chef

New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs was charged with felony strangulation or suffocation and misdemeanor assault and battery at a court hearing Tuesday. The alleged victim in the Dec. 2 incident was his private chef, according to a report taken by police in Dedham, Mass.

Through his attorney, Diggs has denied the allegations. The name of the woman was redacted from the police report.

The chef reported the incident Dec. 16, telling police that she and Diggs had a dispute over pay after he told her via text that her services weren’t needed the week of Nov. 7 and she replied that she should be paid for the week.

The woman told police that Diggs entered her unlocked bedroom in his house and “smacked her across the face.” She tried to push him away and he “tried to choke her using the crook of his elbow around her neck.”

She said that she had trouble breathing and felt like she could have blacked out. “As she tried to pry his arm away, he tightened his grip,” she told police.

The woman told police she had redness on her upper chest area after the incident occurred but did not take photos. She returned to Diggs’ house Dec. 9 to retrieve personal belongings and he instructed her to speak with his assistant about getting paid, she told police. The assistant told her Diggs had requested she sign a non-disclosure agreement, but she refused.

Diggs’ girlfriend is rapper Cardi B, who gave birth to their son in November. Cardi B, born Belcalis Almánzar, is not mentioned by name in the police report, although the woman told police Dec. 20 that a few days earlier “she received a voice mail and text messages from a female that she believed to be Diggs girlfriend. Based on these messages, [the alleged victim] believed that Diggs somehow knew the police were contacted. The messages stated something to the effect of ‘You don’t need to do all this. It’s not that big of a deal.’”

The woman, who had worked as Diggs’ private chef since July, initially did not want the police to file charges against the two-time All-Pro receiver but changed her mind Dec. 23.

Diggs’ lawyer David Meier said in a statement that his client “categorically denies these allegations. They are unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, and were never investigated — because they did not occur.

“The timing and motivation for making the allegations is crystal clear: they are the direct result of an employee-employer financial dispute that was not resolved to the employee’s satisfaction. Stefon looks forward to establishing the truth in a court of law.”

Meier also said Diggs has made a financial offer to the woman, telling the judge at the hearing Tuesday, “As we speak, they’re working to come to an agreement on that.”

According to the police report, Diggs did not return calls from investigators and the criminal complaint was “based on [the alleged victim’s] statement.”

Diggs, 32, has been one of the NFL’s top receivers since beginning his career with the Minnesota Vikings in 2015. He ranks fifth among active players with 939 career receptions, including 82 this season for 970 yards.

This is his first season with the Patriots, who have clinched the AFC East title and will begin the playoffs with a wild card home game the weekend of Jan. 10. Diggs is in the first year of a three-year, $69-million contract.

“We support Stefon,” the Patriots said in a statement. “We will continue to gather information and will cooperate fully with the appropriate authorities and the NFL as necessary. Out of respect for all parties involved, and given that this is an ongoing legal matter, we will have no further comment at this time.”

Diggs’ arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 23. Meier asked the judge Tuesday that the proceeding be delayed until March but no ruling was made.

What do fallen empires leave behind? Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s new work of fiction attempts to answer that question. “Three Stories of Forgetting” probes the inner worlds of three men scarred by their participation in Portugal’s history of rapacious colonialist intervention that ended in 1999. For nearly 600 years, the European republic was involved in a bloody land grab that at its peak controlled over 5.5 million square miles across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Pereira de Almeida’s protagonists — Celestino, a slave trader; Boa Morte, a former soldier who had been conscripted to fight his fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence; and Bruma, an elderly plantation worker — live in a liminal state between past and present, searching for some measure of solace in a world that offers none. I chatted with Pereira de Almeida, who was born in Angola but was reared in Lisbon, about her haunting triptych of stories.

✍️ Author Chat

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is author of “Three Stories of Forgetting,” a new novel exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire.

(Humberto Brito)

Three stories of forgetting … but nothing is forgotten among these men.

All three men are tormented by what they can’t forget, although they don’t feel exactly guilty, in the case of Celestino and Boa Morte. Bruma is a different story. The “forgetting” of the title relates to the omission of the figures who do not appear in the book, or who appear only occasionally, episodically. Those who are forgotten are the victims and their story. These three stories are also chapters of a more general story of violence, that of colonialism, whose victims are largely forgotten to this day.

Boa Morte, a valet in Lisbon, carries an enormous burden of guilt; in order to expiate it, he tries to save a young street vagrant. Of course, all attempts at redemption in the book are futile — why is that?

I don’t think redemption is as common as much of today’s fiction seems to suggest. The experience of guilt or of an existence haunted by ghosts seems more common to me. Boa Morte was forgotten by Portugal, the country for which he gave his life, and his hateful behavior left him utterly alone. What would redeem his life? Boa Morte is inspired by a man I knew who became my friend and lived on the streets of Lisbon, just like the character. One day, he was found dead in an alley. Not all lives know redemption.

The three protagonists are captives of their pasts, because the past is still present. Can you speak to that?

After reading [British philosopher] Peter Geach’s sentence that opens his book “The Virtues,” I became interested in inquiring into the lives of people who may be, so to speak, “dead in the eyes of God.” The problem with this possibility, however, is that we may die in the eyes of God early in life, without knowing it, and yet live to old age and remain here.

This sentence is important to me, regardless of its religious meaning. It is important in that it opens up the possibility that we may have exhausted our share of grace in life and, as humans, need to keep going.

All three of these characters are looking for some kind of solace — whether it’s reverting to some kind of quiet life among living things that don’t talk back, or building a lean-to as a kind of sanctuary.

Perhaps these places they seek are, in very different ways, the only possible remnants of rest: and also places where questions have ceased. Among living things that don’t talk there are no witnesses, there is no guilt.

You can’t write stories like these without some degree of empathy — do you feel sorry for these men? What do you feel for them as a writer?

I agree with that. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I tried to get closer to them and understand them, without imposing my ideas and opinions on them, something I don’t like to do when I write novels. Instead, I preferred, as I usually prefer, to fly around them like an insect, to study them, to let them talk to me: It is a non-imposing approach, which lets the characters speak. In general, I tend to be interested in characters I don’t like and who wouldn’t treat me with the kindness I show them. It’s my way of seeking justice, in its contradictions, and of exploring ambiguity in human behavior: I want to create hospitality, and that means being able to extend my hospitality to characters whose deeds I condemn.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Carolyn Kellogg, Bethanne Patrick and Mark Athitakis select the best books of the year for The Times.

(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Scribner, Riverhead and Penguin Press)

Jim Ruland talked to Thurston Moore about his new book that chronicles the Sonic Youth guitarist’s love of free jazz. “I go out with my band and I play typical band gigs,” says Moore, “but I prefer being in a basement with a free jazz drummer any day of the week.”

Mark Athitakis finds favor with W. David Marx’s “Blank Space,” a sharp critique that maps the decline of our present culture, as well as Adam Morgan’s biography of 20th century literary firebrand Margaret C. Anderson, a trailblazer who bucked the prevailing culture to champion challenging art, including Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “If we want more works like ‘Ulysses’ in our world (and far less cringe) … it will demand a stubbornness from creators and dedication from consumers that the current moment is designed to strip from us,” Athatakis writes.

Finally, three critics weigh in on the 15 best books of 2025, while Mariella Rudi ticks off the nine best celebrity memoirs of the year.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Apollo, one of two bookstore cats, sleeping in a box at the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood.

(Gerard Burkhart / For The Times)

The San Fernando Valley has lost many of its beloved bookshops over the last two decades, but North Hollywood’s Iliad bookshop remains. The store, which first opened its doors 28 years ago and remains the greatest purveyor of used books in all of Los Angeles, is the kind of tangled labyrinth teeming with titles that one can get lost in for hours. I spoke with Dan Weinstein about what is moving out of the doors this holiday season.

What is selling in the Christmas rush this year?

We tend to sell the same kinds of titles all year round, so it’s standard literature, science fiction and the handful of authors we can’t keep on the shelves: Octavia Butler, Charles Bukowski, Sarah J. Maas and Brandon Sanderson. Also, a lot of gift cards! Actually, January is our strongest month for sales — winter kicks in and people like to stay at home and read.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Iliad customer since the ’90s. Do you tend to see the same faces across the years?

Oh, we have very serious hardcore customers that come over and over again. Some of them even come on a daily basis. Fortunately, we are always putting good new inventory out.

What about Hollywood business? You have a tremendous inventory of art and photography books. Do set designers come in to find inspiration?

We do sell a lot to the entertainment industry. That really keeps us alive. If we were doing business in a city other than Los Angeles, I don’t think we would do nearly as well.

The Iliad Bookshop is located in North Hollywood at 5400 Cahuenga Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)