You gotta credit the guys over at
Deadspin: they do the dirty work in sports that the big boys (who get most of their revenue from kissing up to college and pro athletes) won't do. Take the heartbreaking story of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and the loss--on the same day-- of his beloved grandmother AND his girlfriend, a student at Stanford named Lennay Marie Kekua (Picture at right from TMZ of the woman identified as Lennay Marie Kekua, but later revealed to be someone else. More photos of "Kekua" below from
PlayerWives.com.)
Only there was never a car accident for Kekua, never a student at Stanford with that name, and never a dead girlfriend.
The real question is: where did this story start and who didn't anyone else in the media do the legwork to find out if it was really true instead of repeating it over and over again to tug at our heartstrings?
Manti Te'o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper. Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar's office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there's no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed. The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te'o.
Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax
