SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-America linebacker Manti Te’o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 10. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only wasn’t she dead, she wasn’t real.