Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning was linked to alleged HGH use by the Al Jazeera documentary, “The Dark Side: The Secret World of Sports Doping,” something he has fiercely denied since. His alleged accuser, Charlie Sly, recanted the claims he made in the documentary just one day after the documentary aired, but a new report from the Washington Post says that may not have been entirely his own doing.
According to the report, Manning's lawyers hired two private investigators to identify and find who his accuser was once they became aware of Al Jazeera's report - which was a full five days before it was released.
Five days before a documentary alleged that quarterback Peyton Manning and other star athletes had used performance-enhancing drugs, two men hired by Manning’s lawyers visited the parents of the documentary’s key witness. Both men wore black overcoats and jeans and, according to a 911 call from the house that evening, one initially said he was a law enforcement officer but didn’t have a badge.
After they told their daughter to call 911 the night of Dec. 22, Randall and Judith Sly stepped outside to talk to the strangers, who clarified they were private investigators, not cops. They had come to this red brick house with a well-manicured lawn looking for the Slys’ 31-year-old son, Charlie, a pharmacist who was the primary source in the upcoming documentary.In one scene, Sly implied that Manning took human growth hormone prescribed by an Indianapolis anti-aging clinic and shipped to Manning’s wife, Ashley.
Manning’s lawyers launched the private probe shortly after Al Jazeera started contacting athletes who would be named in the documentary. They hired investigators to identify, locate and interrogate Sly, and sent a lawyer to examine Peyton and Ashley’s medical records at the Guyer Institute of Molecular Medicine in Indianapolis.
Manning's investigators met with Sly on Dec. 23, and Sly then issued a statement recanting the accusations on Dec. 24, though Sly's lawyer said Sly issued that statment "without knowing exactly what he was recanting."
Manning missed the entire 2011 NFL season after undergoing neck surgery, and the Al Jazeera report alleges that he used HGH to help him recover from that injury. Sly, who worked at the Guyer Institute (an anti-aging clinic in Indianapolis) in 2011 says, he was "part of the medical team" that helped Manning recover, and says in one of those undercover videos that they sent HGH - along with other drugs - to Manning's wife to keep Peyton's name off of any transactions.
“All the time we would be sending Ashley Manning drugs,” Sly said in the report. “Like growth hormone, all the time, everywhere, Florida. And it would never be under Peyton’s name, it would always be under her name.”
The Washington Post was able to confirm that shipments of HGH were, in fact, sent to Ashley Manning.
The NFL is investigating the claims made by the Al Jazeera report, and Peyton Manning has been adamant in denying the report, saying during Super Bowl 50 Opening Night that he has total confidence that NFL's investigation will find a "big, fat nothing."
Back to the Denver Broncos Newsfeed