Ohio State recently released dozens of records related to its investigation of football coach Urban Meyer — a file that includes select text messages from Meyer's wife and agent, plus a 23-page summary of findings.
But at least one big question remains unanswered.
Did Meyer delete text messages on his phone in an effort to destroy evidence?
Ohio State investigators looked at his phone and said they could not determine if he had deleted messages older than a year, according to their report about Meyer's management of an assistant coach who had been accused of domestic abuse. They suspected Meyer might have deleted them, but the report does not say whether they even asked him about it – or if they tried to recover deleted text messages with the help of digital forensic tools.
And nobody involved is answering questions about it now, two weeks after his three-game suspension was announced by Ohio State.
Not Ohio State. Not Meyer’s legal team. Not the lead investigator in the case.
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Over the past 10 days, USA TODAY Sports asked each: Was Meyer asked if he deleted text messages on his phone? If so, how did he respond?
And if Ohio State didn't ask him about this, why not?
The lone response came from Ohio State spokesman Chris Davey, who said Tuesday he was looking into it but didn’t know if he was going to be able to answer it.
Meyer’s answer could be damning either way, said Thomas Mars, an attorney who has experience obtaining phone records in legal battles.
“The absence of any information about this (from Ohio State) just leads me to one conclusion: that they didn’t want to know,” Mars told USA TODAY Sports.
Mars acquired phone records last year from Ole Miss that showed a call made to a number associated with a female escort service. The phone belonged to football coach Hugh Freeze, who later resigned in disgrace.
In this case, Meyer stressed last week that Ohio State's investigation found no "deliberate cover-up" and that he did not "deliberately lie" when he answered news media questions in July about his accused assistant coach, Zach Smith.
However, holes remain in the sequence of events involving Meyer's phone.
On Aug. 1, college football reporter Brett McMurphy published a report that alleged Meyer had made inaccurate denials to reporters in July about his knowledge of domestic violence allegations against Smith from 2015. McMurphy’s article included text messages from 2015 written by Meyer’s wife, Shelley, in which she discussed Smith’s alleged abuse with the woman who was accusing him of it: Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney.
“I am with you!” Shelley Meyer wrote to Courtney Smith, according to McMurphy’s report. “A lot of women stay hoping it will get better. I don’t blame you! But just want u to be safe. Do you have a restraining order? He scares me.”
Zach Smith has disputed the allegations and has not been convicted of a crime related to them. Meyer has denied knowing of his wife's text messages with Courtney Smith.
Around 6 p.m. ET on Aug. 1, the university announced it was conducting an investigation. That investigation later found that shortly after McMurphy’s article published on Aug. 1, Meyer and staff member Brian Voltolini “specifically discussed how to adjust the settings on Meyer’s phone so that text messages older than one year would be deleted.”
Later that night, Meyer’s agent, Trace Armstrong, sent a text message to Meyer telling him that attorneys on Meyer’s legal team would need four hours with his phone the next morning, Aug. 2, according to records later released by Ohio State. A spokesman for Meyer’s legal team, Curt Steiner, told USA TODAY Sports this was for the preservation and imaging of his phone Aug. 2, which he called a "routine legal practice in these types of matters." "No messages were deleted or settings were changed in that process," Steiner said.
Steiner did not respond to questions this week or last week about whether Meyer deleted messages before then. The lead investigator in the case, Mary Jo White of the firm Debevoise & Plimpton, didn’t return a message Wednesday asking about the text messages and digital forensic tools.
Also on Aug. 2, Ohio State obtained Meyer’s phone and subsequently found no text messages older than a year, according to its Aug. 22 report of findings in the case. That report said investigators could not determine whether Meyer’s phone was set to retain messages only for one year in response to McMurphy’s report “or at some earlier time.”
“It just so happens there weren’t any (messages) there older than a year?” asked Mars, a trial lawyer in Arkansas who previously represented former Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt in his legal battle against that university.
Meyer ostensibly wouldn’t need to discuss deleting his older text messages on Aug. 1 if his phone settings already did so. Text messages released by Ohio State indicate Meyer used an iPhone, which typically has a default setting to retain text messages “forever.” Limiting message retention to the last 30 days or year typically requires manually changing this setting.
Mars said it is “standard operating procedure” in similar investigations to employ digital forensic tools and experts to recover relevant deleted text messages – efforts that often are successful. But Ohio State’s report does not indicate a similar effort was made.
A digital forensics expert contacted by USA TODAY Sports said that, in general, when an item is deleted from a phone, it is actually just marked as deleted in a database on the phone. But it still could be recovered, depending on the phone, said Lance Watson of the digital forensics firm Avansic in Tulsa. The phone just no longer displays it, and it might get overwritten later.
“The recovery of the messages is as simple as using one of the commercially available mobile device imaging tools,” said Watson, speaking generally and not specifically about Ohio State. “We use this tool and recover deleted messages all the time.”
Ohio State’s report instead says that investigators “accessed and reviewed” more than 10,000 pages of Meyer’s text messages from the past year. Then it says they didn’t know if he deleted messages older than that.
“While we do not know if messages older than a year had been on Coach Meyer’s phone before August 1st or whether Coach Meyer deleted any messages, we do know that he at least thought about and discussed it with Brian Voltolini in response to learning of the negative article,” Ohio State’s report said. “Often, although not always, such reactions evidence consciousness of guilt.”
Ohio State ended its investigation last month by suspending Meyer for three games, saying he failed to take “sufficient management action” regarding Smith’s string of questionable behavior before the assistant coach's firing in July.
“I would have expected OSU to highlight the fact they took all reasonable measures to recover deleted text messages,” Mars said. “Their failure to do that was a huge red flag to me, as it would have been for anyone who has experience in this type of investigation.”
Digital forensic tools still might be able to recover Meyer’s older texts.
“It’s not too late to do it now,” Mars said. “Why don’t you do it now?”
Follow sports reporter Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer
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