New York Post reporter Gabrielle Fonrouge details how she found the hot sauce bottle containing bleach, which is now key evidence in the Jussie Smollett hate crime case.
#jussiesmollett #hotsauce #evidence #crime #hatecrime #attack #newyorkpost #nypost #bottle #bleach
From ‘Jussie Smollett’s neighbors cast doubt on his attack story’ – https://nypost.com/2019/02/11/jussie-smolletts-neighbors-cast-doubt-on-his-attack-story
Weeks after “Empire” star Jussie Smollett claimed he was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack, cops have yet to identify any suspects — and some people in his tony Chicago neighborhood are growing skeptical.
Smollett told cops he was confronted by two men, one wearing a black mask, who hurled gay and racist epithets at him, calling him “’Empire’ f—-t n—-r” while he was walking home shortly before 2 a.m.
The assailants allegedly punched Smollett in the face, doused him with a liquid — believed to be bleach — and tied a rope around his neck in an underpass between the Sheraton and Loews Chicago hotels.
Last week, The Post traced Smollett’s likely route to the underpass from a 24-hour Subway sandwich shop where he bought a tuna sandwich and a salad.
Near the foot of a stairwell to the Loews, The Post found an empty hot sauce bottle that was partially filled with a clear liquid that smelled like bleach.
The Post alerted police, who seized the bottle and said it was turned over to the FBI for analysis.
The FBI declined to comment.
From ‘ How The Post found key evidence in the Jussie Smollett case’ – https://nypost.com/2019/03/27/how-the-post-found-key-evidence-in-the-jussie-smollett-case/
The Post’s discovery of a hot sauce bottle that reeked of bleach at the scene of Jussie Smollett’s alleged hate-crime hoax turned out to be a key piece of evidence, a police report revealed Wednesday.
Chicago cops initially pooh-poohed the finding on Feb. 7 — nine days after the “Empire” star claimed he was attacked by Trump-loving bigots who splashed him with the cleaning fluid.
“Are you trying to do our job?” sneered one detective when reporter Gabrielle Fonrouge alerted police that she’d found the bottle.
She wasn’t, but, as it turns out, she had.
One of the two brothers who said they were paid by Smollett to stage the attack “was shown a large photograph taken of the El Yucateco Hot Sauce bottle,” according to police reports released Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act to outlets including CWBChicago.
The alleged co-conspirator “stated that indeed was the bottle he filled with bleach and poured on Smollett,” the paperwork revealed.
Neither brother has been criminally charged.
Jussie Smollett’s neighbors cast doubt on his attack story
Wednesday’s revelation came despite initial skepticism of the reporter’s detective work.
“It’s highly unlikely that they missed anything that night,” one cop said at the time.
“They already took everything from the scene.”
Fonrouge was asked: “Did you sniff all these bottles? What made you think this one?”
“What else did you find? Should we process all these cigarette butts?” said a detective — who later groused while waiting for a crime-scene technician to arrive, “There goes my dinner plans.”
The Chicago Police Department confirmed on Wednesday that the brothers who staged the attack admitted they used that bottle.
“Those details were given during the interrogation when the brothers confessed to being accomplices in this hoax,” spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told The Post.
The spokesman also said the department takes the detective’s dismissive attitude toward the key piece of evidence “very seriously.”
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