Jaclyn Taylor v Jessy Jones: Texts, Lies & Video Debate

CHATSWORTH, Calif.—The great 2002 screen adaptation of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans' electrifying memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture opens with this line: "There are three sides to every story: Your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying." A more apt encapsulation of the past week's tumultuous legal fray between formerly engaged adult performers Jaclyn Taylor and Jessy Jones, as recounted separately by each to AVN, would be difficult to conjure. Like a real-life Porn Valley incarnation of the Akira Kurosawa classic Rashomon, the portrait that emerges from the accounts of both parties is one of two wildly divergent versions, each plausible yet flawed in their own ways, of the same story. A handful of facts stand undisputed: Jones was arrested last Sunday afternoon and booked into the Van Nuys Jail on a felony domestic violence charge, then released the same night after posting a $5,000 bond on the set bail amount of $50,000; he also was served prior to booking with an emergency restraining order Taylor filed against him following the fight earlier that day upon which his arrest and felony charge were based, as had transpired in the kitchen area of the home the two have shared for several years. The day before, Taylor had the locks changed on the home while Jones was at work, something she wasn't legally allowed to do, despite the fact that his name was not on the lease, because he had technically established residency there. Almost everything surrounding those key points varies significantly in the tales told by the now separated couple. At the center of this battle lies the above-mentioned home, a townhouse that has been entirely in Taylor's name since the two moved in, for which she initially put down $7,500 for first month's rent and security deposit, but he has been solely handling the rent at least since the two got engaged roughly two years ago (or all along, depending on which of them you ask). Taylor and Jones both attest that their relationship had been on the rocks since November or December, and that they had a plan in place for him to take over the lease from her, and for her to move to Las Vegas and get her own house there. In order for that to happen, he would need to be approved by the leasing agent and pay the $5,000 security amount to Taylor—which the lessor would reimburse to him at whatever point he moved out—and once he'd done so, Taylor would sign a "roommate addendum" that would in effect turn the townhouse over to him. Then last Friday night, something happened. Taylor was out drinking with some friends, and got word that Jones' "new girlfriend," another adult performer, had been saying things about her on a set. Whether or not Taylor was aware prior to that night that Jones had been seeing someone else is unclear. What happened next is where the first major schism in stories occurs. According to Taylor, "I had decided that Saturday morning I was going to get up, I was going to go change the locks and tell Jessy that he could not come in anymore. Because he's been living at her house and my house, back and forth, and he's trashed my house. There's shit everywhere, there's cat shit everywhere, it's just a nightmare. So I said you know what, he's not on the lease, I've had enough of this, I'm just going to take back my apartment, clean the place up and give my 30 days notice so I can get my $5,000 back, go get a new place and move on. So I changed the locks." Jones' telling of that morning's events, on the other hand, is as follows: "Saturday, I'm about to go to work ... I see her in the driveway. And she's crying in her car, and she has the dog with her, I'm like, 'What's wrong?' She's like, 'Well, the dog's been shitting all over [her friend]'s place, she doesn't want me there anymore, I don't have a place to live, my house did not get approved in Las Vegas, I don't have enough credit; I don't have a house, I don't have a place to live, I'm fucked.' So I feel bad. I'm like, 'Listen, keep the dog at the house, it's cool with me, I don't care. Just make sure you come pick it up later, though.' Because I have cats in the house, I don't want the fucking dog there all day. So basically, that was my first mistake. Because that gave her access to the house. I gave her the key, she went in the house, and she went and she changed the locks on me." When Jones came home and discovered that his key no longer worked, things began to spiral south. Taylor told him cops were coming to escort him in and take whatever belongings he wanted, including his cats, but he left. Police did show, and explained to Taylor that she wasn't allowed to just lock him out, and at some point, Jones did collect his cats and a few other items. The same day, an attorney friend of the two who'd been mediating their separation drew up an agreement for them both to sign stipulating that Jones would give Taylor the $5,000 for the security deposit, she would sign the roommate addendum turning the townhouse over to him once he'd done so, and they would both be bound to a "monetary penalty agreement" that neither party—nor Jones' new girlfriend—would speak negatively about one another to others.  A meeting was set up for Sunday at the townhouse for Taylor and Jones to sign and finalize this agreement. A pertinent point they differ on in regard to this meeting is that, according to Jones, his new girlfriend was in his car—which has tinted windows and was parked right outside the front door—and witnessed what unfolded next; Taylor says she looked in his car and nobody was there. As Jones tells it, upon Taylor's arrival, "She opens the door, and as she opens the door, she starts recording with her phone. I'm like, 'What are you doing?' And she's like, 'I'm just recording you, in case something happens, you take something that's not yours.' I'm like, 'You can film me all you want, I don't know what your problem is, I have a camera right there and I have a camera right there.'" [Jones has maintained on social media and while speaking with AVN that he had a video surveillance system set up in the townhouse that was simultaneously recording these events as Taylor was doing so with her phone.] Taylor showed AVN the video she recorded on her phone, and while it did not contain an exchange exactly matching the one above, here is what it did: Taylor and Jones carry on an escalating verbal spar about the terms of the agreement, the money he owes her, and the fact that she's recording the argument, until at one point he moves toward her phone (which she props up on a corner surface toward the beginning), she grabs it, and he smacks it out of her hand. She picks it back up, he smacks it out of her hand again, there's an unperceivable blur of commotion, and the video ends.  By Taylor's account, this is what happened at that point: "Once the video gets shaky, it's because he's like being very aggressive with me. He grabbed me by the neck, he threw me against the front door, I hit my head on the front door, and he was choking me and basically like staring at me in the eyes, and I pushed him off of me. And then when I pushed him off of me to walk away, he grabbed me and threw me on the floor, and I fell to the ground, I hit my head on the floor, and then I kind of just got up ... I ran around the island to get away from him, and he basically was like, 'I'm sorry, I apologize, just please don't call the police.' And I said, 'I'm calling the police, you need to get out of here or do whatever you need to do, I'm calling 9-1-1.' So I called 9-1-1, I screamed at them that I needed help and that I was in trouble, and he left." Jones' version is decidedly different—according to him, at the point the video cut off, Taylor began screaming, "'Oh my god, this is assault! You just assaulted me!' And she goes down to the ground and like she's starting to like go crazy. And I'm laughing at her, I'm like, 'Listen, you're crazy, when I come back, you better not be here.'" He went on to say, "I swatted the phone away. And I even made sure I didn't touch her hand. I swatted the phone. ... I don't know what ticked her off, I don't know what pissed her off, but I never hit her. I never touched her, put my hand around her, she knows that." Once Taylor called the police, Jones left—he says he went to a shoot he had booked. Meanwhile, Taylor recounted, "The police came, they looked at the marks on my neck, they took photos of the marks on my neck, they looked at the video that had been recorded 25 minutes ago, and they issued me a emergency protective order until April 12. They said he cannot come near me, he can't call me, that's it. They're going to go meet him and get his story, they're going to to serve him with his protective order, and they're most likely going to arrest him because what he's done is a felony, and that I had given them all the proof that they needed for all of it." Following that, she went to the emergency room, where "I had a bunch of tests done; they determined that I have a cervical strain from tensing up in my neck; and I have pain in my back just from being tense; and they also determined that I have a concussion." Taylor showed AVN documentation of these diagnoses from West Hills Hospital. Upon arriving to his booking, Jones says others on the set advised him to call the police, because Taylor was likely telling them he'd assaulted her as they spoke. "Thirty-five minutes later, cops come to set, 'Jessy, can you step outside for a second?'" he recalled. "Not even one word ... they don't even let me say anything, they say, 'Can you put your hands behind your back and face the wall and spread your legs?' I'm like, 'What? What's happening right now?' And then I'm ... of course, California." He says he pleaded with the cops to go to the townhouse and retrieve the video footage from his surveillance cameras that would disprove Taylor's story, and they went, but she was not there and they couldn't enter without permission, and so he was sent to the Van Nuys Jail. Back at the hospital, Taylor said, the supervising police officer came to question her. "He said my story that the police took the report of is very different than his story, so I need to talk to you—I just want to be clear before I book him and have him arrested. So I proceeded to show him again the marks on my neck, the photos of the marks on my neck and the video that I took, and once I did that, he basically said, 'OK, this makes a lot more sense. I thought that he was lying but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and come and question you myself. I can tell that he's manipulative and he's disrespectful ... and quite frankly, I'm afraid for you, and you need to stick to your guns and keep this restraining order in place.' He called the other police officers right in front of me and said, 'You can book him now, I have everything I need.'" Over the next couple of days, Taylor says, Jones made perpetual attempts to contact her either directly or through mutual acquaintances—including a call from the jail house ("He violated his restraining order from jail")—imploring her to drop the charges and professing that "he made a mistake, he's sorry and he loves me and he wants to have children with me, and he wants to stay engaged and get married and have a life with me." She was considering agreeing to a supervised face-to-face meeting with him once the temporary restraining order expired, but not before then. "I'm afraid at this point, and it's gone too far," she said. Because Jones' family was coming to visit for a week starting Thursday and he'd been planning to have them stay at the townhouse, Taylor conceded through their mutual lawyer friend that she would move forward with their previous agreement for him to take over the lease provided he make a $2,500 payment to her and sign the necessary paperwork through the lawyer. She only wanted to first make sure such an agreement was possible with the restraining order in place, and go pick up a few things from the townhouse, at which point she would leave the key under the front mat.  When she got there on Wednesday to do as much, "I noticed that all the items, including the cats that were removed from my house two days ago by the police and his friend were now back in my home, and the screen from the window was taken down and it was on the side, so I had seen that someone had clearly gone through the window and there had been someone in my house. Because all the items that were moved prior are now back." Another item she discovered was a sticky note with the following written on it in feminine handwriting (by Taylor's presumption, the writing was that of Jones' new girlfriend): "Jessy's to-do list: "1) Get attorney for court date on May 2 "2) Keep calling Jaclyn & act like you want to get back together "3) Figure out family visiting" Taylor felt newly violated. "So basically, this whole plot of them breaking up and all of this, Jessy texting me he loves me and all of these things was just a plot to get me to drop the charges against him, give him the place back, and then he would just walk away from this scot free," she said. She immediately went to the police station and reported the break-in. Shortly after leaving, while sitting at a stop light, she claims she saw Jones pull up behind her in his car, then dart around her and speed off. She says she attempted to follow and get a picture of the car with her phone, but she lost him. Jones says that never happened. Taylor then returned to the townhouse and called the police again to file another report.  "Now I really am fearful for my life," Taylor asserted. "I'm afraid he's going to follow me. I'm afraid that now that all of this stuff is out and people in the industry know about it, he's going to come after me. So my first order of business I guess is to go and get [a] permanent restraining order—not that it matters, because clearly he doesn't care about those things." AVN confirmed with Taylor today that on Thursday she did in fact file for a permanent restraining order, but it had not yet been served on Jones as of post time.  The way Jones relays the events of Wednesday not only contradicts Taylor's version, it contradicts itself on a couple of fronts. The agreement to move forward with his taking over the lease, he says, was one brokered between himself and Taylor's father. "Her father's on the phone, 'I'm an Italian man, I'm a man of my word, if you come here and we talk, you get the place and you just never talk to my daughter again, and we dismiss all the charges, everything," Jones said. "I'm like, 'OK, cool,' I go there [Wednesday], get there, cops waiting for me. Jaclyn there waiting with the cops to get me arrested again." Later, however, he remembered things as such: "Her father told me on the phone, 'Jessy, you can go bring your stuff in, because you and I, as man to man, have an agreement. If you sign the paper and you give my daughter a check, we will dismiss the charge.' He says, 'You're young, I don't want to have a felony on your case.' He's a really nice, smart man. I go there, and I'm like, 'You know what, I still don't trust it, the cops should be here.' ... I call my lawyer, I'm like, 'Hey, I'm this amount away from the house. Can we do this? Can she come, can we do all of this?' She's like, 'No, she changed her mind. She doesn't want to do it today.' I'm like, 'What the fuck? Like, I took the day off and I'm here. Call the cops, we're gonna have the cops there,' because at this point, I wasn't taking my stuff. I was keeping the place. I was just giving her a check in front of the cops, and I was just signing the paper in front of the dad and the cops, but all of that was out the window." Whichever of these versions is true, neither explains how Jones' cats and the other items wound up back in the townhouse when Taylor showed up there that day. "I sent my friend Russian from the back door," Jones explained on that count. "I have two sliding doors in the back that don't lock. So basically I had golf clubs that couldn't fit in my car, and I have two cats, so I told him, 'Listen, go put the cats in the back, put the golf clubs in the back, and then get the fuck out of there.' That's it." And then there's the matter of the surveillance footage. Once again, Jones insists that the video captured by his surveillance system will completely exonerate him of Taylor's charges. The only problem: it's missing. At some point—it's not clear when—Jones reports, "I [got] in my house, so I run to my security camera, and I go and I take the freakin' memory card off the side ... memory card gone. So I'm like, 'Oh, OK, she plays dirty.' So at this point I'm like, 'Listen, I have a witness.' I'm like, 'You know what? Show on your phone, you were recording on your phone, right, the whole time? Why don't you show that?' Because everybody that saw it sees that there's nothing." As to the marks on Taylor's neck, Jones submitted the following counter-claim: "I had scratches on me from her when I tried to fucking swat the phone away and grab the phone from the ground—she scratched me, and the cop took a picture and was like, 'Wow, that's a bigger scratch than she has, 'cause she has nothing.'" He added that he'd been told Taylor had shot a BDSM scene the day prior to the fight that involved choking. "Like come on man, you can't be in porn and do BDSM and a choking scene where you leave a mark and then, 'Oh no, that was Jessy.' Are you serious? I never even fucking touched her. Like it's so frustrating." AVN asked Taylor by text whether she had shot such a scene last Saturday, and she replied, "I didn't shoot at all on sat ... and i don't shoot bdsm ... never have prob never will."  As things stand today, Taylor's charges against Jones remain in place, as does the restraining order, and neither plan to retain the townhouse. Jones has rented an AirBnB to host his family during their visit. For Taylor's part, she contends, "I would love to see him respect the restraining order that I have, and that's it. I would like his girlfriend to leave me alone, I would like him to leave me alone, and I want to be done with all of this. I don't actually even care at this point if I get my money back from the leasing office. I don't care, I'm going to get rid of the place and try to move forward and hope that he just stays away from me, and I hope that when he goes to court, the proper procedure is done based on him assaulting me and him doing all of this. I want there to be justice for this, because I don't think anything he's done is right, and I don't want to be a part of it." Offered Jones, "I wish nothing but the best for her, I want her to be happy, find a guy that's gonna be happy, get married, get engaged; she's an amazing person, but when she goes crazy, she goes crazy, and it just happened there was a mix of her finding out about another girl, the whole situation that she has no place to live, she just got kicked out, she got not approved for her house in Vegas, she got in a fight with her parents, she doesn't want to live there, she needed the place. ... I don't know her at this point. I thought I knew her, I don't know her at this point. And it's sad to people like my friends that are getting abused, that are really victims, and how she's using that to kind of get pity from people and have this whole industry be like, 'Oh, fuck Jessy Jones, he's a woman beater.'  "I have a career in front of me, I have so many movies, like I would never put myself in a jeopardizing situation like this that I could lose everything because I touched a girl," he continued. "Like that's absolutely insane. And if I had the footage from my camera, I would totally show you. At this point, it's he said/she said, and I just can't really say anything more than that. But hey, she did it, and she wanted to go this route, so this is where we're at right now." Jones is scheduled to appear in Van Nuys Municipal Court May 2.