Scott Bolzan captivated the nation with the heartbreaking story of a fall that robbed him of his memories.
“My life was a keyboard and someone pressed the delete button, and all my memories are gone,” the ex-NFLer said on “Good Morning America” last week.
His tale has been touted as the most extreme example of permanent memory loss ever recorded.
But is it true?
Neurologists are questioning the science of Bolzan’s story, as other observers note his newfound — and lucrative — fame rises from a swamp of past crimes and pending civil lawsuits.
Bolzan, CEO of an Arizona private-jet leasing company, claims that in 2008 he fell in his office bathroom, sustaining a head injury that caused permanent retrograde amnesia, or long-term memory loss. He didn’t recognize his wife and kids, called the TV a “picture box,” and forgot his own name.
He made the rounds of TV talk shows last week promoting a memoir he co-authored with his wife, Joan, titled “My Life, Deleted.”
But a doctor who examined Bolzan after his fall told The Post that Bolzan was possibly “feigning his alleged memory deficits,” citing the “implausibility” of his purported symptoms.
He says it’s questionable that an injury to one part of the brain could affect all the different memory circuits spread throughout the organ — while his cognitive function and ability to make new memories remained unharmed. Bolzan didn’t seem to have residual cognitive problems; he relearned how to drive, play golf, and even received a gun license in 2010.
Dr. William Barr, chief of neuropsychology at NYU Langone Medical Center, who has not treated Bolzan, called this type of memory loss “Hollywood amnesia.”
“Not knowing what a TV is, not knowing what a cellphone is, this is all inconsistent with any known form of brain damage,” added Dr. Joel Morgan, an expert in medical malingering.
Total autobiographical loss is “automatically a red flag for considering a severe personality disorder or a plain-vanilla malin-gerer,” said Dr. Manfred Greif-fenstein, a neuropsychologist who has not examined Bolzan.
“What made Bolzan’s claims unusual from the start was its violation of bedrock principles: Old memories are more resistant to brain damage than fresh ones,” said Greiffenstein. “But here we see the opposite — well-established memories wiped out, but recent memory preserved.”
Bolzan says he can’t remember his childhood, his parents, food tastes or even Christmas — yet retains memory of the fall.
“I remember my feet going above my head — that’s the last memory I can recall,” he said on “GMA.”
Bolzan filed a lawsuit for more than $1 million in 2009 against the building owner and property manager where he fell, claiming he could remember slipping on an “oily substance on the floor.”
Though the case has been sealed, Bolzan reportedly received “significantly less” than he sought because of questions raised about the fall and his amnesia, according to sources close to the case.
The accident and book came at a convenient time for Bolzan, who filed for bankruptcy in 2002, who was still mired in debt in 2008, and who has battled at least six lawsuits against his business in the last decade, according to public records.
Bolzan, who did not return calls seeking comment, has stood up to critics in the past.
“I did not ask to fall, and I certainly did not ask to have a traumatic brain injury,” he blogged in 2009 after a newspaper report publicized his ordeal.