Roethlisberger documents give details
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Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
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MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. -- Members of the posse accompanying Ben Roethlisberger on a Georgia bar crawl played a pivotal role in uniting the star quarterback with the woman who accused him of rape -- and barring the women's friends from checking on her, according to investigative documents released Thursday.
The 20-year-old college student told police that a "bodyguard" escorted her to a back room in the Capital City nightclub in Milledgeville shortly before an encounter with Mr. Roethlisberger in a dingy bathroom led to the rape allegations.
And a friend of hers, Nicole Biancofiore, claimed that a third woman was "taken away by a bodyguard of Ben's" when she tried to open the locked bathroom door.
None of the men who were bar-hopping with Mr. Roethlisberger on March 4-5 in Milledgeville, near the quarterback's off-season home, admitted to being involved in any such untoward activity.
That group included Steelers tackle Willie Colon, off-duty Coraopolis police Officer Anthony J. Barravecchio and off-duty Pennsylvania State Trooper Edward Joyner of the Washington barracks.
When the case was closed this week without charges being filed, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's voluminous file became public. Among the hundreds of pages of documents generated during its monthlong investigation were police reports, interviews with at least 54 people and handwritten statements by the accuser.
The Post-Gazette does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.
Reports in the file show that investigators were initially intent on getting a sample of Mr. Roethlisberger's DNA to compare it to a male DNA sample retrieved from the woman through a sexual assault kit. They took swabs of evidence from the nightclub bathroom and obtained a search warrant to collect the quarterback's genetic material.
Officials at the bureau's crime lab, however, told agents that there was too little DNA from the kit to be able to compare it to Mr. Roethlisberger's DNA.
"The sample was so minute that it could not be profiled," George Herrin, deputy director of the bureau's Department of Forensic Science, said.
In the absence of DNA evidence, investigators relied on witness accounts and statements by the alleged victim to try to unearth the truth about what happened in the Capital City nightclub.
First Published April 16, 2010 12:00 am
