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She lied about it

McCain Campaign Volunteer Admits Alleged Attack Was a Hoax

A woman who lied about being attacked because of the McCain bumper sticker on her car will face charges of filing a false report.

FOXNews.com
Friday, October 24, 2008

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PITTSBURGH -- A 20-year-old volunteer for John McCain's campaign has admitted that she lied when she said she was attacked by a robber who carved a "B" into her cheek when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on her car, Pittsburgh police said Friday.
Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Tex., will be charged with filing a false report, a misdemeanor, police said.
"She told lie after lie, and the situation compounded to where we are right now," Lt. Kevin Kraus, head of major crimes for the Pittsburgh police, said Friday.
Todd had told police that on Wednesday night at 9 o'clock ET, a 6-foot-4 black male in dark jeans and a black tank top held her up at an ATM machine in Bloomfield, Pa. Todd said the robber put a knife to her neck and demanded money. She said she gave him $60, according to the police report.
Todd, who is white, said the robber then noticed the McCain bumper sticker on her car, punched her in the back of her head, knocked her down and continued to punch and kick her while threatening to teach her a lesson.
"You are going to be a Barack supporter," she said the robber told her before he sat on her chest, pinned her hands down with his knees and scratched the letter "B" on the right side of her face, using what she believed to be a very dull knife. The robber then fled, Todd said in the police report.
On Friday, officials said they had found several "inconsistencies" in Todd's statements. She was brought back to police headquarters, where she finally confessed that she had made the entire story up.
"After a while, she just simply stated that she wanted to tell the truth," said Maurita Bryant, assistant chief for investigations.
Todd confessed to police that she was driving alone, looked in the mirror, saw her black eye and the "B" on her face, and didn't know how they got there. She assumed she could have done it herself, she said, and then she made up the story about the attacker.
"She saw the 'B' on her face, and she immediately thought about Barack," Bryant said.
Kraus said the 'B' was what first led him to suspect Todd's story. He said he was struck by how neatly the letter was etched on her face.
Police suspect Todd's wounds were self-inflicted. She remained at police headquarters on Friday afternoon, because police "have concern for her well-being," Kraus said. He said officials are trying to determine whether she needs psychiatric evaluation.
"She hasn't really shown any obvious remorse," Kraus said. "She's certainly surprised that it snowballed to where it is today."
"It's been a huge waste of time and man hours," said Bryant, adding that police had been working on the story since it broke Thursday.
Police said Todd did not have a lawyer, and that her none of her family were in Pittsburgh.
Earlier in the day, Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard would not say whether police doubted Todd's story, but bank surveillance footage did not show Todd at the Citizens Bank ATM where she claimed the assault took place.
Richard told FOX News that Todd had been staying with a male friend who lives down the street from the ATM.;
A woman named Liz who answered the door at the residence where Todd arrived after her purported attack told FOXNews.com that her roommate is friends with Todd, and he told Liz not to discuss any details about the incident. A Ford Taurus with a Texas license plate and a McCain-Palin sticker was parked outside.
Richard said Todd later added to her tale, saying she was groped by the robber and lost consciousness during the assault. Neither of those details was in the original report.
Richard said that after a second interview, Todd was not as definitive about the assault or the motives behind it, nor could she say for certain whether the robber took $60 from her, as she initially reported and still maintained was missing.
Todd took a polygraph test late Thursday or early Friday after police heard the inconsistencies, Richard said.
'There were major changes in her story" before and after the polygraph test, Richard said. As for the wound on her cheek, "it's very shallow, it's more of a scratch."
Before Todd's admission, Richard had said the police department was taking the report "very seriously" and considered Todd a "victim" while the investigation was ongoing.
The area at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street where Todd had said the attack took place is heavily traveled in the daytime, full of traffic, pedestrians, restaurants and stores. On Friday, Pittsburgh detectives canvassed the area looking for witnesses.
Doug Graham, a neighbor of the residence where Todd's friend lives, told FOXNews.com it's unlikely an assault at the bank would go unnoticed.
"There ain't no way nobody saw that," said Graham, whose home -- where he has lived for a decade -- sports a Barack Obama sign. "It's always hopping up there. Something fishy, I knew the first second I saw [her story]. Something fishy."
Ethan Eilon, executive director of the College Republicans National Committee, told FOX News that Todd was volunteering as a field representative through his organization and that she had taken a year off from her studies at Blinn College to work on the campaign.
Todd received a call from the Republican presidential nominee on Thursday night. Barack Obama's local campaign team also issued well-wishes and said it hoped her assailant would be caught and brought to justice.
FOX News' Judson Berger and Carl Cameron and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
I'm glad she admitted it. When I first heard about this she was still sticking to her main story but had retracted the allegation of sexual assault and was refusing medical care, which is pretty sad if you ask me. Hopefully it's too late in the game for anything like this to sway most voters.
~Joe
 
A friend of mine is working as a drug/alcohol counselor at a treatment facility as he works on his degree in Child Psychology. Last time he came by for a visit he was discussing starting up a class this semester related to teens and "cutting", not sure if this qualifies but I'd like to hear his take on it. Must be a number of issues going on within her to cause her to go to these lengths.
 
Could be self-mutilation, could be a more general sociopathic need for attention. I have my doubts that she actually can't remember what happened. I think it must've been intentional - by my understanding the wound shows textbook signs of being self-inflicted with the help of a mirror. Also, it's way too shallow to have been some sort of sleepwalking or an accident. Pretty out there any way you look at it.
~Joe
 
When I first saw that picture yesterday, I had a funny feeling about it. It looks like she's smiling a LITTLE. I thought, hmmm that's odd, cause if someone was attacked like how she said, you wouldn't take a pic and almost have a smirk on your face. Am I just imagining it. or does she really look kinda like she's smirking?
 
That's also why the lines aren't straight. Like they say in the article, forensic experts aren't convinced at all.
~Joe

PS - Trapper - I noticed that too, but I didn't really give it much thought until you mentioned it. Really, really weird.
 
I noticed the backwards thing when this story first surfaced. I thought "did the mugger have dyslexia or something?"
 
She looks a lot like my reptile keeping cousin Julie. Glad it's not her though! ;)

Black eyes are usually swelled and generally have a yellowish outline around the bruised area. The eye itself is also often red and/or closed. Today as they led her from the courthouse to the car she didn't have any black eye at all.

In the movies and forensic medical footage, when someone gets a symbol or word carved into them it's pretty vicious, there's blood coagulation and gaping wounds. On a cheek I think the fatty tissues should be bursting out from a shape like the well rounded portions of the B cut into the cheek. It mentions a "dull knife" but even a butter knife would break the skin if used with uncaring brute force. It looks to me like that backwards B could have been done without even breaking the skin using something like the back end of a pen on your cheek scratching and repeating the pattern until it made the design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton
 
  • #10
The McCain campaign made this bad news worse. McCain's Pennsylvania communications director not only repeated the made-up story to reporters without adequately checking on its accuracy, he embellished it in an obvious attempt to use racism to turn voters against Obama. Some commentators have previously pointed to certain words and phrases that McCain and Palin and McCain's ads have used, alleging that the McCain campaign has an underlying element of racism. This proves it.
 
  • #11
The McCain campaign made this bad news worse. McCain's Pennsylvania communications director not only repeated the made-up story to reporters without adequately checking on its accuracy, he embellished it in an obvious attempt to use racism to turn voters against Obama. Some commentators have previously pointed to certain words and phrases that McCain and Palin and McCain's ads have used, alleging that the McCain campaign has an underlying element of racism. This proves it.

This proves it??
please..it proves nothing..

Some commentators have previously pointed out that perhaps this whole story was a plant by Obama supporters, to make McCain look racist when the story was exposed as a fake..which they knew it would be because they planned that all along..

Now that the girl came out and said it was fake, and Obama supporters also alleged some McCain supporters suggested they might be racist based on their comments in this case, This PROVES the whole thing was made up by the Obama camp!!
wow..such clear and obvious proof... :crazy:

but seriously..it proves nothing..on either side..
all this story proves is that the girl has issues..nothing more.

Scot
 
  • #12
I think Scottychaos is right on. This proves nothing, and even if it did, it does nothing to invalidate or discredit the McCain campaign. Both sides are guilty of twisting the truth and committing desparate acts. The media has been pointing out how much the RNC spent on Palin's wardrobe, yet how quickly they forget how much the DNC spent on the stage for Obama. . . . as well as his record breaking and questionable fund raising. They also fail to mention that Palin's clothes will most likely be auctioned or donated after the campaign.

Both sides are not without their shady dealings. And it's sad that there are so many ignorant people (not anyone in this thread, just in general) that believe everything they hear without doing solid research.
 
  • #13
Did you all miss the part where this girl has worked for the McCain campaign for a year? (Was it more than a year?) So, are you saying that Obama knew he and McCain would be on the ticket before the end of primaries and had this girl take a year off college and join McCain's campaign just to sabotage his already ailing polling scores mere weeks before the election? That seems... wildly unlikely to me. If you have a more reasonable interpretation of that scenario, I would be interested to hear it.
More likely? This is the first election this girl has ever been involved in, she's starstruck with her candidate and his ideology, and McCain's shrinking support drove her to an act of desperation on the naïve notion that her cleverness might save us all from an Obama presidency. People will do unbelievable things to feel special.
Now that the girl came out and said it was fake, and Obama supporters also alleged some McCain supporters suggested they might be racist based on their comments in this case, This PROVES the whole thing was made up by the Obama camp!!
wow..such clear and obvious proof...
And it's sad that there are so many ignorant people (not anyone in this thread, just in general) that believe everything they hear without doing solid research.
You mean like McCain's campaign aide that went to the press with this little embellishment, which the police can't seem to corroborate? Since Todd's confession, this detail has been redacted from all local press sources with no explanation of its removal.
KDKA-450w.jpg

~Joe
 
  • #14
Did you all miss the part where this girl has worked for the McCain campaign for a year? (Was it more than a year?) So, are you saying that Obama knew he and McCain would be on the ticket before the end of primaries and had this girl take a year off college and join McCain's campaign just to sabotage his already ailing polling scores mere weeks before the election? That seems... wildly unlikely to me. If you have a more reasonable interpretation of that scenario, I would be interested to hear it.
More likely? This is the first election this girl has ever been involved in, she's starstruck with her candidate and his ideology, and McCain's shrinking support drove her to an act of desperation on the naïve notion that her cleverness might save us all from an Obama presidency. People will do unbelievable things to feel special.


You mean like McCain's campaign aid that went to the press with this little embellishment, which the police can't seem to corroborate? Since Todd's confession, this detail has been redacted from all local press sources with no explanation of its removal.
KDKA-450w.jpg

~Joe

Joe,
im not seeing your point..
everyone agrees she just made the whole thing up..
there is no question about that..
it has nothing to do with the McCain campaign, it has nothing to do with the Obama campaign..thats totally clear and obvious now..

I think you are agreeing with that..
but im not quite clear what you are saying..

thanks,
scot
 
  • #15
OK, I couldn't tell if that was sarcasm or not. Text lacks certain subtleties. I do agree that this wasn't something planned by a campaign. (I think we all can also agree it would've been done better.) But I am disappointed at how quickly the McCain camp chimed in for such a dubious allegation.
~Joe
 
  • #16
As an active Obama supporter, I'm with Scotty on this one. Sure, the repubs have a few racist idiots in their party, but the dems have their own intolerant idiots. The McCain campaign is not actively promoting racism, even though some individual McCain suppporters might try to. This chick is clearly disturbed. I'm happy to know that an Obama supporter did not commit this crime, but that's all.
 
  • #17
It was not just Ashley Todd who was trying to use racism to promote McCain, it was the McCain campaign. Seedjar provided the evidence. The McCain campaign, through its Pennsylvania communications director, tried to cement the relationship of Todd’s imaginary assailant with Obama and raised the racial temperature of the story by asserting that the backwards “B” that Todd said was carved on her cheek stood for “Barack.” The McCain campaign had no basis for this assertion, as the whole story was made up in the first place. Okay, maybe it’s not proof that the McCain campaign is using racism, but it’s more evidence, which is piling up. I almost feel sorry for the Republican commentators on the news channels who have to defend the McCain campaign.
 
  • #18
It was not just Ashley Todd who was trying to use racism to promote McCain, it was the McCain campaign. Seedjar provided the evidence. The McCain campaign, through its Pennsylvania communications director, tried to cement the relationship of Todd’s imaginary assailant with Obama and raised the racial temperature of the story by asserting that the backwards “B” that Todd said was carved on her cheek stood for “Barack.” The McCain campaign had no basis for this assertion, as the whole story was made up in the first place. Okay, maybe it’s not proof that the McCain campaign is using racism, but it’s more evidence, which is piling up. I almost feel sorry for the Republican commentators on the news channels who have to defend the McCain campaign.

well..there is definite proof of at least one thing here! if nothing else..
there is a lot of proof in this very thread how things can just get made up out of thin air..
and then get repeated over and over as indisputable facts..
and a lot of proof that some people will believe anything they read, if it supports what they want to hear..

Scot
 
  • #19
You're right. The McCain campaign made up the idea that the backwards "B" stood for "Barack," hoping that McCain supporters would believe it because it supports what they want to believe. In this case, though, the McCain campaign, after realizing that the story was untrue, didn't want it repeated because it would show how desperate the campaign was.
 
  • #20
I don't think I would say the McCain Campaign planned this girls breakdown, this is the sort of thing I said might happen to a portion of the public who is wound up too tightly about race (my "paradigm shift" theory). But I do agree that they would have used it in a minute as McCain's own Willie Horton scare tactic, had she held to her story (and the black eye not washed off). Some of you are probably too young to know about the "Willie Horton; Angry Black Men out Wilding" scare put on by Bush 1.0 back in the 1988 campaign (this girl would have only been around one at the time). Here's a link to the Wiki article on the fiasco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

Now before someone comes out of right field and claims I'm a murder/rapist lover or something, what I'm alluding to is that the "scary black man" idea is partly what helped pappy Bush get in - they were able to milk the idea from that summer on, not just the last couple weeks. But it's a good scare tactic, and I hate to say it but for the "real america" areas they are concentrating on, these kinds of stories get great play. I should know, I've lived in "real america" all my life witnessing/experiencing first hand.how well diversity of any sort is tolerated. My dad ran away from home in AR, 1956 because he couldn't deal with the racism, he says what I think of as injustice nowadays is nothing in comparison to his home sweet home. He refuses to go back there because of the memories, even though I offered several times to take him to visit his dad before he dies.

McCain himself has of course not said the words "Obama is a scary black man" (it would be political suicide yet fun to watch) but the affect is coming across to that segment of the population which does hitch on to that idea. The fact the attendees are saying it and not the campaign itself furthers the idea that the semantics is working perfectly. It simply doesn't make the party look welcoming when they become more and more exclusionary with each speech - more so since Palin entered the picture the early McCain campaign was not behaving like it is now. This sort of thing galvanizes those sorts of people by talk of marginalizing city dwellers, intellectuals ("elitists" today), community organizations and the poor by making them "the other" (see Jacques Derrida's work). Psychologist Wilhelm Reich is an easier read and he called this phenomenon of mass marginalization of certain groups the "Mass Psychology of Fascism" - he himself having fled Germany in 1933. The book of the same title is available again after being burned and then banned by the US Gov for some decades.

I was glad to see McCain correct that lady by saying "He's not an Arab, he's a good family man - I just happen to disagree with him." even though he got booed by his people for it. Then I got to examining his statement, and started wondering, why can't Arabs be good family men...? :-O
 
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