Newly released FBI documents detail how a Swiss bodybuilder offered to kill US basketball player Kobe Bryant’s rape accuser for $3 million.
Bryant’s lawyers contacted the police upon hearing the offer and the bodybuilder was arrested.
A newly released FBI report details how officials caught the bodybuilder.
Swiss bodybuilder Patrick Graber was ultimately sentenced to three years in prison in the case, after pleading no contest to grant theft in 2004 when prosecutors dropped several charges against him, including solicitation to commit murder, the Associated Press and ESPN reported at the time.
The case came after a woman accused Bryant of raping her in his hotel room at The Lodge & Spa at Cordillera in Edwards, Colorado, in 2003.
Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash in January 2020, had said the sex was consensual, and charges were dropped after the woman refused to testify.
A settlement was eventually reached in a civil suit.
But a report posted this month on the FBI’s vault website describes Graber’s offer for a murder-for-hire plot against Bryant’s accuser, the Denver Post first reported.
While the FBI report is heavily redacted, Graber’s name was made public when he was charged and sentenced in 2004.
The report said that Graber, a member of a Gold’s Gym in Venice who had alleged ties to the Russian mafia, sent Bryant a letter with “inferences that he could make Bryant’s problem with respect to the sexual assault case go away for a fee.”
Upon receiving the letter, Bryant’s security team and attorney then contacted the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
In a meeting with the sheriff’s office, Graber offered to “influence the victim” or “go all the way to remove the witness,” the report said.
Graber was then arrested by the FBI. He was ordered to be deported upon finishing his sentence. (Insider)