Irish star caught up in a hoax

— Facing a media throng just days before competing for a national championship, Notre Dame’s star linebacker Manti Te’o fielded a question about the death of his girlfriend and his ability to rise above the tragedy.

It was a benign question, one he had heard dozens of times before as Lennay Kekua’s passing had been woven so tightly into the narrative of his triumphant senior year, and he answered it as he always had.

But at that time Te’o - and university officials - knew there was far more to the story than platitudes about football and family. Aweek earlier, on Dec. 26, the Heisman runner-up told Notre Dame officials that his girlfriend did not exist and that he was avictim of an elaborate internet hoax, the school said Wednesday.

“In many ways, Manti was the perfect mark, because he is a guy who is so willing to believe in others and so ready to help, that as this hoax played out in a way that called upon those tendencies of Manti, it roped him more and more into the trap,” Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said. “He was not a person who would have a second thought about offering his assistance and help.”

Swarbrick outlined a bizarre story in which Te’o learned his girlfriend never existed more than three months after her supposed death. The player received a phone call Dec. 6 while atan awards show from what he believed was Kekua’s old cell phone number. The woman on the other end - in a voice he recognized as Kekua’s - told him thatshe wasn’t dead. She later tried to rekindle the relationship, Swarbrick said.

“Every single thing about this, until that day in the first week of December, was real to Manti,” Swarbrick said. “There was no suspicion it wasn’t. No belief it might not be. The pain was real. The grief was real. The affection was real. That’s the nature of this sad, cruel game.”

Te’o notified his coaches of the situation Dec. 26, after discussing it with his parents over the Christmas holiday. Swarbrick said he met with the player twice and found hisstory about the exclusively online and telephonic relationship to be consistent. Te’o and Kekua never met face-toface, Swarbrick said.

“Several meetings were set up where Lennay never showed,” he said.

Kekua’s purported passing came within 48 hours of the real death of Te’o’s grandmother, Annette Santiago. That double-loss vaulted Te’o onto the cover of Sports Illustrated and, along with Notre Dame’s eventual undefeated regular season, into the Heisman Trophy mix. Te’o finished second in that voting to Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, tying for the best finish ever by a pure defender.

Numerous news outlets ran stories about Kekua’s death without verifying it. There was no published obituary for Kekua and no California driver’s license issued to anyone with that name. The Social Security Administration database had no record of anyone with the surname Kekua dying in 2012.

An Academic All-American with a 3.3 grade-point average, Te’o released a statement Wednesday insisting that he had been duped into having a long-term, “emotional relationship” with an internet impostor..

“To think that I shared ... my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about herjust makes me sick,” the statement read. “I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been.”

Notre Dame hired a private investigator, who produced a final report Jan. 4, and the university shared the findings with the Te’o family Jan. 5 during the run-up to the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama. The independent investigation revealed online “chatter” among the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, that demonstrated “the joy they were taking” in fooling Te’o.

“There was a place to send flowers,” Swarbrick said. “There was no detail of the hoax left undone.”

Sports, Pages 17 on 01/17/2013

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