TORONTO - A semi-retired California lawyer yesterday joined a Pickering woman in accusing comedian Bill Cosby of drugging and groping her.

Tamara Green, 57, claimed Cosby peeled off her clothes and "tried to rape me" 30 years ago after providing what she thought were two decongestant pills at a Los Angeles restaurant he owned.

A lawyer Cosby hired after a probe began last month into allegations by Pickering's Andrea Constand, said the comedian had never met Green.

"Mr. Cosby does not know the name Tamara Green," lawyer Walter Phillips said in a statement from his Philadelphia office. "The incident she describes did not happen."

He criticized the Philadelphia News for publishing a story on Green yesterday.

"I was a starry-eyed 20-year-old wannabe and he was this famous guy," Green said yesterday from a friend's home in Ventura, Calif. "I was introduced to him by a mutual friend, a doctor.

Green said she auditioned for Cosby to join his production firm, then began working with him on a new nightclub venture.

After she phoned in sick one day, he invited her to lunch, suggesting food would help, she claimed. "He gave me (some pills) ... this was Bill Cosby so I thought it was okay! I lost all motor co-ordination and he said, 'you look sick' and offered to drive me home."

Once there, he removed her clothes, Green alleged. Dazed but resisting, "I told him. 'you'll have to kill me'." Cosby left "after I threw a lamp at him. He tossed $200 onto a table, which really p...d me off."

After dressing, Green said, "I ... went after him because I wanted to throw the $200 in his face." But the restaurant was closed.

Semi-retired after 18 years as a criminal and civil lawyer, "I had told the story far and wide," but only went public now after hearing a recent news report in which Montgomery County district attorney Bruce Castor called Constand's case weak, she said.

Green said she contacted the prosecutor's office and gave a preliminary interview to a detective, "but I never heard back from him" and decided to tell her story publicly.

"I sympathized with the Canadian girl,"she said.

Assistant District Attorney Risa Ferman said Castor has not decided if charges would be laid in the Green case.

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