Listen to 911 call made the night Johnny Depp and Amber Heard had blowout fight

An anonymous 911 call made the night Johnny Depp and Amber Heard had the blowout fight that ended their toxic 18-month marriage is published today for the first time.

The recording was buried in legal files for nearly four years but now DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal both its explosive contents and the tantalizing new questions it raises about the former couple’s infamous clash.

‘Hi, I need to report an assault right now happening at 849 Broadway at the Eastern building, it’s penthouse three,’ the caller begins, referring to the luxurious home Depp and Heard formerly shared in downtown LA.

Refusing to give a name, the caller explains that a friend named Amber is being attacked by a man described merely as a ‘boyfriend’, saying: ‘I happen to know that it’s happening and I just need to remain anonymous.’

‘So what did she say that this guy assaulted her or hit her?’ the LAPD operator replies, explaining she needs more detail.

‘Physically assaulting her, yeah,’ replies the caller, becoming agitated. ‘Send somebody up there please,’ the caller adds, reiterating the location of the couple’s lavish penthouse before the recording abruptly ends. 

Timestamped 8:27:27pm on Saturday May 21, 2016, the call appears to have been placed around the time Heard claims Depp flew into a rage, hurled a cell phone at her face and tore out clumps of her hair.

Her attorney says phone records and police department logs vindicate Heard’s account of the final shocking episode of domestic violence she endured before filing for divorce.

Depp’s legal team say this recording does the precise opposite, however, by raising discrepancies in the various accounts Heard and her allies have given of the notorious dust up.  

His attorney is also questioning the identity of the caller, pointing out the female voice on the clip does not belong to iO Tillett Wright, a trans activist and Heard confidante who has since gone on record to say he dialed 911.

Depp, 56, maintains he never laid a finger on his 33-year-old ex-wife and has accused her of fabricating an ‘abuse hoax’ to boost her profile.

The pair are currently battling it out in the courts after Heard penned a 2018 op-ed describing her experiences as a domestic violence survivor and the Pirates of the Caribbean actor responded by filing a $50 million defamation suit.

Their rival accounts of the May 2016 fight, the bitter, final chapter of their troubled five-year relationship, will likely play a key role in deciding the case, which is due to go before a jury later this year.

Heard has claimed she was on the phone to Tillett Wright when Depp launched his alleged attack, grabbing the device and throwing it at her as she tried to talk to him about their marriage problems.

‘He is smacking my face, moving my face and he’s got me by the hair and he’s, it’s hard to describe it’s almost like yanking me from side to side with my hair,’ she said in a videotaped deposition for their 2016 divorce case.

‘He’s still holding on to my head at this time and he said, I don’t know if he’s trying it grab my face but he’s yelling at me, screaming, see how hard I hit you. I am screaming at the top of my lungs, help, help please help.’

That account was corroborated by Tillett Wright who issued a June 2016 declaration through Heard’s attorneys saying he listened via speakerphone as Depp launched ‘into a cruel and vicious rage’.

‘I then heard Amber crying in fear and begging Johnny to stop his attack, thereafter I heard Amber scream out ‘Call 911′ before the call got disconnected. I called 911 to save Amber’s life,’ he said.

Expanding on the incident in an op-ed for Refinery29, entitled ‘Why I called 911’, Tillett Wright said he had witnessed Depp abusing Heard on previous occasions.

‘That’s why, when it happened again, when I was on the phone with both of them and heard it drop, heard him say, ‘What if I pulled your hair back?’ and her scream for my help, I wondered like so many times before if I should break the code of silence that surrounds celebrities and invite the police into the situation, and in a split second decided that, yes, I was going to,’ he wrote.

However Depp’s legal team point to an LAPD log that shows that Tillett Wright’s call was not registered on their system until 10:09pm, around an hour and a half after the alleged attack. 

They suggest the 8:27pm 911 call was instead placed by a different woman called Raquel Pennington, a yoga instructor and close pal of the Aquaman actress who ‘lived rent free’ in a neighboring apartment also owned by Depp. 

Pennington, one of the first people on the scene after the alleged assault, did not respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

However she was specifically asked if she had dialed 911 in a July 2016 deposition.

‘What steps did you take at any time from the moment you walked into the apartment until now to call the police she was asked, under oath.

Pennington replied: ‘The police had already been called by iO.’

Depp’s legal team say the Oscar nominee was seen on surveillance video leaving the apartment at 8:29pm and knew nothing about Heard’s alleged injuries until she filed for a restraining order six days later and attended court with a bruised face.

The domestic violence case ultimately fizzled when the two LAPD officers who responded to the 8:27pm call, Melissa Saenz and Tyler Hadden, said they never found any evidence of a crime.

Officer Saenz said in a July 2016 deposition that the pair left behind a business card and didn’t know until two weeks later the man involved was Johnny Depp.

Saenz said she also learned that a second patrol visited the penthouse later the same night.

She didn’t recall the names of the officers but said in her testimony: ‘Their findings were the same as ours.’

Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman said the various discrepancies proved that nothing Heard and her friends said about the events of May 21, 2016 could be considered credible.

‘Quite simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr Depp up by calling the cops but the first attempt didn’t do the trick,’ he told DailyMail.com. 

‘The officers came to the penthouses, thoroughly searched and interviewed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property.

‘So Amber and her friends spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories straight under the direction of a lawyer and publicist, and then placed a second call to 911.

‘But even this didn’t have the desired effect because two domestic abuse-trained LAPD police would later provide a pair of sworn depositions saying they saw no evidence of a crime.

‘These lies about who made the calls and when are just the tip of the iceberg as the evidence will show in court.’

Heard’s legal team rejected those allegations as ‘fantasies’.

‘Mr Depp’s representations about the 911 calls on the night of May 21, 2016 are false, and Mr Depp and his lawyers should know better,’ said her attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

‘All of the evidence – including sworn testimony from multiple witnesses, phone records, and police department logs – are consistent with the truthful account given by Mr Tillet Wright.

‘Despite Mr Depp’s efforts to misrepresent the facts and to harass and intimidate Ms Heard and various witnesses, we still live in a world where certain things are truth and others are false.

‘Here, there are the true facts of what happened and then there are Mr Depp’s self-serving fantasies.’

Tillett Wright’s attorney Lauren Schwartz told DailyMail.com that her client was in New York on May 21, 2016 and when he dialed 911 he reached the NYPD.

She says he is able to prove he made the call at 11:16pm eastern time – 8:16pm in LA – and that the hour and a half delay was simply the time it took the NYPD to formally hand the incident over to the LAPD.

Schwartz said Tillett Wright had indeed asked a friend living in LA to make a second call, fearing the two police forces would drag their heels while Heard was being assaulted.

She did not name the friend, nor confirm if it was Pennington.

‘Mr. Wright stands by his truthful account of the May 21, 2016 events,’ said Schwartz.

‘Mr Depp’s team, desperate to discredit this timeline, has mounted a calculated attack on Mr. Wright. Although they have access to records that corroborate Mr Wright, they are instead releasing only cherry-picked, misleading portions of the record.

‘Mr. Depp’s effort to paint Mr Wright as a hoaxer or a liar is simply an effort to re-write history. The truth of Mr Wright’s statements will be proven by documents and testimony when this case finally goes to trial.’

Depp and Heard met on the set of The Rum Diary back in 2011 and married four years later before their May 2016 fight proved the final nail in their chaotic relationship.

The estranged couple managed to agree to a $7 million divorce settlement in August of that year however their feud reignited when Heard’s op-ed was published in December 2018.

It didn’t mention Depp by name but he nonetheless sued her the following March, saying it led to speculation that he was the abuser and caused him to lose the role of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Depp has always argued that he was the victim of an ‘elaborate hoax’ instigated by his ex-wife, who ‘faked’ her injuries with makeup and falsified accounts of abuse.

‘Ms. Heard is not a victim of domestic abuse; she is the perpetrator,’ his suit alleges.

‘She hit, punched and kicked me. She also repeatedly and frequently threw objects into my body and head, including heavy bottles, soda cans, burning candles, television remote controls and paint thinner cans, which severely injured me.’

Heard responded with a 300-page filing of her own, cataloging the years of alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of ‘the monster’ and recalling many of the allegations she made during their divorce

These included a blood-curdling account of how Depp cut off his own finger after a booze and ecstasy bender one month into their marriage, an accusation he denies.