Listen to the Hoax 'Lennay Kekua' Voicemails, Apparently Recorded by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo
Okay. First, listen to this voicemail left on Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o's voicemail by his nonexistent "girlfriend," Lennay Kekua:
(The rest are available here at Deadspin.)
Now, listen to Ronaiah Tuiasosopo — the hoaxer behind Kekua and her "death" — introduce one of his songs, "Saved Again," in the video above.
So. Is that the same person? This morning, Tuiasosopo's lawyer told the New York Daily News that Tuiasosopo himself had posed as Kekua and assumed "a falsetto voice" on the phone with Te'o:
The Heisman Trophy finalist "thought it was a female he was talking with," lawyer Milton Grimes acknowledged to the Daily News. "It was Ronaiah as Lennay."
The soul-baring chats between the star linebacker and the man posing as his phantom girlfriend were the linchpin of their fake fairy-tale romance. But Te'o apparently never realized it was Tuiasosopo disguising his voice to assume the persona of stunning, sassy Stanford coed Kekua.
If Tuiasosopo is faking a woman's voice, he's very good at it.