A voice seemingly from the grave has come back to haunt Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te’o, whose inspirational story had made him the sympathetic focus of the Fighting Irish’s bid for a national championship.
Describing himself as an embarrassed victim of “someone’s sick joke” concerning a fictional girlfriend who was purported to have died early in the season, Oahu native Te’o and the school Wednesday said he was taken in by a sophisticated online hoax.
The disclosures came in the wake of a story posted earlier in the day on the deadspin.com website under the headline, “Blarney.”
An at times emotional Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told a campus news conference that Te’o was “unnerved” to receive a call in early December from a person purporting to be the fictitious girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, whom he believed had died of leukemia in September. “He received a phone call from a number that he recognized as having been associated with Lennay Kekua,” Swarbrick said. “When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person that he had talked to who told him she was, in fact, not dead.”
Te’o’s grandmother, 72-year-old Annette Santiago, died Sept. 11, 2012, and word of the purported death of Te’o’s girlfriend, Kekua, in the same 24-hour span made national news in the days leading up to Notre Dame’s nationally televised game with then-10th-ranked Michigan State.
Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said during a Sept. 13 news conference that Te’o “lost some people very close to him and it’s obviously taken a toll on him. Our players have been there for him and have been a great support. We’ll support him,” Kelly said. “He’ll be with us. He practiced. He’ll be playing Saturday against Michigan State. Unfortunately, he’s gone through a very rough 24, 48 hours.”
Kelly added: "But his support and his family at home have been great, and all of the coaches and players have been there for him. He wants to be with his teammates, he wants to be with the people that care about him. He’s a strong man and he’s going through a tough time, but he’ll rise to the occasion.”
A Honolulu Star-Advertiser story about Te’o’s plight was the most read item on the Star-Advertiser’s website that week, and his 12-tackle performance in that game made headlines. Coupled with a strong showing against Michigan two weeks later, Te’o vaulted into the conversation as a candidate for the Heisman Trophy, a rarity for a defensive player.
The combination of Te’o’s powerful play, his inspirational story and Notre Dame’s visibility put him on the cover of Sports Illustrated and made him a regular feature on ESPN and NBC telecasts. As once downtrodden Notre Dame made its climb back to relevance with an unbeaten (12-0) regular season, Te’o’s stock soared.
He was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy and received the most votes of any purely defensive performer and won seven other major postseason awards, the most by any player.
He was at ESPN’s college football awards weekend in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., just days before the Heisman announcement, Swarbrick said, when he received the phone call that was alleged to have come from his “dead” girlfriend.
Apart from a brief statement issued by his representative, Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles, Te’o and his family have not responded to requests for comment. Swarbrick said he expects Te’o to address the situation with an appearance today. “At the end of the day, this is Manti’s story to tell. We believe he should have the right to tell it. Which he is going to do,” Swarbrick said.
Creative Artists also represents Stevie Wonder and was the agency that blew the whistle on the so-called “Wonder Blunder,” notifying UH President M.R.C. Greenwood in July.
Te’o is said to be in Florida working out at the IMG Institute in preparation for the NFL Draft Combine Feb. 20-26 in Indianapolis.
Online romance scams are commonly known as “catfishing” after a 2010 documentary film titled “Catfish” that highlighted the practice. MTV has run a series on the issue and Dr. Phil has addressed it.
After an independent investigation commissioned by the school, Swarbrick said he felt that “Manti was the victim of that hoax. Manti is the victim of that hoax. He will carry it with him for a while.”
Swarbrick said, “Nothing I have learned has shaken my belief in Manti Te’o one iota.”
Swarbrick said “our investigators, through their work, were able to discover online chatter among the perpetrators that is sort of the ultimate proof of this, the joy they were taking, the sort of casualness with which, among themselves, they were referring to what they had accomplished and what they had done.”
Swarbrick maintained that Manti’s “pain was real. The grief was real. The affection was real. And that’s the nature of this sad, cruel game.”
Swarbrick said he shared the investigators’ report with Te’o and his parents in Miami three days before Notre Dame’s one-sided loss to Alabama in the Bowl Championship Series and left it up to them to make an announcement. Swarbrick said he believed that announcement was to have come “next week” but was sped up by deadspin.com’s revelations.
In a statement issued by his representatives, Te’o said: “This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over several months I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.”
Swarbrick said a timeline showed Te’o and the woman had a relationship dating from 2009.
Deadspin.com claimed an investigation shows “there is no Social Security record of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.”
An Oct. 12 story in the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune quoted Te’o’s father, Brian, as saying, “They started out as just friends. Every once in a while, she would travel to Hawaii and that happened to be the time Manti was home, so he would meet with her there. But within the last year, they became a couple. And, we came to the realization that she could be our daughter-in-law. Sadly, it won’t happen now.”
In an Oct. 2 interview on ESPN’s “College Game Day” Te’o said Kekua’s final words to him were, “‘I love you.’” He also said, according to ESPN, “Kekua was the most beautiful girl I ever met.”
But Swarbrick said Manti’s only contact with the woman was online and by phone and that, to his knowledge, they never met face to face. Swarbrick said, “As part of the hoax, several meetings were set up where Lennay never showed up, including some in Hawaii.”
Deadspin.com said the only photos of the woman online are actually those of another 22-year-old.
Former University of Hawaii running back Reagan Mauia, now with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, has told ESPN.com he believed Kekua existed because he met her when he was among a group that did charity work in American Samoa in 2011.
“This was before her and Manti,” Mauia told ESPN.com. He insisted to the website. “No, she is real.”
Swarbrick said, “There’s a lot of tragedy here. There’s a lot of sorrow here. But the thing I am most sad (about) is … the single most trusting human being I’ve ever met will never be able to trust in the same way again in his life. That’s an incredible tragedy.”
