By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
The man who says he tricked Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o into falling for a fake woman he created online claims the hoax had "everything to do" with escaping from real life because he had been molested as a child.
The 22-year-old Tuiasosopo said he built the online persona of Lennay Kekua, a nonexistent woman who Te'o said he fell for without ever meeting in person and later believed to have died of leukemia.
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo fell in love with Manti Te'o and said all his energy went into pretending to be the woman the Notre Dame linebacker came to know as Lennay Kekua.
Dr. Phil McGraw says Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who masterminded the dead girlfriend hoax involving Manti Te'o, told him the Notre Dame linebacker was not involved in the scheme and that he ended up falling "deeply, romantically" in love with the football player.
Dr. Phil McGraw said on the "Today" show Wednesday morning that he believes Manti Te'o's hoaxster, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, fell genuinely in love with the linebacker over a two-year span of lies and deception.
The woman who was unknowingly the face of Lennay Kekua said the man who concocted the hoax confessed to her and said he wanted to end the ruse that snared Notre Dame star Manti Te'o many times before it unraveled.
The woman who was unknowingly the face of Lennay Kekua said the man who concocted the hoax confessed to her and said he wanted to end the ruse that snared Notre Dame star Manti Te'o many times before it unraveled.
In a story Jan. 19 about the Manti Te'o-Lennay Kekua hoax, The Associated Press reported erroneously some of the details about the place where Te'o says he sent flowers after he was told by pranksters that his girlfriend had died. The home was in Carson, Calif., not Palmdale, and was once the home of the alleged mastermind of the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, not a family named Kekua. A family named Kekua does live down the street from the Tuiasosopos in Carson.
The person cast as the mastermind of the hoax involving Notre Dame's Manti Te'o may tell his side of the story, a family member said Sunday.
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o will be interviewed by Katie Couric, the first on-camera interview given by the All-American since news broke about the dead girlfriend hoax.
The person cast as the mastermind of the hoax involving Notre Dame's Manti Te'o may tell his side of the story, a family member said Sunday.
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o tried to clear the air about how he fell into an online relationship with a fictitious woman he met online who called herself Lennay Kekua. His grief at her "death" became a major story during the college football season. The problem was Kekua was a hoax _ there was no such person.
When Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o ordered two dozen white roses delivered to 21503 Water Street, he says he thought they were headed to the home of his dead girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. In fact, the man implicated as the ringleader of a false-identity hoax and many of his relatives have lived in the single-story, stucco bungalow, according to publicly available records and interviews with neighbors.
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o tried to clear the air late Friday about how he fell into an online relationship with a fictitious woman he met online who called herself Lennay Kekua. His grief at her "death" became a major story during the college football season. The problem was Kekua was a hoax _ there was no such person.
Manti Te'o tried to put one of the strangest sports stories in memory behind him, insisting he was the target of an elaborate online hoax in which he fell for a fake woman created by pranksters, then admitting his own lies made the bizarre ordeal worse.
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, 22, later said he created the online persona of Lennay Kekua, a nonexistent woman whom Te'o said he fell in love with despite never meeting her in person.
"I've learned first, just to be honest in everything you do, from the big things to the small things. To keep your circle very small and to really understand who's in your corner and who's not," he said. "Going off of the season my team and I had, there were a lot of people in our corner, and then when Jan. 16th happened, there was a lot of people in the other corner. I've just learned to appreciate the people that I have that are with me."
