The bodybuilder offered to make Bryant’s problem ‘go away for a fee’
A Swiss bodybuilder offered to kill the person who accused Kobe Bryant of rape for $3 million, a newly-released FBI report details.
Bryant, who died in January last year, was charged with sexual assault in 2003 following claims made by a woman, then 19, who worked at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera in Colorado.
Prosecutors dropped the case in September 2004 after the accuser decided she would not testify. Bryant had claimed the sex was consensual, but a settlement was later reached following a civil lawsuit.
It has since emerged that bodybuilder Patrick Graber was jailed for three years in 2004 for a murder-for-hire plot against the accuser.
Details of the plot were unearthed this month in a report published to the FBI’s vault website which archives cases with a large public interest.
Large parts of the 17-page report were redacted, the Denver Post reports, including Graber’s name, though it was made public when he was sentenced in 2004.
However, the FBI report does detail how he used Federal Express to mail the LA Lakers icon with an offer that included “inferences that he could make Bryant’s problem with respect to the sexual assault case go away for a fee”.
Graber also reportedly offered to “influence the victim” during the trial against Bryant and, if that failed, go “all the way to remove the witness”.
The Post reports that Bryan’s security team and lawyer took the letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which conducted a controlled meeting with Graber before the FBI later arrested him.
Graber was ordered to be deported from the US upon finishing his sentence.
Bryant died last year in a helicopter crash that also killed eight other people on board, including the basketball player’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.
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