According to the Boulder Police Department, Fiorillo, a twenty-year-old CU-Boulder student, told cops she had been walking alone on the 1100 block of University Avenue during the early hours of Sunday, January 22, when she was grabbed from behind by a black male armed with a knife. She added that she escaped after a brief struggle, sustaining only scratches on her forearms, possibly from the knife. She provided police with a rather detailed description of this alleged scofflaw, but during a followup interview, she allegedly conceded that she'd invented the whole thing. This admission won her a false reporting to authorities charge -- a class 3 misdemeanor that brings with it possible penalties of six months in jail and a $750 fine.
The story's much the same with Manley, eighteen. She told police that about 2:30 a.m. on an October date, she was walking alone near Big Horn and Star Lane when a man driving a yellow sedan stepped out of the car and tried to sexually assault her before fleeing the scene in his car.
These assertions triggered a full-scale investigation, complete with analysis by the state crime lab of numerous pieces of potential evidence. But the more the cops learned, the more the info they gathered conflicted with Manley's narrative. Hence, a followup interview in which she allegedly said the entire tale had been fabricated. On Valentine's Day, she, too, was cited for false reporting.
The incidents can't help recalling a report we shared last October about Kathy Johnson, accused of making up a series of threats stretching over months, as well as a supposed kidnapper who called her husband and said, "We won, nigga." Presumably, the actual speaker was Johnson herself.
Sometimes stories can be more interesting than real life....
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More from our Colorado Crimes archive: "Man threatens to stab cupcake store employees using syringe filled with AIDS-infected blood."
