Bryant file details accuser's phone call

By Jeff Kass And Holly Yettick, Rocky Mountain News
October 9, 2004

EAGLE - The woman who accused Kobe Bryant of raping her pleaded on the phone with her mother to come home from work the morning after the alleged assault, according to previously sealed documents in the case.

"Mom, you need to come home, I need to talk to you," the woman said.

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The mother found her daughter in bed. She had been crying and looked upset. Her mother sat next to her.

"Mom," she reportedly said, "I was raped last night."

Her mother hugged her for a minute.

"Who was it?" she asked.

"Kobe Bryant," the woman said.

An account of that conversation, and a report that Bryant reportedly called his wife soon after the incident, is contained in 625 pages of documents released Friday by the Eagle County District Attorney.

DA spokeswoman Krista Flannigan said the investigative file actually stretches to 4,000 pages, but the vast majority were withheld because of privacy issues.

Among the other revelations in the documents are an account by Kylie Robinson, an acquaintance of the alleged victim, who said the woman talked several months after the incident about making money off the case and the sale of pictures of herself to tabloid newspapers.

"As they talked that evening, she just kind of laugh (sic) it off and said she wanted money for the photos, too," according to the report of the interview.

The file also includes a 21/4- page letter from the alleged victim to a district attorney investigator retracting a couple of parts of her early statements to police. She said she falsified parts of her story because she did not think the detective believed her story.

Denver defense attorney Dan Recht said such revelations would have hurt the alleged victim in the now-dismissed criminal trial and could come back to haunt her in the civil lawsuit she has filed against Bryant.

"When a jury hears that somebody has lied about some things, they will have doubts about what is true and what is not true,"

Recht said. "It would have been devastating for the prosecution."

Flannigan, however, said the letter was not a negative. "It enhanced her credibility because she came forward on her own," Flannigan said, later adding, "It wasn't anything that caused us concern."

Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert dropped the rape charge against Bryant last month as jury selection was under way because the alleged victim, now 20, decided she did not want to testify.

The Eagle woman's civil lawsuit against Bryant is pending in federal district court in Denver.

The letter from the alleged victim retracting certain facts is dated July 31, 2004, more than one year after the incident. It is addressed to district attorney investigator Gerry Sandberg and begins "Dear Gerry."

In it, she admits she altered two details in her statement to police.

"I said what I said because I felt that Detective Winters did not believe what had happened to me," she wrote, apparently referring to Eagle County Sheriff's Detective Doug Winters. "In reporting this crime one of my fears was that I would not be believed."

In block letters, the woman wrote that she originally told Winters that Bryant "made me stay in the room and wash my face" after the alleged rape.

But the woman acknowledges in the letter, "While I was held against my will in that room, I was not forced to wash my face. I did not wash my face."

She later added, "I made the mistake of telling Detective Winters about the bathroom, but as I continued with my statement, I felt what was done to me was horrific enough, and that is the only thing I exaggerated. Again, I am very sorry."

The Eagle woman also said she was not truthful when she said she was late to work the day of the incident because of car troubles.

"When I called in late to work that day that was the reason I gave my boss for being late," the letter said. "In all reality, I simply overslept."

The woman said the misrepresentations "have been weighing heavily on my conscience."

Former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman said of the revelation: "Any lie is bad. More than one lie is worse, and it's never good for a witness to apologize for a mix-up."

But Flannigan said the misrepresentations were on issues that "weren't really that significant anyway."

Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.