Frank Sedita, the Eerie County District Attorney overseeing Chicago Blackhawks star forward Patrick Kane's sexual assault investigation, announced on Friday his belief that the evidence bag, said to have at one time contained the results of the alleged victim's rape kit and which was purported to have been delivered to the victim's mother some time this week, was actually part of an ill-conceived fabrication or "hoax."
"Obviously there has been an effort to create a hoax," Sedita said, via ESPN. "I gotta figure out who was in on that, why they would do that and what it means vis-a-vis all the other evidence."
Earlier this week, Thomas Eoannou, the attorney for the victim, convened a press conference in order to reveal to the media that an evidence bag, which may have contained the victim's rape kit, was delivered to the woman's mother. There was even an extra detail about how the bag had been folded and shoved between the door and the storm door.
In a stunning reversal the next day, Eoannou held another press conference in which he said that he had discovered inconsistencies in the story of how the mother came by the bag - which he maintained was an actual evidence bag from Kane's case - and would therefore no longer represent the victim.
On Friday, Sedita revealed the origins of the bag in the mother's possession. Per Sedita, the bag was given to the mother at the hospital at the time of her daughter's examination. The mother was meant to put the young woman's top, which she had changed out of sometime between leaving Kane's home and arriving at the hospital, in the bag and return it to authorities.
She never did.
Sedita went on to show the assembled media surveillance video of the rape kit, which is stored in a box, as is the norm, not a bag, in the evidence room.
"It's a bizarre hoax," Sedita said, per ESPN. "And it's a dog and pony show."
Sedita also made it clear that the case is no longer certain to go before a grand jury.
