Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - The US Attorney's Office on Friday announced that Bernie Fine will not be charged with a crime after a year-long investigation into sexual abuse allegations against the former Syracuse University men's basketball assistant coach.
One year ago, the US Attorney’s Office began investigating Fine after two former Syracuse University ball boys said he sexually abused them when they were minors.
The statute of limitations on charges leveled by the two ball boys – Bobby Davis and Mike Lang – had passed.
The US Attorney’s Office says there was insufficient evidence against Fine to pursue Federal criminal charges. They subsequently closed their investigation.
They also noted, however, that Fine has not been cleared of any wrongdoing, but that they could not find sufficient evidence that could lead to a conviction.
Prosecutors said they interviewed around 130 witnesses and reviewed more than 100,000 pages of documents during their investigation.
They said they were aided by several local law-enforcement agencies and that Syracuse University cooperated with their investigation.
Fine was fired from his position on the SU Men's Basketball staff the day that ESPN aired a telephone conversation recorded by Davis in which Fine's wife suggests that she was aware of an inappropriate relationship between the two.
Laurie Fine filed a lawsuit against ESPN claiming the recording had been manipulated and was misleading. In May, she announced that she had filed a lawsuit against the sports network and reporter Mark Schwartz for libel.
In addition to Davis and Lang, two other men emerged to accuse Fine of sexually abusing them as boys. Floyd VanHooser, a convicted felon, later admitted that his accusations were lies.
Zach Tomaselli claimed Fine molested him in a hotel in Pittsburgh in 2002. Tomaselli, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a boy in Maine, has reversed his story several times.
Bernie Fine has denied all of the accusations against him.
