The ex-wife of the former Angels PR executive convicted of providing the fatal dose of fentanyl to pitcher Tyler Skaggs testified Tuesday that she was paid by the plaintiffs suing the team, as a team defense attorney pressed her on how her testimony appeared to conflict what she said in a deposition in April.
Camela Kay testified that while on a team flight with her husband Eric Kay she saw Xanax and Percocet being passed around like candy while players partied.
Angels attorney Todd Theodora pressed Camela Kay if she recalled one of her sons when he was 16 taking a team flight on a road trip with his father and she could not recall. She recalled her other son traveling with his father.
“If you thought there was rampant drug use on a plane you wouldn’t allow him to go?” Theodora asked Kay.
“That’s correct,” she replied.
She acknowledged she only saw the drug abuse once.
“You base this on one flight?” Theodora asked.
“And being told by Eric” that it was routine, she replied.
The testimony comes as attorneys for Skaggs’ widow and parents make the case that Angels executives were aware of illicit drug use by Kay and took steps to protect a valued employee.
Angels attorneys say the team’s executives thought Kay had mental health issues such as bipolar disorder and depression and were not aware of any illicit drug usage. They blame Skaggs’ death during a July 2019 road trip in Texas on excessive drinking mixed with the fentanyl pill and oxycodone.
Camela Kay said she asked to be paid for time off of work to respond to the plaintiffs’ deposition in the case in April. She said she gets paid $28 per hour and wanted to be reimbursed for lost income.
“I got paid for my deposition because I was missing work,” Camela Kay said.
Theodora asked if she “demanded” $175 per hour in cash, which she said was for meeting with the plaintiffs’ attorneys before the deposition.
“Are they paying you to be here now?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “They haven’t offered to pay me anything, but they would pay me for missing work … I am a single mother of three boys.”
Camela Kay said she recalled being paid $500, but Theodora did the math on a calculator and estimated it to be $875 for the time she spent with the attorneys.
“I did not receive any money for my deposition,” Camela Kay said. “I never expected any compensation for my deposition.”
Theodora pressed her on why she wanted cash.
“So it was tax free money to you?” Theodora asked.
“Yes,” she said.
When Camela Kay met with the attorneys, she said, “I had questions. I don’t have counsel. That’s why I met with (them).”
Under questioning from plaintiffs’ attorney, Leah Graham, Camela Kay said her attorney at the time negotiated the compensation of $500.
When Graham asked her if it influenced her testimony, Camela Kay said, “absolutely not.”
During a break away from jurors, the attorneys skirmished with the judge over Theodora’s line of questioning regarding liability Camela Kay would potentially face knowing about her then-spouse’s alleged drug dealing with Skaggs.
Theodora also pressed Camela Kay if she had sour grapes due to the team failing to provide financial assistance when Eric Kay got in trouble with the law.
“Were you angry with Angels Baseball?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
But Theodora pointed her to her deposition statement saying that the time her husband was on trial in federal court was “awful.” She said she felt “disappointed” in the team.
When Theodora asked if she had any remorse knowing about the drug use involving Skaggs and Eric Kay, she said, “Do I have any remorse? Of course.”
Camela Kay said she never told Skaggs’ family about the drug use.
“I didn’t know them,” she said.
Camela Kay said she did not recall what prescriptions Eric Kay was getting for his mental health issues and narcolepsy. But she acknowledged that text messages she exchanged with Eric Kay’s boss, Tim Mead, refreshed her memory.
Camela and Eric Kay were growing estranged between 2017 and 2019, she said. The two were sleeping in separate rooms as she was working “to get my ducks in a row,” she said in her deposition.
“I was sleeping in another room because of his drug use,” Camela Kay said Tuesday. “I was living in chaos, so, yes, I was trying to get him help.”
Eric Kay was not home much at the time to help with parenting, she said.
Camela Kay said she suspected her husband was selling drugs when baggies of pills were found in her room by Mead.
However, she also said: “I did not think he was a drug dealer.”
When team traveling secretary Tom Taylor brought Eric Kay home on one Easter Sunday after seeing him “karate chopping” in a local drug store, she said she told him the baggies of pills found in his room were not for Eric Kay but were meant for Tyler Skaggs, something she said Eric Kay’s sister told her.
She said Taylor “chuckled” at the notion, which prompted Theodora to ask her if he did so because he found that bit of news too incredible to believe.
Camela Kay said she told Taylor in a telephone call in April 2019 that the baggies of pills they found in Eric Kay’s room were meant for Skaggs.
“Eric said he spoke to (Tim Mead) about it,” she added.
While Eric Kay was hospitalized to withdraw from opioid addiction, “He told me to ask Tim to keep (Skaggs) off his back,” for more drugs, Camela Kay testified.
Mead “knew I had seen text messages from Tyler that he needed his candy,” Camela Kay testified.
Eric Kay “didn’t want to give Tyler any more pills,” Camela Kay testified.
When Graham asked her if Eric Kay “complained about needing money,” Camela Kay replied, “Always.”
When Camela Kay said she was disappointed in the team for not “doing more” to help her ex-husband and Skaggs, Theodora objected, saying, “This is all rehearsed.”
Camela Kay also went over medical records regarding her ex-husband’s counselors reports on his progress. He said he was anxious about returning to work and stepping into the shoes of Mead, who was moving on to head the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The reports showed Eric Kay’s addiction started in 2007 and included mixing alcohol, oxycodone, marijuana and that he had tried rehab four times and relapsed that many times.
Camela Kay said she was also concerned about Eric Kay’s return to work in 2019 because she worried “He’s going to be mixing his drugs again,” she testified.