Jerry Jones: We Didn’t Have Access to Abuse Photos
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – In a world where the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” is the standard method of verification, the Deadspin photographs are the smoking gun in the Greg Hardy domestic violence case. These are just a few of the dozens the sports website posted Friday that show Nicole Holder’s bruised and welted arms, foot, chin, back and shoulders.
Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray said the public wasn’t allowed to see the information, but he did allow the NFL. And just Thursday, Hardy secured an expungement, and these very records and documents were ordered destroyed. But Deadspin senior editor Tim Burke tells WCCB Charlotte’s Morgan Fogarty they started working on this weeks ago. She asked Burke how they got the records. He said, “I can’t speak to the reporting process by which we acquired these reports and photographs.”
Deadspin’s article includes other records and disturbing details that weren’t previously public, but it’s the pictures that have critics re-thinking Hardy’s employment in the NFL.
USA Today writer and author Christine Brennan says: “Tell me why Hardy should ever be allowed to play another down in the NFL.” CNN’s Rachel Nichols tweeted, “There’s a point where employing Greg Hardy will be bad business for the Dallas Cowboys. That hasn’t happened yet. But it could.”
And earlier this season, before the pictures, former NFL player and current announcer Terry Bradshaw said this: “I’m actually tired of talking about the Hardys of the world. And I really, really, seriously hope that eventually we never have a place in the NFL for people that touch a woman.”
It’s a nice thought. But it took that chilling video of Ray Rice cold cocking his now wife before the NFL acted, even though they’d already been told what happened. And if the Cowboys and the NFL still aren’t compelled to act now that these images are public, Deadspin tells WCCB it has more on the way. Burke says, “Our reporting on the Greg Hardy domestic violence incident is ongoing, and we have further articles we will be writing about.”
Hardy declined media requests Friday.
