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Cosby on seducing women: 'They need chemicals'

As a 13-year-old boy, Bill Cosby secretly sprinkled what he thought was an aphrodisiac on girls' cookies. He wrote about it in a memoir and later joked about it on The Larry King Show. And he testified in 2005 that he had obtained Quaaludes to give to seduce young women.

"They're never in the mood for us. ... They need chemicals," Cosby told his friends, he wrote in Childhood, his 1991 book.

Now, prosecutors want those references to drugging females shared with jurors at the entertainer's sex-assault trial in June.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele cited the examples Thursday as he asked a judge to allow them as evidence at the trial. Steele's filing comes two days after Cosby's lawyers sought to exclude Cosby's decade-old testimony about Quaaludes and other women.

A chapter of his book, called "Or Maybe It's a Spanish Flea," recounts the tale of attempting to secretly sprinkle a chemical on cookies to give to girls at a party when they were 13. The drug: "Spanish Fly, an aphrodisiac so potent that it could have made Lena Horne surrender to Fat Albert," Cosby wrote.

"My style perhaps could have been smoother, but this, after all, was the first aphrodisiac I had ever pushed," he recalled.

Cosby suggested the drug was perhaps his only chance with the girls.

"I understood sex, but I was still too short and thin to expect that any girl, no matter how much she liked my smile, would ever surrender to me anything more than her rotating shoulder blades," he wrote.

Prosecutors said the book, alongside the 2005 deposition testimony about Quaaludes, proves Cosby's knowledge of date-rape drugs.

"These excerpts also suggest that he had a willingness and motive to push 'chemicals' to obtain sex from the otherwise unwilling victim," Steele wrote.

Prosecutors also cited Cosby's reference to Spanish Fly in a 1991 interview with Larry King, when he called it something that every boy "from age 11 on up to death ... will still be searching for," according to a transcript of the interview.

"It don't make a difference, and the girl would drink it and ... ?" Cosby said to King.

"And she's yours," King responded.

"Hello, America!" Cosby replied.

A spokesman for Cosby declined to comment Thursday.

In a filing earlier this week, lawyers Brian McMonagle and Angela Agrusa said the mention of interactions between Cosby and any woman other than Andrea Constand, his chief accuser in this case, or the one other accuser who will testify, should be prohibited.

Steele acknowledged in Thursday's filing that Cosby's lawyers may argue that both the interview and the anecdote in the book were merely jokes, not evidence for a criminal jury to consider.

"While it would certainly shock the modern social conscience to laugh at, make light of, or joke about drugging and raping women, it is possible [Cosby] may cling to the cloak of comedy to avoid culpability," Steele wrote. "Regardless, his argument would be unavailing."

Cosby, 79, is charged with aggravated indecent assault for allegedly drugging and molesting Constand, who was a Temple University employee, at his home in Cheltenham in 2004. Another woman is expected to testify about her own allegations against Cosby; Judge Steven T. O'Neill is allowing testimony by only one of the 13 women prosecutors sought to bring forward as witnesses. The judge has also ruled that Cosby's 2005 deposition in Constand's lawsuit against him can be used as evidence -- although Cosby's legal team is now seeking to limit its use.

O'Neill will hear arguments -- about Cosby's own words on date-rape drugs and other pretrial issues -- at a hearing Monday in Norristown. The trial is scheduled to begin June 5.