Authors: Jeff Benedict,Don Yaeger
• On June 23, 1991, Simmons, according to a Clemson University police report, was cited for assault and battery after allegedly striking from behind a Domino’s Pizza delivery man. Gao Xing, a foreign student attending Clemson and working part-time delivering pizzas, had to have his rights to safety and other freedoms explained to him by the police. He declined to press charges against Simmons.
• On September 17, 1992, Simmons was arrested on charges of assault and battery after striking a fellow student at Clemson. According to the police report, the student was approached on campus by Simmons, who was with a group of fifteen of his football teammates. “Wayne Simmons was in the middle of the group pointing at me and moving his hand as if he was acting out a person sucking a penis,” she said in her police statement. “He had his hand in a circular fashion around his mouth moving it back and forth away and closer to his mouth. He continued doing this and laughing with the rest of his friends.” The student alleged that when she confronted Simmons about his conduct, “He then took his hat off and his football friends started holding him as he was going to hit me. He then took his hat and smacked me in the face with it. … Then one of Wayne’s friends said that I better leave before I get hurt.” She told authorities that as she walked away, “I heard Wayne yelling, ‘You sucked his dick, dick sucker. …’ I heard him yell this continuously until I walked out of the door.”
• On April 11, 1993, Simmons was charged with assault and battery after he and three friends tried to gain access to a South Carolina bar without paying the cover charge. When the doorman required payment, Simmons began shouting at the man that he was “white trash” and a “pussy.” Spitting on other patrons who were entering the club, Simmons and his crew started screaming, “F— this. We are going back in there to kick every white mother f—er’s ass,” according to the police reports. As they approached the door, some men who were in the parking lot stepped between Simmons’s group and the doorman in an attempt to explain that no one wanted any trouble. Simmons, who had retrieved a pair of brass knuckles from underneath the seat of his car, jumped over the shoulder of one of his friends, striking in the face the man who was trying to prevent an incident. The blow dropped the man to the ground and, according to the police reports, left a “severe laceration” and a scar on the left side of the man’s face and nose. Simmons and his group then ran to their car, squealing tires as they sped out of the parking lot.
• On March 11, 1996, Simmons was arrested for breach of peace and failing to stop for police. When police responded to a noise complaint coming from a house occupied by Simmons and another man, Simmons refused to answer the door. Finally, Simmons and his friend emerged from the residence, walked right past the police, and climbed into a vehicle to leave. While one officer approached the driver’s side to order them to stop, the other officer stood behind the vehicle to prevent them from backing out. “But the subjects still disregarded him and continued to go in reverse toward him at an accelerated rate of speed,” according to the police report. “Both myself and Sergeant Toman got in our vehicle and tried blue lighting the subjects to no avail.”
[The dispositions of most of these cases were not obtainable from the public record.]
I
n early January of 1998, prosecutor David Locke took his case against Wayne Simmons to a grand jury, seeking to have Simmons indicted for kidnapping, rape, and sexual battery. If he were at the trial stage, Locke would have to convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Simmons committed these crimes. But in order to persuade the grand jury to indict Simmons, Locke needed only to prove probable cause (more evidence for than against). And he had at his disposal all the police complaints previously filed against Simmons. “We generally would make a grand jury aware of it [previous criminal history],” said Locke in an exclusive interview for this book. “Arrest records can be properly brought before the grand jury.”
The witness list of those scheduled to testify before the grand jury was short: Detective Y. Strahle, Susan Jensen, and Elliot Mitchell. Grand jurors also had access to videotaped copies of numerous police interviews with individuals connected to the case.
Jensen was the star witness. An attractive, petite girl, she told eighteen grand jurors what happened in a stairwell at The Zoo. Her status as a virgin on the night of the incident went unchallenged. And on January 7, 1998, the grand jury reached its decision on whether there was probable cause to indict Simmons. “NO,” wrote jury foreperson Errol F. Rhett on the form.
Why not?
“I think it basically had to do with the victim’s credibility,” said Locke in an exclusive interview. “The victim’s statement conflicted with most of the other witnesses about what happened immediately prior to the sexual attack.”
According to police reports, The Zoo’s owner, and Simmons’s friend, George Murphy, told investigators that when they were all at The Rave, Jensen said “she would ‘f— Wayne for two million dollars.’” He also told police that “the girl was all over Wayne, especially on the ride back from The Rave. …”
While her friend Emily disputed that Jensen was “all over” Simmons in the car, she did confirm that Jensen told her she wanted to sleep with Simmons.
Emily thought the comment was a joke, but Cyndy Johnson’s boyfriend told authorities that he witnessed “Susan telling Wayne, ‘I want to f— your brains out.’” He said that he saw Jensen “sitting on a sofa with Simmons and she was touching all over him.” Even Cyndy claimed that she, too, heard Jensen say that she would “f— Simmons for two million dollars.” Worse yet, more than one witness vaguely questioned Jensen’s general credibility.
Jensen vehemently denied these charges, both to investigators and to the grand jury. “I’m not saying she wasn’t telling the truth,” said Locke. “It’s just that it would be hard to get twelve jurors to convict the defendant of rape, knowing the trial standard is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ It gets to whether you believe the victim consented to it or not. It is different from Joe Q. Citizen because the interaction between the victim and the football player was controlled by the fact that he was a football player. And some of the things that she is alleged to have said have to do with the fact that he was a football player. A lot of the victim’s actions could be tainted by the fact of his status.”
Locke offered a second, more technical explanation for why the grand jury may have declined to indict Simmons. The physical evidence didn’t prove that Simmons actually penetrated Jensen’s vagina with his penis (which is required to prove rape). Further, no semen was found inside her vagina. “The physical evidence supports that there was some penetration,” said Locke. “But it also supports Simmons’s story to his friend [Mitchell] that he couldn’t enter. The sperm was found on her panties, not inside her. I’m not saying that he didn’t penetrate her, I’m just saying that some of that story is supported by the physical evidence.”
A
t the time this book went to press, Susan Jensen had made no attempt to sue Wayne Simmons or elicit a financial settlement from him. Nor has she attempted to sell her story for pay. In fact, she never as much as told her story to anyone, other than the doctor at the hospital, the authorities, and eighteen grand jurors. Still, apparently it was her credibility that could not pass the test.
In Kansas City, Simmons played a crucial role in the Chiefs’ defense as the team went on to post the AFC’s best record in 1997. Although Simmons declined to be interviewed for this book, his business manager, Tom Gardo, spoke to the authors about the rape allegations.
“Wayne had a DUI and in college he got into a couple of fights,” said Gardo. “But that’s it. This particular crime [the rape allegation], he was exonerated. He ended up having a situation. He knows better than to get himself in a situation where he would be lured into a compromising position with a female in a place like that [The Zoo] when both of them have been drinking.
“But he’s not any different than a lot of the other guys. He’s a highly emotional kind of person, like a lot of ballplayers. You don’t become a professional football player without a high level of testosterone running through your body.”
W
hen the authors called, Chiefs President Carl Peterson declined to discuss what he knew of Simmons’s past. Team spokesman Jim Carr went one step further, taking the unusual step of denying the authors access to the publicly available team photographs of Simmons and Barnett. “I’m a PR guy,” Carr told the authors. “Why would I want to help you put our guys in a negative light? I don’t see any good for the Chiefs that can come out of telling these stories.”
Born Again
People hate to say it, but what you are around is what you’re going to be. At 13 years old and you’re around crime, you’re going to be a criminal.
New York Jets wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, who served time in a youth detention center in California before attending the University of Southern California on a football scholarship.
Although the authors did not treat NFL spokesperson Greg Aiello’s reference to “half of our players” being criminals as any sort of actual confession on his part, it is nonetheless true that the NFL has a much greater handle on the scope of its players’ criminal histories than anyone else does. Consider that despite all of the crimes reported in Chapter 1, the authors did not have access to crimes committed by NFL players in their juvenile years—the fastest growing age group category for violent crime in America. It is virtually impossible to determine how many NFL players have serious juvenile criminal records. Few states collect reliable juvenile crime statistics, and even fewer states make juveniles’ criminal histories a matter of public record. “Public access laws governing juvenile records will prevent you from finding out the number of NFL players who have criminal records as juveniles,” explained Linda Szymanski, director of legal research at the National Center for Juvenile Justice. As a result, it is very difficult for reporters or researchers to estimate, much less pinpoint with accuracy, the number of NFL players who were involved in serious crime as teens.
Who holds the key to this information? The NFL. Equipped with resources that would rival those of any law enforcement agency, and in a position as a prospective employer to access otherwise privileged information, NFL security surely must learn not only which players coming into the league are criminals, but when, where, why, and how the crime was committed.
“The league does a lot of background work,” Minnesota Vikings President and NFL Properties Chairman Roger Headrick explained in an exclusive interview. “We can go back to age twelve in the city where they have gone to school and get their criminal record. Occasionally you’ll be able to get some records of things like substance abuse. That is transmitted through the medical side to the individual teams. So we know who is a drug-related risk. We also try to find out if they are related to any gang background. That is sometimes harder to find out, but you can check into where they lived, what kinds of cities they came from, particularly inner cities.”
All of this information is funneled down to the individual teams, who themselves conduct further investigation, primarily in the form of interviews with probation officers and others personally familiar with those few players whom teams are most interested in drafting.
Since neither the NFL nor the individual teams are itching to reveal the extent of the criminal behavior they discover in predraft investigations, the authors asked player agent Leigh Steinberg if there were any criminal offenses that would altogether bar a player from playing in the NFL. “Murder,” he replied, before qualifying his answer. “But even then there may be exceptions. You have to look at each case individually.”
He wasn’t kidding.
The authors compiled a list of nineteen players who played during the 1996–97 season and who grew up and attended high school in the Los Angeles area. They are: Karim Abdul-Jabbar (Dolphins), Chad Brown (Seahawks), Joe Cain (Seahawks), Curtis Conway (Bears), Aaron Craver (Chargers), Rick Cunningham (Raiders), Bernard Dafney (Steelers), Mark Fields (Saints), Deon Figures (Jaguars), Darick Holmes (Bills), Charles Jordan (Dolphins), Lamar Lyons (Raiders), Willie McGinest (Patriots), Mark McMil-lian (Saints), Anthony Miller (Cowboys), Chris Mims (Chargers), Charles Mincy (Buccaneers), Johnny Morton (Lions), and Marcus Robertson (Oilers).
Although all of these players have either more than five years’ experience in the league or have been starters, most fans will only recognize a few of these names. Players like Lawrence Phillips and Keyshawn Johnson, both of whom also grew up and attended high school in Los Angeles, were purposely left off the list. Their histories have been well documented elsewhere, and the purpose here was to examine players who, while playing key roles, have not had their backgrounds scrutinized in the press.
The authors then turned the list over to a Los Angeles-based firm which specializes in doing legal research for law firms and private companies. Vickie Francies-Siedow, president of the firm, ran the names through a computerized criminal index that accesses all thirty-four municipal courts in Los Angeles County, as well as the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Of the nineteen players whose criminal histories were checked, seven showed up in the index as having been indicted: Mark Fields (DUI), Charles Jordan (murder, controlled substance—two times, false imprisonment, gambling, drugs, robbery, dissuading a witness through force or threat, auto theft), Darick Holmes (grand theft property), Bernard Dafney (forgery), Chad Brown (felony controlled substance), Joe Cain (prostitution), and Aaron Craver (forgery, grand theft auto, grand theft, making false financial statements, auto theft).
As startling as this list is, the most celebrated player on the nineteen-player list, Patriots star linebacker Willie McGinest, didn’t show up on the extensive computerized search of court records.
While attending USC on a football scholarship, McGinest, who grew up in Pasadena, was accused along with two teammates of dragging a twenty-three-year-old graduate student into a dormitory room and sexually molesting her. The 1991 trial, which resulted in all three players being acquitted, received daily press coverage in the
Los Angeles Times.
Yet no record of McGinest ever having been charged with a crime showed up on the court’s computerized records.