The Columbia (Mo.) Police Department has closed the case involving the alleged sexual assault of a former Missouri swimmer.
Sasha Menu Courey committed suicide in June 2011, about 16 months after she said she was allegedly sexually assaulted in February 2010. She had believed her alleged attacker was a member of the Missouri football team.
In a statement released Wednesday, Columbia police said that "after a year of following leads, reviewing evidence, and taking multiple statements, CPD detectives have been unable to identify a suspect in this case."
The case was assigned to a detective after a January 2014 report by ESPN's Outside the Lines that said the university didn't take steps to investigate the alleged incident. ESPN cited records that said a rape crisis counselor, a campus therapist and two doctors knew about the allegation and, according to Menu Courey's journal, so did a member of Missouri's athletic department.
Missouri countered the report by saying Menu Courey chose not to report the allegations to law enforcement and that healthcare workers are bound by privacy and confidentiality laws. A spokesperson also said the university hadn't received family authorization to access her medical records nor had it heard back from her parents regarding their wishes for an investigation.
An independent investigation after the OTL report criticized Missouri's (lack of an) investigation. It said the school should have launched an investigation in November of 2012 and that the school "acted inconsistently" with Title IX requirements.
The police department statement cited four obstacles in the case: the alleged victim is deceased, no forensic evidence exists along with chain of custody issues with Menu Courey's phone and computer, that much of the information obtained from witnesses is hearsay and "there is no information available to clearly establish that this person actually committed the act."
The police statement also included details from an interview with former Missouri football player Rolandis Woodland, who said he received a tape of the alleged incident in the mail from Menu Courey before her death.
Rolandis stated that he did not know that Sasha had been sexually assaulted until after her death. Rolandis stated that immediately after her death, he received a package from Sasha that was sent while she was in a treatment facility in Boston, MA. He advised he felt she sent the package just before committing suicide. Rolandis said that the package contained two letters and a CD. Rolandis said in one letter, she described her feelings for him. He said that in the other letter, she described the sexual assault incident and asked that he not disclose the details to anyone. Rolandis stated that the CD contained video footage of the assault.
You can view the complete statement here.
Menu Courey's parents responded to the police statement and questioned why police destroyed some of her belongings after investigating a previous suicide attempt by Menu Courey in a Columbia hotel in April 2011.
Menu Courey’s parents requested their daughter’s personal effects after her death in June 2011, and several items were returned roughly a month later, Menu said.
During the course of the Columbia police investigation, Menu Courey’s parents learned that items logged as evidence from that April 2011 suicide attempt were not returned.
Those items, including a 10-day journal and a five-page suicide note, were subsequently destroyed by Columbia police.
“There could have been really relevant information,” her father Mike Menu told the Star. “The journal, we suspect — and we don’t know, because we’ve never seen it, but we suspect — was related to her stay at MU’s hospital.
“That’s also a pretty substantial note, which we didn’t see either. What was in there? A person that killed themselves, you don’t know what they might have divulged in there, but there could definitely be something to look into.
“We felt like that, at the very least, should be mentioned as an obstacle, but it wasn’t even mentioned. I think that’s more important than the fact that our daughter’s computer had been accessed since her death when we opened it a couple times to read her journal.”
For more Missouri news, visit PowerMizzou.com.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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