The fourth man to accuse Bernie Fine of sexual abuse admitted to lying Friday and said Fine never molested him as a child.

State prison inmate Floyd VanHooser said he lied to the media and police to get back at Fine for failing to hire VanHooser a lawyer for his most recent criminal conviction, according to an article published by The Post-Standard on Sunday.

VanHooser, 56, originally told police in November that Fine began molesting him when he was 14 or 15 years old and the abuse continued for nearly four decades. He repeated that statement for The Post-Standard during interviews in December at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, according to the article.

VanHooser’s allegations against Fine, the former assistant men’s basketball coach at SU, arose after former ball boys Bobby Davis and Mike Lang told police and ESPN reporters that Fine abused them as teens. Fine was fired from the university on Nov. 27, four days after a third accuser, Zach Tomaselli, stepped forward.

Fine has not been charged with any crimes and continues to maintain his innocence. He could not be reached for comment.

The Post Standard received copies of two letters, dated Nov. 29, sent by VanHooser to Fine admitting that he lied, according to the article. One of the letters is addressed to Fine and the other ‘To whom it may concern.’ VanHooser said he wrote the two letters without being asked to by anyone, according to the article.

‘In a statement I gave I told a lot of lies about Bernie Fine. None of what I said was true,’ VanHooser wrote. ‘Bernie has been nothing but good to me over the years. He was the only thing I had close to a father. He never did anything wrong he is a good man.’

VanHooser lived with Fine after both his parents died when he was a teen. Fine, who taught at Lincoln Middle School when VanHooser was a student there, invited VanHooser to live with him, supporting him periodically for the next 40 years.

VanHooser said he wanted revenge, but did not think ‘the story would go as far as it did,’ according to the article. VanHooser also said that only parts of what he told police were true. He said he lied because Fine didn’t hire a lawyer to help fight his most recent burglary conviction.

VanHooser is currently serving 16 years to life for burglarizing houses in Central New York to support his drug addiction. VanHooser has been arrested dozens of times for felony crimes, mostly to fuel his intense drug addiction, according to the article.

In a Dec. 7 news conference, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick discredited the story of the fourth accuser and said there was no fourth victim. Fitzpatrick told The Daily Orange on Monday this news only validates what he said back in December.

VanHooser did not lie in his statement to police about having a sexual relationship with Fine for many years as adults, continuing into last summer, according to the article. He said Fine first approached him for sexual contact when he was in his 30s, and he was usually high on heroin during the contact, according to the article.

It is unclear how VanHooser’s recanting will affect the investigation. Because his allegations were made outside the statute of limitations they could not have been the basis for criminal charges, but federal prosecutors may have cited the accusations when they applied for a search warrant, according to the article.

egsawyer@syr.edu

Staff writer Michael Cohen contributed reporting to this article

—A previous version of this article appeared on dailyorange.com on Jan. 15.  

Published on January 15, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Liz: egsawyer@syr.edu | @3sawyer