Cosby: "I Am Not Your Father"

NEW YORK CITY: "I will be for you a father figure, a father figure, but I am not your father." Recalling what he once told the woman who claims to be his daughter, Bill Cosby told a Manhattan jury today that he is not Autumn Jackson's father. Jackson is charged with trying to extort $40 million from Cosby, who testified that he gave her mother $100,000 over the past 20 years, because she implied she would tell the press about their brief mid-70's affair. Although this was not testimony many people wanted to hear from Dr. Huxtable, Cosby said: "I called her and she came to Las Vegas and we spent time. We had sex." Sometime later, Cosby said, he met Mrs. Upshaw again and she showed him a picture of a child. "She said, 'This is your daughter, Autumn,'" Cosby testified. "I said, 'That's not my daughter,' and that was it." The actor said he had given Mrs. Upshaw the money out of fear "that she would go public with the fact that I had sex with her." While Cosby denies paternity, Jackson's attorney's contend that his actions prove that he recognized a financial obligation to her and her mother. Jackson's actions, they have argued, were not extortion, but an attempt to negotiate a settlement.