Manti Te’o was fooled.
The Notre Dame linebacker told ESPN Friday “there is no way” he was part of the recently exposed hoax involving his dead girlfriend — and that the man who carried out the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, later apologized on Twitter.
“I wasn’t faking it,” he said. “I wasn’t part of this. When they hear the facts they’ll know.”
Te’o’s comments – his first public remarks since Deadspin reported that his dead girlfriend never existed – came in an off-camera interview with ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap.
Schaap said he spoke to Te’o for more than two hours, and that the football star admitted to lying to his father about a false meeting with his “girlfriend” in Hawaii.
Additionally, Te’o suggested to reporters that he and Kekua had met in person because he thought the real story of his purely online relationship would be too strange for people to believe, according to Schapp.
“That goes back to what I did with my dad. I knew that. I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn’t meet,” he said. “So I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away.”
Earlier, a church friend told ESPN’s“Outside The Lines” that she talked to Tuiasosopo about the deception in early December.
“He (Ronaiah) told me that Manti was not involved at all, he was a victim. … The girlfriend was a lie, the accident was a lie, the leukemia was a lie,” the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the network.
“He was crying, he was literally crying, he’s like ‘I know, I know what I have to do.’”
According to the friend, Tuiasosopo made up the Twitter account of Te’o’s now famous non-existent girlfriend Lennay Kekua and fooled the Notre Dame linebacker into thinking it was a real relationship. He and two cousins — one male and female — also pretended to be Kekua as the lies of a car accident and subsequent leukemia diagnosis grew deeper.
“My cousins and I have been behind the computer, the dating, the lying. He said, ‘I don’t know what to do because it’s getting out there public-wise,” she said.
Why Te’o continued to perpetuate the lie after he suspected it in December remains a mystery; one that continues to fester as Te’o prepares for the NFL Draft in Tampa.
ESPN also spoke to two other people who were cousins of a man, who was supposedly duped by Tuiasosopo in 2008. J.R. Vaosa and Celeste Tuioti-Mariner said it was the same photos and same back story about a car accident that Tuiasosopo used to fool their cousin, who did not wish to be interviewed for OTL’s story. The two did tweet their suspicions, often sarcastically, saying they were the real Lennay Kukua. When the news broke Wednesday, reporters were at their door and threats were made against them.
“When I found out about the Samoan football player (and) his girlfriend, his Grandma died the same day, I was like, ‘Whoa this is crazy,’ I feel so bad for him, so I just looked him up,” Vaosa said. “I found out his girlfriend’s name was Lennay Kekua. And right when I read the name Lennay Kekua, I immediately thought of Ronaiah. Then I thought of my cousin — that this has to be the same person.”
Notre Dame senior wide receiver John Goodman also thinks Te’o was the victim here.
“He was screwed over by someone who wanted to play some sick joke.” he told the Chicago Tribune.
“I don’t know if they wanted to get close to Manti or they were a huge fan or they were playing a joke. Whoever (plays) a sick joke like that for that long has something wrong with them. I don’t put this on Manti. I’m on Manti’s side.”
The friend talked to Tuiasosopo again a couple of days ago, but says she does not know his whereabouts.
“I (still) am worried for him (Ronaiah), not just him and his family but I know that you can’t judge people like that and that’s why I continue to just encourage (him) to come out and tell the truth,” she said.