Mother of Victim 6: “This whole thing stinks so much more than we all know.”

Press reports detailing the police investigation were largely overshadowed by the events of the trial.  While we work to build a complete timeline, what we’ve uncovered so far appears to be both a cover-up and a change of direction.

In late 2010, the police sat down with mother of Victim 6 and paged through Sandusky’s book Touched.  She readily identified other boys who had often attended football games together. The mother then said something quite astonishing:

“At one point police told me they’ve had less evidence in murder cases,” she said. “I kept being told, March, April, June, October. ... The AG kept asking for more evidence. The police told me they had enough for 400 counts, but the AG wanted only 40. This whole thing just stinks so much more than we all know.”

Around the same time that police were contacting the mother of Victim 6, they also knocked on the door of assistant coach Mike McQueary and asked him if rumors were true that he’d witnessed something in the locker room on campus.   Despite rumors of McQueary meeting with police in a parking lot to confess what he knew, the grand jury presentment states otherwise – “[t]he graduate assistant was never questioned by University Police and no other police entity conducted an investigation until he testified in Grand Jury in December 2010.”

What police determined over the next 12 months, after talking to McQueary and the mother, eventually lead to interviews of Victims 3, 4, 5, and 7 by November 2011.  Victims 9 and 10 were added based on hot-line calls.   However, court documents filed by Sandusky's attorneys make references to accusers 11 through 18. 

It is possible that Victims 11 through 17 were really Victims 2 through 9 – children who the police found based on leads from Aaron Fisher - but cases got "lost" in the OAG's office's game of "musical state troopers" early in the investigation. 

Months passed with no victims being identified, then the OAG got a lucky break when Centre County DA Stacy Parks Miller tipped them about McQueary’s chat room exploits.   The OAG finally had the case it wanted -- against Graham Spanier and Penn State. 

Prosecutors focus on a “pattern”

The police told The Patriot-News that prosecutors would not file charges that don’t fit into the pattern they’ve already established.  

Which pattern would that be?

Victim 6’s mom said her son, who was was denied justice once in 1998, was almost denied justice a second time when the AG told her they were not going to file charges for the 1998 incident. 

“The state cop fought for them,” she said. “I heard it got heated, but he stood his ground because he said my son was the cornerstone of the whole case and how they got the other football boys.”

Based on the mother’s statement, the police had established a pattern for Jerry Sandusky’s abuse before they interviewed her and her son’s abuse - a pre-pubescent boy showering with Sandusky - did not fit the pattern.

The investigation started with a report of abuse by a teenager who was abused in his early teen years and the abuse continued until he was fifteen.  If Victim 6, who was 11 years old at the time of abuse, didn’t fit the pattern, then there must have been other victims, likely in puberty or in their teens that had been abused and identified to prosecutors.  

As documented in the grand jury presentment and from the trial, Victims 1, 4, and 9 were all teenagers when the abuse occurred.  Sandusky's abuse of Victim 4, that included oral sex and attempts at anal penetration, occurred over a period of years, in which Sandusky took him on overnight stays at Toftrees prior to football games and also took him to the 1998 Outback Bowl and the 1999 Alamo Bowl.  At trial, Sandusky's letters to Victim 1 were deemed to be similar to letters that would by typical of a relationship between two teenagers.  Sandusky performed oral sex on Victim 1 many times and likewise, Victim 1 did so to Sandusky.  Victim 9 stated that Sandusky attempted to engage in anal penetration on at least 16 occasions and at times did penetrate him.

Pedophile behavior is well documented and it is very likely that Sandusky’s preferred victims were teenagers.  The younger boys were being groomed for later abuse.

Testimony by retired state police Corporal Joseph Leiter, stated that Victim 4 at first refused to talk to police.  "He curled up in the fetal position on the end of his couch."  Victim 4 was 27 years old when Leiter conducted that interview.  It is reasonable to conclude that these were the victims that suffered the worst of the sexual abuse from Jerry Sandusky. 

The PA State Police Investigation Avoids Second Mile/Sandusky's Home

The Patriot News stated the discovery of the 1998 University Park Police report was the big break in the case.  However, according the the Freeh Report (page 83), the state police obtained the report on January 3, 2011 -- over two years into the investigation.  By that time all of the victims but one (Victim 8) had been identified. 

Records also show that the state police did not obtain a search warrant for the Second Mile files until January 2011 -- over two years into the investigation.  It is beyond credulity that the state police, who were investigating the founder and face of Second Mile, and whose victims were participants in Second Mile programs, did not get a warrant for Second Mile at the outset of the investigation. 

In July 2011, the AG's office filed a motion to hold Second Mile in contempt for not producing files requested through a secret grand jury subpoena.   The AG's office dropped the contempt motion in October 2011, when Second Mile produced some of the files from the early 2000s.  Other files remained missing.  A subpoena for their financial records wasn’t delivered until after Sandusky was charged on Nov. 4, 2011. 

Records also show that the state police did not get a search warrant for Sandusky's residence until June 21, 2011.  Nearly three years after the beginning of the investigation, and more than seven months after acknowledging that they had Sandusky on 400 counts of child abuse.  Again, it is well documented that pedophiles engage in the trading, distribution, and selling of child pornography over the internet, as well as use it to introduce their child victims to sexual experiences.  In 1998, Victim 6 stated that Sandusky offered to take him to his house were he had a “cool computer” and he “could sit on his lap and they could go on-line.”  The police had access to this report, as it was attached to the 1998 PSU police report, yet they waited six months to get the warrant for Sandusky's home (and his computer).

Based on information from a source on the Second Mile staff, state police did not search the offices of Second Mile or interview Second Mile staff employees from 2008 to January 2012.  

The mother of Victim 6 could not have been more right, “This whole thing just stinks so much more than we all know.”

Except that now we’re finding out.

Updated 12/6/2012