The inconsistencies surrounding Manti Te’o’s non-existent dead girlfriend are even more convoluted than originally thought.
In an interview, now published in full by Sports Illustrated, the Notre Dame linebacker could provide few details about how he met Lennay Kekua or the circumstances of her death, which occurred six hours after his grandmother’s on Sept. 13. What Te’o could recall were letters that her family member read to him before each game, even some that occurred after her death.
In the article, Te’o claimed to have known Kekua for four years and been dating for her one.
“We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular,” Te’o said.
After that, Te’o said that Kekua — who was from Hawaii, “but was always in California” — went to Notre Dame’s game at USC on Nov. 27, 2010 during his sophomore season.
“But she saw me at the USC game of my sophomore year. We were still just friends, we were acquaintances,” Te’o said.
But this has now all been proven false with a Deadspin report published on Wednesday which established that Kekua never existed. They claim that her identity was made up through a Twitter account by a family friend named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. The pictures on the account belong to a high school classmate of Tuiasosopo, who “Inside Edition” reported Thursday goes by the name of Diane O’Meara.
Te’o and Notre Dame claim he was the victim of a hoax and not trying to garner buzz for his Heisman campaign. They allege that Te’o was suspicious that Kekua was made up on Dec. 6 and that he told school officials the day after Christmas.
Yet, Te’o continued to speak freely about his deceased girlfriend on Dec. 8 during the Heisman ceremony.
“I think I’ll never forget the time when I found out that, you know, my girlfriend passed away and the first person to run to my aid was my defensive coordinator, Coach [Bob] Diaco, and you know he said something very profound to me, he said ‘this is where your faith is tested.’” he told ESPN’s Chris Fowler, according to Awful Announcing.
“Right after that, I ran into the players’ lounge and I got on the phone with my parents – and I opened my eyes and my head coach was sitting right there. And so, you know, there are a hundred-plus people on our team and the defensive coordinator and our head coach took time to just go get one [of those players]. You know I think that was the most meaningful to me.”
But when asked by SI how Kekua died he had no information.
“It was just so sudden. I don’t know the details of it. It was just a surprise,” Te’o said.
Te’o did provide descriptions about how he spent each night on the phone with her, while she recovered from an April 28 car accident. While she was healing, doctors discovered that she had leukemia. It seems now that someone either went to great means to fool Te’o or the Heisman runner-up made up the story.
“It was harder than it was the previous week,” said Te’o, who was wearing a ring at the time of the September interview to remember Kekua. “I was rolling. The feeling of it settling in that, she’s not physically here no more. You just can’t call her. I talked to my girlfriend every single day. I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going though chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn’t sleep. She would say, ‘Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep.’ I slept on the phone with her every single night.”
There are still many holes to this story that people are waiting for Te’o to explain. There were reports that he was going to do an interview with ESPN on Thursday, but that has yet to come to fruition. He is reportedly working out in Tampa for the NFL Draft, but before his future can begin he has to fill in the details of the past year.