GILROY
– Gavilan College football impostor Fred McGrew had pulled the
scam before.
GILROY – Gavilan College football impostor Fred McGrew had pulled the scam before.
Gavilan’s John Lango wasn’t the first football coach Fred McGrew fooled into thinking he was retired NFL linebacker Larry McGrew. The coach of a Texas junior college had previously fallen for the same story and said he warned Lango about McGrew’s duplicity before McGrew started work. Until now, police had hints of past McGrew hoaxes but no evidence.
Meanwhile, Lango said he spoke to three of “Larry” McGrew’s five references, including the Texas junior college coach, before hiring, and nobody said anything negative.
No changes in Gavilan’s hiring procedures are expected, according to Gavilan Public Information Director Jan Bernstein Chargin.
“The procedures were followed,” Chargin said Tuesday. “No change has occurred in the policy.”
Gavilan College officials fired Fred McGrew on Sept. 9 and reported suspicions about his identity to Gilroy police later that day. McGrew was arrested on Sept. 10 and confessed to police he had used Larry McGrew’s name, birth date and professional football record to get the job at Gavilan. He also confessed to using an elderly woman’s Social Security number as his own in order to protect his income from either an ex-girlfriend or ex-wife (His stories varied on this point).
McGrew, charged with felony impersonation, is scheduled to enter a plea in court Friday. If convicted, he could face up to a $10,000 fine and three years in prison.
Fred McGrew also claimed in his confession and in court Friday that the real Larry McGrew is his uncle – yet another lie, Gilroy police discovered.
“I spoke to the true Lawrence McGrew today,” Officer Stanley Devlin said Tuesday. “He confirmed the fact that he does not have a nephew by that name, does not have a relative by that name, that he’s never authorized anyone to use his name, birth date and … employment history.”
Around the first week of August, Lango received a phone message from Karl Morgan, defensive coordinator for the football team at Hampton University in Hampton, Va. In the message, Morgan warned Lango that the new Gavilan assistant coach, who claimed to be former New England Patriots starter Larry McGrew, was probably a fake who had deceived other small colleges in the past. Lango told Gilroy police about this message in a Sept. 9 statement.
Contacted by The Dispatch, Morgan said he referred Lango in the message to Kurt Nichols, head coach and athletic director of Cisco Junior College in Cisco, Texas, who had also been taken in by a man claiming to be Larry McGrew.
Lango never called Morgan back. He said he had already talked to Nichols, who had said nothing of a hoax.
McGrew started work shortly after Morgan’s call – around Aug. 11 – and Lango confronted him about it, according to Gavilan Athletic Director Ron Hannon. According to Hannon, McGrew responded that Hampton officials were trying to get back at him; they had wanted him as a coach and had been angry when he had turned them down.
Incidentally, McGrew used both Morgan’s and Nichols’ names on a reference list he gave Lango along with his résumé.
Lango, via Hannon, claims he called the majority of McGrew’s five references.
Morgan said Lango never called him – possibly because McGrew had listed Morgan as working for Alcorn State University in Mississippi. Morgan had been Alcorn State’s defensive coordinator until this year, when he took the job at Hampton.
Daryll Jones, who claims to have been vice president of football operations for arena football’s Columbus (Georgia) Wardogs, declined comment on McGrew’s use of him as a reference. The others – Nichols and coaches from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas, and the minor-league Texas Coyotes – did not return phone calls.
Chargin said Lango did fine, considering McGrew was an assistant coach.
“The hiring procedures are rigid, but the execution of them is proportionate to the job,” Chargin said. “This was a part-time, assistant, seasonal position, so while there was scrutiny, the level of scrutiny was not the same as for a (higher-ranking position).”
Morgan laughed when The Dispatch informed him McGrew had used him as a reference. While Morgan has never met McGrew face-to-face, he says he knows all about him.
Morgan said he helped Nichols, a friend, unravel McGrew’s deception at Cisco. McGrew came to Cisco as a volunteer, Morgan said. Nichols had seen McGrew say in church that he felt called to minister to young Black men through coaching. Impressed, Nichols let McGrew coach on an unpaid basis, let him stay at his house and loaned him money.
Nichols’ doubts grew as time passed, however, and he eventually shared his suspicions with Morgan.
“There was something shaky about him,” Morgan said.
Morgan used a contact from his own college and pro playing days. Tom Ramsey, who played for the Patriots with Larry McGrew, had played with Morgan at the University of California – Los Angeles. From Ramsey, Nichols learned his Larry McGrew was a phony.
For one thing, he was too short. The Larry McGrew of the Patriots was 6 feet 5 inches tall, and this one was about 6 feet. For another, this McGrew said he went to high school in Cincinnati while the real one did so in California. With this information, Nichols told McGrew his voluntary services were no longer needed.
Next, McGrew approached Morgan for a job at Alcorn State, but Morgan was ready for him.
“The guy calls me, claiming to be Lawrence McGrew,” Morgan said. “I told him, ‘You need to stop saying you’re someone you’re not.’ He vehemently denied it, said he was the real Lawrence McGrew. … He’s obviously delusional.”
In early August of this year, Morgan read about Gavilan’s hiring of “Lawrence McGrew,” ostensibly of the Patriots, in NCAA News, a publication coaches receive. He called Lango the same day, he said.
About five weeks after Morgan’s message, Lango fired McGrew – allegedly because his coaching style clashed with Lango’s, not because of identity questions.
The true McGrew may have stumbled on his alter ego’s trail once before without knowing it, according to a story he told Devlin. While visiting Las Vegas, he ran into a friend from his football playing days. They friend said something to the effect of, “I heard you were working here in Las Vegas these days.” No, Larry McGrew answered, he wasn’t.
While tracking a Social Security number Fred McGrew had falsely used as his own, Devlin had noticed that a “Fred” or “Lawrence” McGrew had used the number several times in the Las Vegas area. The number actually belongs to a woman named Eva Jean Sowder, born in the 1920s.
