Diggs has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Adams said she met Stefon Diggs in 2022 on Instagram and had a “complicated” relationship that included dating each other until 2025 when he hired her to be a cook in his Dedham home, earning $2,000 a week in wages.
“I would say complicated,” Adams testified when asked about her relationship with Diggs. “It started out as friends, it became sexual and we would meet, hang out. We decided that I will come work for him.”
She moved into his Dedham home last summer, she said.
A further complication took place last November, Adams testified, when she was accused by Diggs of sending a DM message sent to “his child’s mother’s friend and this message was stating that I was telling his personal business of the women he was sleeping with that worked with us.”
She said Diggs confronted her about the DM message.
“We got into an argument after Mr. Diggs confronted me. She sent me a message, per his instruction, and called me a name — excuse my language — a bitch,” Adams said. “And she just went on and on and on.”
Adams testified that she had a degree in psychology, but did not have formal training as a chef. She said during her 13 years as a private chef she worked for other professional athletes and actors earning between $3,500 a week and $10,000 a week.
Adams said she was responsible for preparing all of Diggs’ meals, and for anyone who was at his home.
Prior to Adams taking the stand, jurors heard opening statements from both sides.
Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Drew Virtue told jurors that the chef, Mila Adams, would testify that she was in her bedroom at Diggs’s house on Dec. 2, 2025, when “he entered her bedroom, walked up to her and slapped her.”
Virtue said Adams would also tell jurors “how he put her in a headlock, the difficulty she had breathing, that he threw her on the bed, and that he left.”
That never happened, countered Diggs’s attorney, Andrew Kettlewell, when he addressed jurors.
“There was no assault, there was no strangulation, there was no incident on Dec. 2 or any other day,” Kettlewell said, adding that no one among the six people in Diggs’s home that day heard or saw anything amiss.
“The Commonwealth has no physical evidence,” Kettlewell said. “There are no medical records. There are no photos or videos showing any injuries.”
He told jurors that Diggs and Adams had been feuding over money as well as a separate issue involving one of his business partners who’s accused her of bad-mouthing her online in an anonymous blog post.
Kettlewell said Adams was “furious” over Diggs leaving her off of a planned trip to Miami stemming from the spat, and that she declined to tell police she had been fired on Dec. 13, three days before she reported the alleged assault to police.
And, Kettlewell said, hours after the alleged assault, Adams touched down in New York to spend a week with friends, and a number of videos were taken on that trip. He suggested her demeanor on the videos isn’t “consistent” with having just been brutally assaulted.
In addition, Kettlewell said Adams issued a monetary demand to Diggs on Dec. 29 that has since grown.
During the final pretrial hearing Friday, District Court Judge Jeanmarie Carroll said selecting the six-person jury would begin Monday and could last into Tuesday.
Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it will call just two witnesses — the chef and the Dedham police officer who spoke with her in December, records show.
The chef told officers in Dedham on Dec. 16 that Diggs assaulted her on Dec. 2, 2025, while she was working in his home, police said. She said they argued over payment for services and that Diggs allegedly struck and choked her, police said.
The Patriots released Diggs in March. He remains unsigned.
In court papers, lawyers for Diggs wrote that they have provided prosecutors exculpatory evidence, including text messages between the chef and Diggs, videos of the chef on the night she alleged Diggs assaulted her and from several days after “showing the absence of any physical injuries,” and statements from people who interacted with her between Dec. 2 and Dec. 16.
Former New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs arrived at Norfolk County District Court on Monday.Charles Krupa/Associated Press
At Friday’s hearing, Norfolk Assistant District Attorney Drew Virtue said the chef indicated during a Zoom meeting with her lawyer last week that she had witnessed Diggs in a prior altercation with an unnamed person on an unspecified date, which factored into her decision to delay coming forward out of fear for her personal safety.
Carroll said from the bench that the woman will be barred from discussing that incident on the stand “unless there’s some further detail” that comes to light.
At Diggs’s first court hearing at the end of December, his previous lawyers said he was working to resolve the case though a financial settlement, though he maintained his innocence.
In a court filing last week, Diggs’s lawyers wrote that the chef and her civil attorney “made a high-dollar demand” to settle the case before the criminal trial began.
In a recent filing, Diggs’s lawyers said their investigation into the matter had “uncovered multiple false statements made by” his accuser.
On the day Diggs was charged in December, his lawyers said, a business associate of the chef “made a demand for payment of money” on her behalf by “email to Mr. Diggs’s representatives.”
That demand, Diggs’s lawyers said, “will tend to show the [chef’s] bias and motivation.”
Material from previous Globe coverage was used in this report.
John R. Ellement can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @JREbosglobe. Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected]. Nick Stoico can be reached at [email protected].
