The man behind the Manti Te'o dead girlfriend hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, has surfaced. TMZ caught him on-camera (video below) at his family home in Palmdale, Calif. on Saturday evening.
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was wearing a hoodie,but there was no sign of George Zimmerman, so he was safe. He tried to hide his face, but unsuccessfully. When asked about his role in the hoax, he stayed silent.
Less than a day after Ronaiah Tuiasosopo showed his face -- more or less -- in public, Manti Te'o and his parents agreed to an on-camera interview with Katie Couric, on her syndicated daytime TV show. And about a day before, Manti Te'o spoke to ESPN, but on audio only, and said that Tuiasosopo had reached out to him, via Twitter and then phone, and confessed to the prank. Te'o said Tuiasosopo apologized, as well.
Everything blew up last Wednesday, when the fact that Lennay Kekua never existed became known. Te'o had said Kekua had died on the same day his grandmother died, just a few days before he had a monster game against Michigan State.
To make things worse, Te'o continued to discuss Kekua and his grandmother after that game. It seemed as though the story continued to grow in proportion as time went on, until the Notre Dame Fighting Irish finally concluded an unbeaten regular season, only to lose to the Alabama Crimson Tide on Jan. 7 in the BCS Championship game.
Since the hoax became public knowledge last Wednesday, Manti Te'o has continued to claim that he and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo were simply acquaintances. Te'o insists he was just a victim in the hoax, and did not participate in order to further his Heisman Trophy run and keep his name in the news.
Those last two points have been posited as possible theories behind the hoax, which despite Te'o's assertions, seem to have been drawn out over such a long time -- four years, although the couple was not "together" during all that time -- that many have questioned how Te'o could have been blind to the scam during that period.
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