After nearly two decades, the FBI has released a 17-page report focusing on a scheme that aimed to kill the woman who accused the late Kobe Bryant of sexual assault in 2003.
Patrick Gruber is the subject of the report involving a murder-for-hire scheme that was released on Sept. 1, though his name has been redacted.
Gruber was a Swiss bodybuilder who sent a letter to Bryant offering to kill his accuser in exchange for $3 million. Gruber was convicted in the scheme in 2004 and sentenced to three years in prison.
Within the report, the FBI indicated that Gruber made “inferences that he could make Bryant’s problem with respect to the sexual assault case go away for a fee.”
Instead of responding, Bryant’s attorney and security team took the letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. They subsequently traveled to Colorado to interview the woman and to warn her of the threat.
The scandal began after Bryant and the woman in question had sex in a Colorado hotel room in 2003, with the woman later claiming that Bryant had raped her.
The woman later refused to testify, which caused the case to be dropped. However, Bryant and the woman later settled a civil lawsuit.
The FBI made the report available on its vault website, which focuses on cases that garner a great deal of public interest.
