Let's go behind the scenes of one of our most notable stories from 2013. Here's how "Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax" came to be.
Our old pal Jack Dickey takes a look back at the Manti Te'o story, and reminds us that even when a story goes through 24-hour news meat grinder, things can remain unsettled. [TIME]
Nico Muhly, the young composer behind the very buzzy opera Two Boys, has a bit of an obsession with Manti Te'o. Two Boys, currently running at the Metropolitan Opera, has a Te'oish plot: It's about a teenage boy who assumed numerous online personalities in order to convince an older teenage boy to—this is, amazingly,…
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who masterminded the hoax behind Manti Te'o's fake dead girlfriend, is being sued in Los Angeles Superior Court by a friend who claims he suffered brain damage after a March 2012 auto accident while riding in a car driven by Tuiasosopo.
Well, it took a day longer than expected, but former Notre Dame inside linebacker Manti Te'o, whom we've enjoyed following over the past three months and change, has finally found himself an NFL home. He went with pick No. 38 to the San Diego Chargers, a real NFL team, albeit one with a doctor who seems fictitious.
After all that waiting—you were waiting for this, right?—the NFL draft has finally popped up on our calendars. Which means it's as good a time as ever for fresh eyes to try to figure out what exactly happened with Manti Te'o, who could go toward the end of tonight's first round (although he won't be in the building),…
Just when we thought things on the Manti Te'o/Lennay Kekua front were over, they got weird again. Earlier this month, an unknown individual assumed control of Manti Te'o's deleted Twitter account, recreated its appearance, and started tweeting. The tweets weren't original, though; they were recycled from Te'o's own…
Remember when Manti Te'o was boring? I remember half-watching the Heisman ceremony in December and thinking that Te'o seemed like a non-entity—someone who made Collin Klein, a man about whom the most interesting facts are the extra "L" in his first name and that he basically didn't touch his wife before they got…
Whoever said print media wasn't nimble? It's been three weeks and two days since we published our initial story, "Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax." The Te'o story has made its rounds through the national media between then and…
This was not Manti Te'o's last tweet under the handle @mteo_5, it was the second-to-last tweet. If you look for @mteo_5 it is gone, but it's possible he's still out there under a new handle.
When the first part of Dr. Phil's exclusive interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo concluded yesterday, we were left with a cliffhanger: would Ronaiah finally give in to the good Doctor's demands and perform the voice of Lennay Kekua? Today we got the answer: sort of. [Update, March 3, 2014: The video has been removed.]
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo—the man behind Lennay Kekua, Manti Te'o's fake dead girlfriend—today told Dr. Phil new details about the "romantic" relationship he had with Te'o. Put however much stock you like in these details: Tuiasosopo is an avowed liar and hoaxer.
Part one of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo's silence-breaking sit-down with Dr. Phil airs all over the nation today. (Check your local listings for the precise time.) The Associated Press got its hooks into an early broadcast—our Tim Burke has marshaled one, too, and he'll be posting highlights shortly—and quoted this gem from…
On Thursday, the first half of Dr. Phil's exclusive interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo will air in its entirety. Today, Dr. Phil McGraw went on the Today Show to talk about the interview and share some of the things that Ronaiah told him about the hoax he carried out against Manti Te'o. Here's what McGraw told Today's…
Two recent developments have been hard to reconcile with each other. First, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo's claim to the Daily News that, in leading on Manti Te'o, it was him on the phone the entire time, impersonating a female voice. Second, the release of three voicemails from "Lennay Kekua" to Te'o—they really do sound like…
One day during the NFL offseason, I got a text message.
Katie Couric taped her big interview with Manti Te'o Tuesday afternoon. It airs today throughout America. Although the Couric/Te'o publicity team has released a handful of advance snippets—Te'o's admission that he lied to the press, voicemails allegedly from Kekua—most of what Te'o and his family will say remains…
In advance of this afternoon's interview, Katie Couric's show has released recordings of three voicemails provided by Manti Te'o. The messages were left on Te'o's phone by who he believed was Lennay Kekua. As the Daily News reported this morning, hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo claims he disguised his voice over the phone,…
According to his lawyer, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man behind the Manti Te'o dead-girlfriend hoax, was the person who posed as "Lennay Kekua" during phone calls with the Notre Dame linebacker. Skeptical? Well, don't worry. Tuiasosopo's attorney, Milton Grimes, has a pretty airtight explanation for how his client was…
