Eric Kaye’s wife says she told his co-workers he had a drug problem

The ex-wife of the Angels employee who gave pitcher Tyler Skaggs opioid pills laced with fentanyl was steadfast in her testimony Monday and Tuesday that Angels executives knew of her then-husband’s opioid abuse for several years before Skaggs died after cutting up and snorting the pills in 2019.

Camilla Kaye’s testimony directly contradicted testimony from then-VP of Communications Tim Meade and Travel Secretary Tom Taylor, both of whom testified during the first week of the trial in Orange County Superior Court that is expected to last through December.

Skaggs’ widow, Carly, and his parents, Debbie Heitman and Darrell Skaggs, are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Angels seeking $118 million in lost earnings, unspecified damages for pain and suffering as well as punitive damages.

Camilla Kaye’s testimony bolstered the Skaggs’ claim that the Angels knew that Eric Kaye — the team’s director of communications for 23 years and now serving a 22-year prison sentence for his role in Skaggs’ death — had serious drug problems and that his supervisors and co-workers did not follow team and Major League Baseball policies in dealing with those issues.

Leah Graham, another one of the Skaggs’ list of high-profile lawyers, questioned Camilla Kaye, taking her through a timeline that begins in 2013 when she first realized her husband had a drug problem.

During the Angels’ road trip to New York to play the Yankees, Eric admitted to her, “I take five Vicodin a day,” Camilla testified. She said he confessed to Mead and Taylor, who she described as shocked, and who told her they would “do everything they can to help him.”

However, she continued to suspect illicit drug use, and those issues came to the fore in 2017, when Kay’s family broke into their home on October 1, the day after the Angels’ season ended.

Camilla testified about a phone call that day in which she said she told Taylor that Eric’s sister, Kelly Miller, had told her that Eric was distributing pills to Skaggs. “It blew my mind,” Camila said of Taylor’s reaction.

The next day, Mead and Taylor visited Kay’s house to try to convince Eric to go to rehab for his “opioid addiction,” according to Camila. He said Eric asked Meade to go to his bedroom and find the pills he had hidden there. Meade returned with a handful of bags containing the pills.

“I was standing far away, and Tom was on the couch with Eric, and all of a sudden I saw Tim come out of our bedroom with bags of pills,” Camilla Kaye said.

She said Meade placed the pills on the coffee table in front of the couch where Eric Kaye and Taylor were sitting. She testified that she believed her then-husband — whose divorce was finalized in 2023 — was selling bags of opioids to players to make extra money because the family was experiencing financial difficulties.

Both Meade and Taylor denied in their testimony that they remembered finding or seeing any bags full of pills. Meade said he remembered “very little of that morning” and did not recall going to Eric Kaye’s bedroom or finding pills there.

Camilla Kaye testified that she witnessed team employees and players distributing opioid pills on a group flight. In cross-examination, Angels attorney Todd Theodora asked her how many team trips she had been on, and Camila answered 10 to 12.

Theodora also pointed out inconsistencies in her testimony compared to what she said in her testimony several months ago. He also noted that in nearly 200 text messages and emails to Angels employees, she never warned them that her husband might be taking or distributing opioids.

Camila said she had strong suspicions throughout the 2018 season that Eric was still using him because he had displayed erratic behavior, and noted that she shared those concerns with Taylor, whose office at Angel Stadium was adjacent to her husband’s office.

The Angels attempted to prove Eric Kaye’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder, although Camila disputed this. When Theodora pressed her to confirm that she had never heard that her husband had bipolar disorder, she replied: “He was a drug addict.”

Camila testified that Eric told her he was taking opioids to mask mental health problems that included depression, but was not taking prescription medications for bipolar disorder.

There was a crisis on Easter Sunday – April 21, 2019 – when Eric was acting erratically at work and was taken to hospital that evening after Taylor brought him home. Camilla said that while taking Eric’s things from Taylor’s car, she found an Advil bottle filled with blue pills next to the car and threw it on the passenger seat to show Taylor.

Taylor testified that while he remembered Eric acting erratically and driving him home, he did not remember the blue pills in the Advil bottle.

Although Camila said she was forceful in telling Meade and Taylor that Eric needed detox and inpatient care, he instead went to an outpatient rehab program in late April and May. He returned to work—by this time moving to the position Mead had held before leaving that spring to become president of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York—and about a month later was assigned to the trip to Texas that led to Skaggs’ death.

Angels communications employee Grace McNamee testified last week that when she learned Eric Kaye was going on the trip, she asked her colleague Adam Chodzko: “Is this a good idea?”

“Maybe I was speaking out loud, the mother in me, felt like maybe Eric should spend some time at home after he was on leave due to bipolar and mental illness,” McNamee testified.

Testimony last week by Angels human resources executive Mayra Castro established that Eric Kaye was not fired, but instead was allowed to resign on Nov. 2, 2019. Graham said this bolstered the Skaggs’ claim that the Angels repeatedly gave Kaye special treatment instead of handling his behavior the way they do other employees.

Castro told Graham that the 63-year-old Angels point guard was fired because he drank a hard carbonated beverage during a break. Castro testified that the employee was not visibly intoxicated and told human resources that she was not aware the drink contained alcohol. Attorneys for the Skaggs family suggested that if Kay had been similarly punished, Tyler Skaggs would still be alive.

Castro also admitted to deleting and then recovering a text she sent in August 2019 to a co-worker in which he said of Kay: “Dude, he gives me drug addict vibes.” “Gosh, I always thought he sure looked like a drug addict and a sketch,” the coworker replied. Castro testified that she realized the deletion of the text was a mistake and turned it over to the Skaggs family’s legal team as part of discovery.