Alexander brothers sex trafficking trial: The most striking revelations so far

This week, a government witness described using her eyeliner to write "Rapists" on the front door of the brothers' Southampton rental. "You need to apologize," she also wrote.

It was Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend in 2009, and she was fleeing the house after witnessing a group of men, including Tal Alexander and "one of the twins," sexually assaulting a screaming woman in the backyard hot tub, she told the jury.

"She was over and over and over asking them to stop," testified the witness, Avishan Bodjnoud, now an information management executive at the United Nations.

Prosecutors showed jurors photographs of the graffiti recovered from a hard drive seized from Tal Alexander.

A second witness to the hot tub incident, herself an assault accuser, described seeing "a girl, I believe, in a green bikini with a bunch of guys on top of her."

She also described seeing a distraught female onlooker cry out, "I work for the UN, and I know what you're doing out there!"

During cross-examination, a defense lawyer for Tal Alexander challenged the UN employee's testimony that she remained silent out of fear for the brothers' power and influence.

"Were you aware that in 2009, Tal Alexander was a 21-year-old copy machine salesman?" asked the lawyer, Milton Williams.

The prescription sleep aid Ambien has figured prominently in the trial.

The jury has seen four emails from 2015 and 2016 in which Oren Alexander used his work email at Douglas Elliman — where he and Tal Alexander were star real estate brokers — to ask his assistants for help refilling his Ambien prescription.

Each time, an assistant told Oren Alexander he's out of prescriptions and needs to call his doctor or try another pharmacy.

The jury has also seen five texts from between 2017 and 2021 in which the brothers discuss Ambien. "I give u all my ambien and you do nothing to try and get some more," Oren Alexander complains to Tal Alexander in one text from 2017.

A forensic toxicologist testified during week three of the government's case that Ambien is a sedative commonly used in drug-facilitated sexual assaults.

The jury has seen other sedatives referenced in the brothers' texts, including Quaaludes, Xanax, ketamine, and GHB.

By the end of the third week of testimony, eight accusers had described being raped by one or more of the brothers after losing consciousness from a few sips of a drink.

Defense lawyers have noted that not one accuser called police or sought to take a drug test.

"You may not approve of their lifestyle," defense lawyer Teny Geragos told the jury, but "there is not a single solitary shred of evidence relating to drugging a woman for sex."

Jurors watched intently when shown a video of two men — one of them Alon Alexander, then 21 — having sex with an intoxicated 17-year-old in 2009.

Half of the jurors held their hands to their faces, and a middle-aged woman in the panel's second row appeared near tears, her face reddening as the footage played.

"I can hardly understand what I was saying," the girl in the video tearfully told jurors, after taking the witness stand the following day.

Now 33, she testified under the pseudonym Amelia Rosen, and told the jury she has no memory of that night or of what prosecutors called Alon Alexander's "trophy" video of her rape.

In cross-examining Rosen, Marc Agnifilo, an attorney for Oren Alexander, asked Rosen which party promoters took her to nightclubs when she was ages 15 through 17. Agnifilo also noted in his questioning that Rosen was two months shy of her 18th birthday at the time of the video.

An accuser using the pseudonym "Katie Moore" was the first government witness to testify. Moore said she was 20 years old when she met Tal and Alon Alexander at a 2012 NBA Finals viewing party at the Manhattan penthouse of actor Zac Efron.

Moore said she lost consciousness at a nightclub later that night, after sipping a drink handed to her by one of the brothers' friends.

She said she woke up naked on a bed at the Manhattan apartment Alon Alexander shared with Tal Alexander. Alon Alexander stood at the side of the bed, also naked, she said.

"I don't want to have sex with you!" she recalled telling Alon Alexander, who she said laughed, responded, "But you already did," and then continued his attack despite her screams of "No."

At some point, Moore testified, Tal Alexander walked in. "It was so weird how normal it seemed between them," Moore told the jury of the two brothers. "I think they had a conversation" as she was raped by Alon Alexander, she said.

On cross-examination, lawyers for the brothers noted that Moore didn't call the police or take a drug test. The defense also asked Moore why, hours after the alleged rape, she updated her Facebook profile photo. The photo, taken by Efron, showed her and her friend Ainsley at the actor's party.

"It was the last photo I had of me before I was raped that night," she said of the photograph. "I see someone who was much more innocent and carefree and unburdened," she said as the photograph was shown to jurors.

During opening statements, Assistant US Attorney Madison Reddick Smyser told the jury that the Alexander brothers "celebrated their crimes."

"For example," the prosecutor said, "after Oren and Alon sexually assaulted three high school girls in a hotel room, Oren texted a friend that he took down a 17-year-old."

Smyser said the Alexander brothers used "power, wealth, and access to lure women and girls to them" at upscale locales like the Hamptons, Miami, and Manhattan.

Smyser, the Manhattan federal prosecutor, told jurors during opening arguments that the Alexander brothers texted each other about their conquests, at one point saying that "the only thing that could bring them down is if some 'ho' complained."

The prosecutor said the Alexander brothers "used whatever means necessary" — including drugging victims and using "brute force" — to carry out sex attacks.

They "carried out their rapes in different ways," said Smyser. "They physically held victims down" and put drugs like GHB and Xanax in their drinks, getting the women so intoxicated that, in one instance, their victim could not stand up, she said.