Yoko Driver Stalled in Jail

01/29/2007 9:32 AM, E! Online
Julie Keller

Yoko Ono still gets to imagine a world without trouble-making limo drivers…at least for the time being.

Koral Karsan, the chauffeur accused of trying to extort $2 million from John Lennon's widow, has been once again been denied bail.

The New York State Supreme Court reviewed the case Friday and ruled that there have been no new developments in the case and that the 50-year-old accused of threatening to kill (or at least really embarrass) Ono for money must remain behind bars.

Prosecutors claim Karsan is a flight risk and will hightail it back to his native Turkey if he is released from jail.

But Karsan's lawyer, who has been gunning for his client's release, now claims that some key evidence-a recording of Ono's lawyers and Karsan that allegedly recounts the driver's plans to kill Ono if she didn't meet his demands-actually exonerates Karsan.

Ono's team says Karsan claimed on tape that he had people waiting to kill her and that he would release embarrassing private material about her in a tell-all book if she did not come up with the $2 million.

Robert Gottlieb told the courts, however, that the accusation is "just plain false" and that his client should be released on bail.

Gottlieb asserted the tape reveals Karsan actually said there are "a lot of people out there who want to get" Ono, including  "my psychiatrist, my dentist, my lawyer."

The attorney said that Karsan claimed Ono was under constant threat from Beatles fans who saw her as a band-wrecking interloper: "They're all Beatles fans and they hate her. So they all want to use me," a transcript quotes Karsan as saying.

"There are millions of people who do not like Yoko Ono because of what they perceive her role to have been in breaking up the Beatles," Gottlieb wrote in court papers.

Gottlieb also told the courts that Karsan was so stressed from his job that eight of his teeth fell out, requiring medical attention, and that he was actually pleading for compensation for pain and suffering, not threatening death.

Finally, the lawyer insisted that any "killing" references were in regards to Karsan's legal team "killing" Ono in court.

Still, the tape is just one element in the prosecution's evidence against the driver, and Supreme Court Justice Daniel P. FitzGerald declined to set bail. FitzGerald said he didn't see any "substantial change in the material fact" and still thought Karsan could be a flight risk.

A tentative trial date was set for Feb. 12, following Gottlieb's request for a speedy trial.

The case could provide ample publicity for Ono's new album, Yes, I'm a Witch. The disc, featuring remixes of her songs by the likes of the Flaming Lips, Cat Power, Antony and the Johnsons and the Polyphonic Spree, is due in stores exactly one week later.