(CNN) — Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o acknowledged to ABC’s Katie Couric that he maintained the illusion of his dead girlfriend in the weeks after he received a call claiming that Lennay Kekua and her death were hoaxes.
His publicist, Matthew Hiltzik, who also reportedly represents Couric, said he was present during the interview. He insists his client was not lying. Rather, he was trying to determine the truth after learning a woman he thought was his girlfriend had not died and may never have existed. Hiltzik takes issue with Te’o being called a liar, he said.
“Lance Armstrong is a liar. Manti Te’o made one big mistake: not telling his father the truth,” he said, referring to a statement his father made last year, claiming Te’o and Kekua had met in person.
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During the interview, set to air on Couric’s syndicated show Thursday, the Heisman Trophy runner-up said he mentioned Kekua and her death to reporters after receiving a December 6 phone call from someone he thought was Kekua, saying she was not dead.
“Katie, put yourself in my situation. I, my whole world told me that she died on September 12. Everybody knew that. This girl, who I committed myself to, died on September 12,” Te’o said, according to clips released on the ABC News website.
Te’o has said he believed Kekua, whom he thought was his girlfriend despite never meeting her face to face, had died of leukemia on September 12 after a car accident left her hospitalized.
“Now I get a phone call on December 6, saying that she’s alive and then I’m going be put on national TV two days later. And to ask me about the same question. You know, what would you do?” Te’o said, according to clips of the interview.
Hiltzik asserted Thursday that it would be have been “crazy and stupid and short-sighted” for Te’o, who was still trying to determine what had happened, to tell reporters that his girlfriend — the story of whose death helped propel him into the national spotlight — may have been an elaborate concoction.
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On December 8, ahead of the Heisman Trophy presentation, Te’o said he “lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer.” In a New York Post interview published more than three weeks later, Te’o said memories of his grandfather helped him cope with the losses of his grandmother and girlfriend, whom he’d previously said died on the same day.
“So when I lost my grandmother and Lennay, I thought of him. He was my strength,” Te’o told the Post, according to a December 30 article.
It was true that his grandmother had died, but Te’o conceded that he mentioned Kekua again even after — as Couric put it — he “knew that something was amiss,” according to the interview clips.
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Article Courtesy of CNN
Picture Courtesy of The Huffington Post
