Posted on 07/29/2003 9:35:38 AM PDT by beckett
THIS does not dilute a devastating loss, but there is an expectation of a conclusion once a missing person's body is discovered, if only as the end to an agonizing unknown.
Not all expectations unfold neatly, though. Sometimes a death is the beginning of a discovery into a secret double life, providing an unexpected peek into a hidden dark side.
The exposed, however, is not the Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy. Certainly, there are questions about how he could have met such an unimaginable death, how a friend and a teammate like Carlton Dotson could be accused of being his killer, how Dennehy could be spiritually reborn one minute only to be found amid tall weeds the next.
Dennehy may have lived a life in paradoxes - who doesn't wrestle with fresh starts and difficult pasts from time to time? - but there's now a question whether the double life that has been revealed upon his death belongs to Baylor University.
This is a Baptist university that has a moral compass pointed at God, although an official in the program allegedly caved into evil when he slipped players like Dennehy pocket money as an illegal perk.
This is a campus where resistance is an answer to temptation, although there are allegations that Dennehy's tuition, expenses and Chevy Tahoe were impulsive buys from staffers eager to please the player.
This is a university where lines of biblical proportions are drawn between right and wrong, although Dennehy's girlfriend alleges that a Baylor assistant gave her cab fare in possible violation of N.C.A.A. rules on a meter that began in Waco, Tex., and ended in Dallas.
This is a place where "love thy neighbor" is a career goal, although some wonder if the coaches turned their backs on troubled players and turned their heads away from a teamwide drug problem.
And this is why Dave Bliss looked more like a faith healer under a tent than a basketball coach under pressure when he stood up at a news conference yesterday at Baylor to proclaim his program's clean living.
All but using the televised moment as a recruiting tool, he praised the university, his assistant coaches and the basketball program. He celebrated the power of prayer and he spoke of devotion. "I'm a Christian," he said. "I love coaching at Baylor."
Bliss's career is on the line as questions about the integrity of Baylor's program grow. "The questions aren't about Patrick, and they aren't about Dotson," Bliss said. "They're about me, my coaches and our basketball program."
Then the coach offered a line-item explanation for some of the allegations only days after Baylor began an internal inquiry into possible N.C.A.A. violations.
The $50 in cash handed to players? That's authorized per diem money, Bliss said. The S.U.V. Dennehy drove? Bliss recommended a dealer, but he said he is almost sure Dennehy's father financed it. The team drug problem? There is no problem, he declared.
He was more vague on other allegations - many of which have been lobbed by family members and friends of Dotson and Dennehy - and also conceded the obvious difficulty in deciphering the truth: A witness is dead.
"The one person who could relieve and answer all of these questions is no longer with us," Bliss said.
Without Dennehy, how will anyone know if Baylor's promise to repent for past N.C.A.A. indiscretions (see 1986 and 1995) has expired once again?
"We've done a number of investigations in the past, but I'm not aware of any situation like this," the Baylor law professor Bill Underwood, a member of the university's three-member investigation committee, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "Certainly, we've never had one in this kind of environment."
The atmosphere since Dennehy was declared missing six weeks ago through the moment his body was identified on Sunday has been emotional, making a fair investigation even more problematic. From Dotson's former wife to Dennehy's father, everyone has had an intriguing story to tell to Texas newspapers about Baylor's possible improprieties.
Is every pal's account absolute, or is this a game of telephone? Is every allegation on the mark, or is it colored by anger toward Baylor? Is the misdeed accurate, or said out of grief?
"This is something that presents a challenge," Underwood said. "I think any time you hear allegations, you have to consider all the reasons for it."
Whatever the committee of Baylor's best minds discovers, there are other questions for the university to answer, mostly about itself. How could this God-fearing university find itself in the middle of a murder investigation involving two gun-toting players who may - or may not - have been part of a corrupt program?
"I think the investigation provides an opportunity for the university to show its integrity," Underwood said. "As a faculty member, I believe the university stands for values."
Bliss stood on a podium, preaching those values yesterday. But without Dennehy to offer a testimonial, not everyone will believe his good word. There is a body to go with Dennehy's name, but no resolution for a university that is being questioned about whether it indulged in a secret double life.
A kid shoots another kid in the head off-campus and The New York Times wants us to believe that the "double life" of Baylor University has been exposed. Did The New York Times investigate the "double life" of Yale University when an instructor there was accused of murdering a student some years ago? Hell no. You can be certain the thought never even occurred to them.
Santana Dotson went to Baylor, but he graduated in '92. Seeing as how Carlton Dotson (21) would be considerably younger than Santana (34), they are in different sports, and Santana is 6'5" 287 lbs vs. Carlton's 6'7" skinny build, I doubt they are related.
I agree. It could be as simple as Dotson being jealous about being told, basically, to seek employment elsewhere while Dennehy progressed, but there were a lot of strange goings on that had nothing to do with Baylor.
Sorry, I just can't get all worked up about cab fare. I don't care if it was a $300 trip. Clearly the money was meant to help out a student who needed to get somewhere. That strikes me as an act of charity. I am not prepared to make it into something malevolent and underhanded based on the evidence at hand.
In fact I am much more prepared to question the motives of the girl who went to the press with the story. This is the same girl --- Dennehy's girlfriend -- who wanted everyone to know he had "talked of marriage" with her in order to make the most of her brief relationship with Dennehy, and who you can be sure will be working ever angle her lawyers can think of to sue Baylor.
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