The Denver Post
Transcript of Bryant interview leaked
Friday, September 17, 2004 -
Kobe Bryant told detectives that he was worried about his image and his wife's fury when they first contacted him about sex-assault allegations last year, according to a recording of the interview published Thursday.
"Whatever I need to do without making this thing public, I will do, man," Bryant said, according to a transcript of the tape sent anonymously to the Vail Daily News. "I don't care what it is, man. I will do it." Bryant initially denied having sex with the 19-year-old hotel clerk but later said the encounter was consensual and similar to sex he frequently enjoyed with another woman who isn't his wife. It marks the first public release of the conversation that defense attorneys unsuccessfully fought to keep out of trial and now are seeking to have sealed permanently. "This is my career," Bryant told Eagle County sheriff's Detectives Doug Winters and Daniel Loya in a late-night interview at the upscale Lodge & Spa at Cordillera near Edwards a day after the encounter with the woman. "My biggest fear is my career and ... my image." The sex-assault charge against Bryant was dismissed during jury selection this month after his accuser told prosecutors that she would not go forward with the case. She still has a civil lawsuit pending against the Los Angeles Lakers star. The interview was one of the key pieces of evidence that prosecutors had planned to present at trial. Bryant's statements - the exact wording of which had been kept under wraps until now - would have bolstered what many observers had suggested was a weak prosecution case. "We had many pieces of strong evidence, and that was one of them," said Krista Flannigan, spokeswoman for Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert. She declined to comment further, citing a temporary restraining order placed by an Eagle district court judge at the request of defense attorneys. The transcript and an audio CD of the surreptitiously recorded conversation arrived at the Vail newspaper in a brown envelope with no return address and a Denver postmark. Although the attorneys and law-enforcement officers are precluded from disclosing evidence covered by Judge Richard Hart's restraining order, other witnesses may have had access to the material and could have released it legally.
Click here to read the transcript of Kobe Bryant's interview with detectives in the Vail Daily.
Click here for a timeline of the People v. Bryant case.
Click here for the official court website with officials court orders, filings and documents in the case.
Click here to see a copy of the felony charges against Bryant in the PDF format. The charges were dropped Sept. 1.
Click here for an interactive presentation on Bryant's career.
Click here for the 9NEWS archive on the case.
Click here for the CourtTV archive on the case.
She requested that the court appoint an independent investigator to seize the envelope, documents and CD sent to the Vail Daily News in an effort to identify the source, claiming Bryant's privacy had been violated. In the interview with detectives, Bryant repeatedly asked them to keep the investigation out of the press and not to let his wife, Vanessa, know about the incident. "If my wife found out that anybody made any type of allegations against me, she would be infuriated," he said at one point, later suggesting that he would lose his wife and all of his endorsements if the incident became public. On the day Hurlbert announced the charge, Bryant appeared alongside his wife at a news conference and admitted that he had committed adultery but said that the encounter was consensual. In the interview with detectives late on July 1, 2003, however, Bryant initially told a different story. Winters: "OK, all right. Um, did anything happen in the room?" Bryant: "Like what?" Loya: "Uh, did you guys hug or kiss?" Bryant: "No." Winters: "OK. Um, I'll be blunt and ask you. Did you have sexual intercourse with her?" Bryant: "No." After detectives indicated they had allegations otherwise, Bryant recanted and admitted that he did have sex with the accuser but said she initiated it. "We were still only this close, and she gets up and she gives me a kiss," he said. "So I kiss her back, and then, you know, I started caressing her or whatever. And then she puts her hand on my, you know, my thing or whatever, and it kind of goes from there." Bryant, who detectives indicated was upset at times, told them that the five minutes of intercourse began when the woman bent herself over the chair. "It was consensual," he said. "There was nothing weird, you know what I mean?" Bryant, who wasn't even sure of the woman's name and interjected that "she wasn't all that attractive," said the encounter ended on friendly terms, with a goodbye kiss at the door of his room. Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or at slipsher@denverpost.com . |