Bill Cosby Rape Allegation: Entertainer 'is paying private investigators to dig up dirt on rape accusers'

Bill Cosby has allegedly employed a team of private investigators to dig up dirt on the women who have accused him of sexual assault and rape.

The 77-year-old has so far maintained his silence following ongoing claims that he drugged and carried out sexual assaults on over twenty high profile women.

However, according to a report in the New York Post, he has paid investigators a six-figure fee to begin a smear campaign against his accusers, in a bid to discredit their claims.

An anonymous source told the paper that after discussing the sex scandal with his legal and PR teams, Cosby's response was "If you're going to say to the world that I did this to you, then the world needs to know, 'What kind of person are you? Who is this person that's saying it?'

Making a direct reference to one of his accusers, Vogue cover girl Beverly Johnson, he is believed to have commented: "You can't say that I put something in your coffee, threw you in a cab and then you go on and live a high-profile life, a famous life and you never complain. You mean you never reported it to the police? You never tell anyone?"

Johnson claimed that Cosby raped her after slipping a drug into her cappuccino during a visit to his home in the 1980s.

The report comes as a new accuser has publicly come forward to accuse the entertainer. Katherine McKee, now 65, alleges that the comedian raped her in a Michigan hotel room in the early 1970s after inviting her to a party on a boat in Detroit.

The former actress, who appeared on Sanford and Son and on The Bill Cosby Show, told the New York Daily News: "It was a rape, but it seemed so strange to call it that. We think of rape as a stranger who attacks you in a parking lot. "

"I chalked it up to another powerful person in Hollywood who just felt he could take what he wanted from women," she explained.

McKee, who now works as a casting agent, has never spoken of the incident in public before last week.

Cosby's investigators reportedly found that McKee wrote posts praising the comedian online after the alleged rape. The team also claim that Johnson's live-in boyfriend at the time only heard her say nice things about Cosby.

It was recently reported that Los Angeles Police Department are to launch a 'definitive open investigation' as several more women come forward claiming to have been sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby.

Several of the allegations fall within the statute of limitations, meaning the 77-year-old can be prosecuted if enough evidence is found.

Cosby's lawyer Martin Singer would not confirm whether the comedian had hired any private detectives in relation to the sexual assault claims levelled at him.