Jim Brown Denies Raping Woman, Says D.A., Police Have Evidence Clearing Him

Professional football Hall of Famer Jim Brown, arrested last month in the alleged rape of a 33-year-old woman friend, denied Friday that he had raped the woman, and charged that police and district attorney’s investigators already know that medical evidence shows “this young lady to be a liar.”

Brown, 49, the record-setting Cleveland Browns’ fullback-turned-actor, and companion Carol Moses, 22, were arrested Feb. 20 by Los Angeles police in Brown’s Hollywood Hills home, after the alleged victim complained to police that Brown and Moses both sexually assaulted her after Brown struck her several times.

No charges have been filed in the case, and a spokesman for Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said Friday that the investigation will continue. The probe will last into next week and possibly longer--in part to investigate claims Brown made Friday at a news conference in Beverly Hills, which a district attorney’s staff member attended, the spokesman said.

Brown--free on $17,500 bail--told reporters gathered at the Beverly Hilton that on the night in question, Moses and the alleged victim had been fighting, and he waded in to break it up because he felt someone would be hurt.

“I will always intercede in anything that happens in my house,” he said.

The woman “lied to the police and the D.A., and they know she lied,” Brown said, adding later: “I know for a fact they (investigators) have the medical report, they know I didn’t do it and they know she’s a liar.”

He would not say that he had seen the medical report, but said only, “I have ways of finding out things.”

Brown also said a third woman, a witness to the fracas, would corroborate his explanation.

District attorney’s office spokesman Schuyler Sprowles said authorities have interviewed that witness and have “no reason to doubt” that she was present that night, but he refused to describe the statements she made.

The actor said he has known the alleged victim for about two years. They had played tennis and basketball together, and she was a frequent visitor at his home.

One delay in the investigation of the case has evidently been a question over who may have been in Brown’s house at the time.

“It was represented to us by Mr. Brown’s attorney that there were individuals other than those (mentioned by the alleged victim) at his home,” on the night of the alleged crime--two people said to be Motown record executives, Sprowles said.

On Friday, Brown said: “I have had no Motown executives in my house.”

He added that, although he does not “exactly” have an attorney representing him, he did contact attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr.

Sprowles said the district attorney’s office has been dealing with Cochran’s firm as Brown’s legal representative. Cochran was out of town Friday, and an associate, attorney Eddie Harris, did not return The Times’ call.

Brown told reporters that the arrest has been costly to him, even though charges have not been filed.

“I have absorbed losing jobs over this, I have absorbed my mother being totally upset,” he said. “I have been in headlines across the country. When they (police) took me to jail, they knew that was the winning situation--not the trial. They knew I was going to have to pay . . . bail, they knew I was going to have to get an attorney, they knew I was going to have to fight it. That is economic death.”