A Southern Illinois University journalism student invented a

motherless 8-year-old girl and her heart-strings-yanking letters to

her “father,” a soldier stationed in Iraq. Michael Brenner is accused

of inventing the story of Kodee Kennings and chronicling it for the

SIU student newspaper since 2003. That Brenner is dishonest seems

obvious enough, but apparently he is also spectacularly convincing,

having allegedly told several of the people who posed for pictures for

the newspaper that they were in a film… for two years.