needed some relief,” Masden said. “Then he bit the back of my neck and he pushed me. He tried to push my head down to his crotch area.”

As she tried to push Albert off her, she said, “I went to grab his hair and his hair lifted off. He immediately put his hands on his hair and I ran out of the room.”

During the testimony, Albert put one hand to his chin, his face impassive. His fiancee, freelance producer Heather Faulkiner, leaned forward and gripped the back of the bench in front of her but showed no emotion. Albert’s daughter, Denise, looked pained.

Madsen said there was an earlier encounter in 1993, one in Miami, in which Albert asked for oral sex and she refused. She also said, “He asked me if I was interested in a menage a trois,” specifically, three-way sex with another man.

Earlier Wednesday, an emergency room nurse testified that the woman who brought the criminal charges went to an emergency room with 18 to 20 bite marks on her back, one of which broke the skin.

The nurse, Jonathan Gold, said the woman was “tearful, and at other times she seemed angry” when she came to National Hospital.

The third day of the trial began with the judge angrily lecturing reporters and spectators after someone who identified herself as a court reporter contacted a juror.

Albert’s lawyers lost another bid to admit evidence intended to portray Albert’s accuser as a mentally unstable chronic liar whose life was falling apart around the time of the alleged attack.