Woman Changed Part of Story

Kobe Bryant’s accuser sent a letter to prosecutors one month before trial was to begin, retracting portions of her original statements to investigators.

The letter was one of several pieces of evidence released by the Eagle County District Attorney’s office Friday that could have been damaging to the 20-year-old woman at the Laker star’s sexual assault trial.

The felony sexual assault charge against Bryant was dismissed Sept. 1 after the accuser decided not to testify. The woman still has a federal suit pending against Bryant seeking unspecified damages.

The accuser wrote in the three-page, handwritten letter dated July 31, 2004, that she needed to inform prosecutors of “a few things that have been weighing heavily on my conscience.”

She said that contrary to her original statement to Det. Doug Winters, Bryant did not make her wash her face following their encounter in a hotel room June 30, 2003. She also said that car trouble was not the reason she had been late to work that day, that actually she had overslept.

Although the contradictions do not directly address her allegation that Bryant forced her to have intercourse by holding her by the neck and ignoring her pleas for him to stop, legal experts said it would have posed problems at trial.

“This isn’t her changing the recollection of a detail, this is her completely inventing something,” said Larry Pozner, a Denver attorney who followed the case closely. Bryant attorney “Pam Mackey would have done a tap dance on her head with that. It’s like gift wrapping a baseball bat and saying, ‘Whack me with it.’ ”

The woman called her mother the morning after the encounter and said, “Mom, I was raped last night,” according to a statement the mother gave an investigator. Asked about her daughter’s truthfulness, the mother said, “She is honest with me about the important things. She is a normal teenager.”

Two witnesses who observed the woman the night of the alleged rape said she did not seemed troubled.

Trina McKay, the woman’s supervisor, said that after emerging from Bryant’s room and returning to her post to count a cash drawer, the woman “had a big smile on her face and was bubbly.” McKay said the woman approached her and said, “Hey, I’m out of here.”

McKay also said Bryant could not sleep late that night and spent a half-hour watching television with her in the lobby.

Another witness said that early in the evening the woman was “flirtatious” with Bryant and described her behavior “as what she might see in a bar.” Janet Woods, a guest at the Cordillera Lodge & Spa, told a prosecution investigator that she thought the woman was someone “intimately” connected with Bryant because of their “body language.”

The woman took a trip to Canada with a friend about one month after the alleged rape and people she met there took photos of her dancing with a man and kissing him at a bar. The photos were sold to a tabloid, and in an interview with a prosecution investigator, one of the woman’s acquaintances said the woman “was hurt by the photos, but as they talked that evening she just kind of laughed it off and said she wanted money for the photos too.”

The acquaintance, Kylie Robinson, said she did not feel the woman was the victim of a sexual assault because “she seemed to make a joke of it and commented about money she was going to get from the trial.”

The woman was in Calgary the night Bryant appeared on the Teen Choice Awards and she became emotionally upset and went to the bathroom, Robinson said.

John Clune, an attorney for the accuser, said he supported the release of the previously sealed files. “It’s better for the public to have as much truth as possible instead of the leak-fest Bryant’s defense attorneys have been running,” he said.

Only 625 pages of approximately 4,000 pages of sealed documents in the file of Eagle County Dist. Atty. Mark Hurlbert were released. Among the material not released was test results of physical evidence in the case, including DNA, clothing and hair and fibers taken from Bryant and the accuser.

In a motion filed Sept. 27, Mackey requested that Hurlbert release 16 items of evidence that favored Bryant. Among the items she requested that remain under seal are the results of the investigation into the purchase of T-shirts degrading to Bryant; a follow-up interview with the accuser that addressed her psychiatric history; and a chart developed by the prosecution concerning allegations of specific sexual conduct.

Also remaining sealed are the opinions of forensics expert Dr. Michael Baden and Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA expert Yvonne Woods. Neither expert would back prosecution theories regarding the transfer of semen from the accuser’s underwear to her body.

A CBI spokesman told prosecutors he had been “misquoted” in a March story in The Times where he indicated such a transfer was “highly unlikely.” Woods, however, made the same comment during a pretrial hearing in June.

One consequence of the allegation was the demotion of Bryant bodyguard Troy Laster at his regular job with the Los Angeles Police Department. Laster, who stood by while detectives interrogated Bryant for 75 minutes the day after the alleged rape, was a member of a squad that investigated assaults.

Ray Birch, an investigator for the prosecution, asked him, “Are you still in that position now?” Laster replied, “No, sir. I’m on the filing team.”