Chrissy Mazzeo, center, the woman who accuses Rep. Jim Gibbons of assaulting her, gestures while speaking to the media for the first time since the alleged incident Oct. 13. Mazzeo spoke to reporters Wednesday with attorneys Richard Wright and Karen Winckler at Wright's office. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Attorney Don Campbell, Rep. Jim Gibbons' lawyer, points during a news conference Wednesday afternoon as private investigator David Groover looks on. Photo by Jeff Scheid. GOP candidate for governor Jim Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, arrive for the unveiling Wednesday of the World Jewelry Center. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

The Las Vegas woman who has accused Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons of assaulting her said Wednesday that she dropped charges against him the next day because people connected to his campaign had threatened her, pressured her and tried to buy her silence.

In her first public comments on the circumstances that have put her at the center of the scandal that has dominated the run-up to the election, Chrissy Mazzeo said at a news conference Wednesday that she was telling the truth when she said that Gibbons had assaulted her and that she gladly would take a lie detector test.

The friend whom Mazzeo accused of pressuring her denied Mazzeo's assertions and questioned her sanity Wednesday.

"Based on the statements attributed to her at the press conference today, which are clearly fabricated, I believe she (Mazzeo) needs to strongly consider seeking professional help," Pennie Puhek said in a statement.

Mazzeo said Puhek had acted as a go-between, relaying threats and bribe offers from the Gibbons camp until Mazzeo agreed not to pursue her complaint the day after the Oct. 13 incident.

Puhek, who was Mazzeo's companion at the bar that night, denied Mazzeo's description Wednesday of Puhek's actions. If true, Mazzeo's assertions about Puhek's behavior would make Puhek a central figure in a wide-ranging cover-up.

Puhek's statement said she had never had any association with the Gibbons campaign until last week, when she gave a statement on the congressman's behalf, saying he had conducted himself appropriately at the bar.

Puhek and Mazzeo had dinner at McCormick & Schmick's restaurant and were drinking at the bar when Puhek recognized Gibbons, who had come in for a nightcap with campaign adviser Sig Rogich to get out of the rain, sitting down at the table of two women Rogich knew. Puhek and Mazzeo then joined the table.

Puhek described her relationship with Mazzeo as "acquaintances" who've seen each other socially a few times in five years. Mazzeo said she met Puhek while working at Puhek's husband's dental practice.

Mazzeo said the Gibbons camp's threats, via Puhek, included predicting that "they'll kill your baby and your family." Mazzeo said that after the Review-Journal reported the dropped complaint, Puhek said she would have to go further and sign a statement recanting her claims.

"Chrissy told her, 'I did my part. I don't want to do anything further,'" Mazzeo's lawyer, Richard Wright, said Wednesday.

"But Pennie persisted: 'You have to meet with these people.'" The following day, "Pennie called and said, 'There's money in this. You will get money from signing this.'"

Mazzeo said that Puhek never named a specific amount and that when Mazzeo asked from whom the offer was coming, Puhek said, "the Gibbons party."

Wright and Mazzeo, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress and student, said Wednesday that she was telling the truth when she told Las Vegas police on Oct. 13 that Gibbons forced her up against the wall of a parking garage and threatened her after making unwanted advances over drinks in a bar with others.

Gibbons told police and said in a news conference last week that he was walking her to the parking garage to find her truck when she slipped; he grabbed her arm to keep her from falling; she looked at him wordlessly and walked away.

When she dropped the complaint the next day, she told police she hadn't been pressured but was dropping it because "of who he is and I just don't want to go up against something like that."

Wright said he hoped Clark County District Attorney David Roger would reopen an investigation into her claims and said Mazzeo would cooperate.

Roger said his office would investigate her claims if Mazzeo came in, made a complaint and agreed to cooperate.

"If Miss Mazzeo has had a change of heart and she's willing to come talk to us and to cooperate with us 110 percent, we would commit to review the case," Roger said.

If they pick up the investigation, prosecutors would review the Las Vegas police reports and witness statements before deciding whether to investigate further, he said. Charges would be filed if prosecutors believed they could prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.

Mazzeo said Wednesday she was sufficiently frightened by Puhek's claims that she didn't come forward until nearly a week after her name and statements to police appeared in the media. But after Gibbons held a news conference reaffirming his version of events, she felt she had to speak up to defend herself.

"She has to come to me to help defend her from the situation she's been put in by the police department and Mr. Gibbons, who wants to put her on trial when she was simply victimized by Mr. Gibbons," Wright said Wednesday.

Mazzeo said her actions were not politically motivated: "I'm not even registered to vote. I don't know who he (Gibbons) is, and I don't care."

Mazzeo said she sought assurances from police that her identity would never be made public. Wright blasted the Metropolitan Police Department and Sheriff Bill Young, saying they mistreated a victim and improperly released her identity, putting someone who wanted to be left alone in the center of a media circus.

"She just wanted it to go away," Wright said. "But it was a snowball, and it wouldn't go away."

Wright said Mazzeo should have been covered by a Nevada statute that prohibits disclosing the names of victims of alleged sexual assaults and related crimes. But Young has said police were investigating a misdemeanor battery, a case in which that statute wouldn't apply.

Young wouldn't comment on the case Wednesday. He is scheduled to hold a news conference today.

Mazzeo cleared up some mysterious or contradictory elements of her five statements to police: three recorded 911 calls and two interviews.

Mazzeo first told the 911 dispatcher that she's an interior decorator, then said she works at Wynn Las Vegas, where it has been confirmed she was a cocktail waitress. Mazzeo said Wednesday she was a cocktail waitress at the Wynn until Oct. 15 but is also a student who will receive her degree in interior decorating in nine weeks.

Mazzeo said she's also certified in dentistry and real estate.

The locations of the 911 calls are also confusing. In the first one, she said she was at a Starbucks on Paradise Road; then she said she was at the La Quinta Inn across Paradise. In the second one, she first said she was at La Quinta, then quickly corrected herself to say she was in the bathroom of the Starbucks. In the third call, she was at Gordon Biersch Brewing Co., a nearby restaurant where police told her to meet them because they had been trying to locate her for about an hour.

Mazzeo said Wednesday that the first call was placed from the La Quinta, where she had run full-tilt after escaping Gibbons' clutches in the garage. "The receptionists all saw me there," she said.

From the La Quinta, she also made several other phone calls, including to Puhek, family and friends. Mazzeo said she wasn't sure what made her leave there, but she believes she thought she saw Gibbons outside the hotel and fled to the Starbucks bathroom and locked herself inside.

Mazzeo attributed the calls' frantic tone to fear. "At the time I was so hysterical, I said a lot of stuff. I think I even mentioned my cancer," she said.

But she said she was certain what Gibbons described didn't happen.

"I was not stumbling. I did not trip. I did not need help off a wet pavement," she said.

Gibbons told police he'd had two glasses of wine in the bar; Mazzeo said Wednesday that she saw him have three or four and that he was acting aggressive.

Gibbons told police Mazzeo might have been tipsy, but he wasn't qualified to tell whether she ought to be behind the wheel because he hadn't been with her long. Mazzeo said Wednesday she consumed four or five alcoholic drinks in six hours, with dinner, water and coffee.

Mazzeo repeated her claim to police that she and Puhek lingered for about 20 minutes in the bar after Gibbons, Rogich and the other two women left. "He (Gibbons) was waiting by the bushes," she said. "Why else would he be waiting in the rain?"

Mazzeo said she never found the keys to her truck that night, nor have police, and she still believes Gibbons must have taken them to prevent her from leaving.

Although Mazzeo addressed many details of the night in question, she declined to describe what happened in the parking garage. Wright said she found it too upsetting.

Gibbons' lawyer held a news conference Wednesday afternoon to counter the claims.

Campbell, who has represented the Review-Journal in lawsuits, said Mazzeo had contradicted herself but could not cite an example of her doing so; he alluded to a problematic background, based on a private investigator's work, but provided no evidence for his claim.

Campbell provided an affidavit from private investigator David Groover that contradicted Mazzeo's account of Groover's contacts with Mazzeo and with Hal Collins, a California lawyer and ex-boyfriend of Mazzeo.

Groover said he found Collins untrustworthy and aggressive. Collins described Mazzeo's claims to Groover as she described the incident to police and portrayed her as afraid for her life: Collins allegedly said Mazzeo was afraid her arms and legs would be severed.

According to Groover's account, Collins claimed to have placed a call to a Review-Journal reporter. The reporter never received such a call.

Groover's account also said that Collins told him he'd received multiple calls from the campaign of Dina Titus, Gibbons' Democratic opponent. Titus has denied any contact with Mazzeo or her associates.

Collins told the Review-Journal on Wednesday that Mazzeo first called him because she was scared and was seeking some legal advice. Collins, a practicing attorney in California, said he had advised Mazzeo and her family on legal issues.

"They (Puhek and the people she spoke on behalf of) were saying that Chrissy was going to regret pursuing this if she didn't back away," Collins said. "Not from the standpoint of people trying to dig up facts from the past and trying to smear her, but from the standpoint of her life and her safety."

Collins said Groover told him that Mazzeo needed to change her story.

"He said the police reports are going to come out, Chrissy's name would be disclosed, and it was somehow important to discuss these statements made by Chrissy that were inconsistent with what Gibbons had to say, as if there was a need to reconcile them," he said.

Collins said he was never contacted by Titus and is a registered Republican.

Wright said at Wednesday's news conference that evidence such as hotel security systems, photos a police technician took of Mazzeo's purported injuries, phone records and interviews with potentially corroborating witnesses would back up Mazzeo's story.

He said police never bothered to interview Rogich or the two other women at the table in the restaurant, where a waitress described the atmosphere as "flirty and dirty." Mazzeo said Wednesday that quarters were so cramped and Gibbons' game of footsie under the table so intense that she was pinned in place.

Gibbons on Wednesday told the Review-Journal that he didn't want to talk about the incident.

"I just want to get back to the issues," Gibbons said. "No one is happy about this at all. This doesn't help the political process. We really should be speaking about the issues."

Campbell said Wednesday that Mazzeo had brought any potential character attacks, which he said he wasn't making, on herself.

"Not once has one pejorative statement been made about Ms. Mazzeo, including by Mr. Gibbons," he said. "But now she has put it all out there. ... This young lady is in our opinion exceedingly troubled."

Review-Journal writers Brian Haynes, Paul Harasim, David Kihara and Francis McCabe contributed to this report.