TMZ is reporting today that Manti Te’o had a real girlfriend, Alexandra del Pilar, and dated her shortly after learning that his catfish girlfriend had died of leukemia. Pilar is a student at the all-girls school St. Mary’s College, which is across the road from Notre Dame.
A Busted Coverage investigation has resulted in the above photo of Manti and del Pilar enjoying the Christmas season (photo was uploaded December 18) on Santa’s (defensive tackle Louis Nix) lap, which was also still around the time that Te’o was pushing the fake girlfriend story. Notre Dame says Te’o told them about the fake girlfriend December 26.
A search of of del Pilar’s Twitter account shows that she only mentioned Te’o in three tweets between November 16 and January 7. The January tweet has been deleted but remains in the Twitter cache.
It’s unclear when Te’o and del Pilar began dating, but we do know from this tweet that Manti was making her car smell good in mid-November. The last we’ve heard of del Pilar she was at the BCS wearing a lei before the Irish were rolled by Alabama.
UPDATE: A SnapBird search of Manti Te’o's tweets shows zero Twitter communication between himself and Alex del Pilar.
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