By JANON FISHER and LORENA MONGELLI
Last updated: 8:18 pm
July 6, 2008
Posted: 3:44 am
July 6, 2008
Supermodel Christie Brinkley's hubby Peter Cook is a deviant who repeatedly ignored warnings to stay away from teen Diana Bianchi, the girl's stepfather says.
Speaking out for the first time in detail, Southampton Village Police Officer Brian Platt recalled his first encounter with Cook, who has since admitted to hiring, pursuing and eventually bedding Bianchi. The cad and the teen first met in a toy store in 2003, when she was 15.
Cook hired her to work at his architecture firm when she was 18.
Platt said he knew of Cook "since the early '90s," and started to get wise to his intentions "when he first began to solicit my daughter to leave her job and come to work for him.
"I told her not to," Platt said. "To me this was suspicious behavior on his part."
Platt said he learned from a "confidential informant" that the architect had put a $15,000 down payment on a Nissan Maxima to replace the car her parents took away for "disciplinary reasons."
After that, the dad knew he had to take action.
He approached Cook at a produce stand in Sag Harbor.
"When confronted about the car, Cook said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't think I did anything wrong, I was trying to help her,' " Platt said. "I said 'the only part of what you said that was right is that [you didn't think].' I personally wouldn't dream of putting a 19-year-old girl in a new car without speaking to the family first."
"You have overstepped your bounds. Stay away from my daughter," Platt told Cook, whom he described as a "very arrogant man."
"Cook agreed to stay away from her."
But Cook broke his word, continuing a relationship Bianchi called "mutual" when she took the stand in the Brinkley-Cook divorce trial last week.
The teen and the married man had sex at least 10 times in various locations, including his office, and he showered the girl with expensive gifts.
Platt confronted Cook a second time on a park bench, and then decided enough was enough.
"I knew that in that past year he failed to keep his word," Platt said. "I believe he thought he didn't have to respect me or anyone else."
When Platt realized Brinkley was a guest speaker at the Southampton HS graduation ceremony in 2006 - an event to which he was invited because a friend's daughter was graduating - he said, "I made the decision then and there" to tell the supermodel.
"I was just delivering the truth," he said.
He told Brinkley: "That bastard husband of yours is having an affair with my teenage daughter and he won't stop. I warned him twice and he won't stop. He shows me no respect."
Brinkley has a 10-year-old daughter with Cook, and an 11-year-old son he adopted. She filed for divorce shortly after Platt's revelation.
Cook, 49, gave Bianchi, now 22, $300,000 to keep quiet. Bianchi's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, also asked Platt to sign a confidentiality agreement, but the stepdad refused, Platt said.
Tacopina declined comment.
Cook also allegedly sent Bianchi e-mails encouraging her to lie about their affair.
But Bianchi was subpoenaed, and details of the affair were shared on the stand.
Bianchi family members said yesterday they wished the proceedings had been private, and that Diana is trying to move on.
"They shouldn't condemn her," said her brother Robert, 14. "[Cook] tried to buy her."
Grandmother Carole Bianchi - who said Diana is thinking about college and currently staying with a friend - said that "of course" her granddaughter regrets what happened, and that the family's "heart breaks for Christie."
"Cook is the culprit here," added Diana's grandfather, Robert Sr. "[Diana] is a good girl who made a mistake. She got conned by an older man - and that wasn't his first time."
