I think the timeline takes it back to 1977. That makes him 34. Sounds right.
It means rumors were flying for YEARS!
Knute Rockne once described State College, PA as being “equally inaccessible from all directions”.
It was an apt description. Very isolated, self-contained community, surrounded by mountains and miles and miles of nothing. An ideal environment for keeping secrets “in the family”, at least in the pre-Internet era.