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Former Baylor Coach Caught on Explosive Recording Saying 'We Have to Create Reasonable Doubt' to Cover Up Player's Murder of Teammate

Dave Bliss also planned to call murdered Patrick Dennehy a drug dealer.

In June 2003, Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy, 21, was murdered by his teammate Carlton Dotson.

While then-Baylor basketball coach Dave Bliss should have been deeply concerned with Dennehy's death and the overall mental state of his players, he was more concerned with how he could protect himself and manipulate the NCAA for his own selfish gains.

An upcoming Showtime documentary about Dennehy's death, called Disgraced, which airs Friday night, includes disturbing audio of Bliss plotting to throw NCAA investigators off from the fact that he paid part of Dennehy's tuition — an NCAA violation — to ensure he would stay with the Bears' program. 

How did he plan on accomplishing that? By coming up with a twisted storyline that Dennehy was a drug dealer, as he proceeded to tell his assistant coach Abar Rouse in the recording. The thought behind the lie was to insinuate that Dennehy always had cash on him because of his drug dealing, deflecting from the true story that Bliss was giving money to him.

"There’s nobody right now that can say that we paid Pat Dennehy because he’s dead. OK?" Bliss said, as heard in the Disgraced trailer below. "So what we have to do is create the reasonable doubt. I got like 30 years, I’ve never talked to an NCAA investigator. OK? So, I mean, that stands for something. And the thing about it is, what the lawyers want to do is all they got to handle is $2,000 for the down payment, and then $7,000 on his tuition. And what we’ve got to create here is drugs."

Disgusting scheme for one of his players to be tagged posthumously as a drug dealer, when it wasn't the truth.

Perhaps even more shocking is that Rouse's secret recording of Bliss reportedly occurred five days after Dennehy's body was discovered in July 2003, as confirmed by the Daily Mail.

The secret recording led to Bliss's 10-year ban from coaching in the NCAA in 2005. Dotson pleaded guilty that same year to killing Dennehy and was slapped with a 35-year prison sentence.

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