Zach Tomaselli, one of the men who accused former Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine of child sexual abuse, says he has been lying the past few months and was not abused by Fine.
"It has become a burden of a lie and I am sick of it," Tomaselli said in a email to Syracuse website CNYCentral.com. "Bobby Davis told me what to tell detectives and it pretty much took off from there. The evidence that supports me is just pure luck, not real evidence. I made the ENTIRE thing up. I have never met Bernie in my life."
Davis, a ball boy for Syracuse teams in the 1980s, and his stepbrother Mike Lang have accused Fine of molesting them during the 1980s and '90s.
Davis spoke with ESPN's Mark Schwarz on Friday and denied telling Tomaselli details of his alleged interactions with Fine.
"I never said anything like that at all to the kid," Davis told ESPN. "I just spoke to him a couple minutes. There were like two phone calls between us and they lasted a total of three to four minutes.
"It was very short," Davis said of their conversations. "I asked him all the questions. I asked him to describe Bernie's house, to describe the arena, to name the players on the team at that time. He kept changing his story with me. He couldn't name the players, couldn't describe the house. I said, 'You just need to call the police.' I called back and asked him if he called the police and he said, 'no one answered.' I said, "no one answered?' "
In a phone interview with CNYCentral, Tomaselli said "It was a game to me. It was fun trying to make this story come alive." By email, Tomaselli went on, "I NEVER met Bernie fine or went to an autograph session. I sat in the nosebleeds at the Pitt game at the (Carrier) Dome in '03 but that is it. I lied."
As for why he misled the authorities, prosecutors, the media and the public at large for so long, Tomaselli wrote to CNYCentral, "I don't have feelings most of the time. I just hate people without caring," adding that he was motivated by a strong dislike for the Syracuse basketball program because it beat his favorite team, Kansas, in the 2003 NCAA championship game.
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