AfterEmpirestarJussie Smollettreported he’d been beaten in a hate crime at 2 a.m on a Chicago street last month as the rest of the city was bunkered against one of the coldest nights of the year, police were skeptical but took him at his word.
“To be perfectly honest, from the very beginning we had questions,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Thursday.
“When we discovered the actual motive,” said Johnson, “quite frankly it pissed everybody off.”
Jussie Smollett.Stephen Lovekin/Variety/REX/Shutterstock
Police said several factors helped crack the case, which is still under investigation.
Police reviewed hundreds of hours of video from surveillance cameras, starting with those focused on the street near the reported incident. The alleged attack itself was not captured, but police quickly obtained and shared images of two men “that we believed were the likely offenders,” he said.
Jussie Smollett.Chicago Police Department
Police then discovered that the two men, who they’ve identified as brothers, had traveled to O’Hare airport and left the country using round-trip tickets to Nigeria, with a scheduled return to Chicago on Feb. 13.
The interim allowed police to issue more than 50 search warrants and subpoenas for phone and other records that showed the men had been in contact with Smollett — including one hour before the alleged attack, one hour afterward, and while they were out of the country, said Johnson.
Police met and arrested the men upon their return. But after the men requested an attorney, Gloria Schmidt, “she came to us and after speaking with these two people of interest, she said that something smelled fishy,” said Wodnicki. “She came to me and said, ‘You really ned to talk to these guys, I’m going to allow them to give you a video interview with us present and we’re going to have you hear their story. They are not offenders, they’re victims.'”
Said Wodnicki: “It was at this time that this investigation started to spin in a completely new direction.”
PEOPLE has not been able to reach Schmidt for comment.
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The men were released from police custody, and the revelation shifted the focus on Smollett from victim to possible culprit, he said.
The incentive for the brothers, who have not been charged, was financial, said Johnson, who added that police have obtained the $3,500 check — and that the brothers were promised another $500 upon their return to Chicago.
Theo Wargo/Getty
Johnson suggested that Smollett allegedy recruited the brothers — at least one of whom worked on the set ofEmpire— for their “bulk.”
He added: “The brothers had on gloves during the staged attack where they punched [Smollett] a little bit, but as far as we can tell, the scratches and bruising that you saw on his face were most likely self-inflicted.”
What lies ahead for the brothers is unclear.
source: people.com
