"Preview" of Moulton's Report on the Sandusky investigation

While Moulton will not produce evidence that the investigation was slowed due to political purposes, there will be ample evidence that the investigation took far too long.

By
Ray Blehar

Last July, I published Report 3, which was my review of the evidence on the public record about the Sandusky investigation.

Tomorrow at 1030AM, AG Kathleen Kane will announce the results of the Moulton investigation.  Press reports to date indicated that the scope of the investigation was very narrow and limited to the 2008 to 2011 Sandusky investigation and did not look at prior investigations in 1998 or the prosecution of Sandusky.

Press reports to date have also indicated that the investigation did not find Corbett delayed it for political purposes.  On that point, I agree.  The timeline in Report 3 indicated that Corbett's motivation was personal, not political.  As the timeline below shows, the investigation continued to lag along after the November 2010 election and didn't take off until after the March 2011 budget battle between Corbett and Spanier.

I don't expect that Moulton will go as far as to assign motive for the delay.

Report 3 referenced Ken Lanning's manual, "Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis" and press reports indicated that Moulton interviewed Ken Lanning as part of the investigation.  As a result, expect the following points to be made regarding failures of the Sandusky investigation.


1) Failure to expeditiously obtain search warrants for Sandusky’s home and business areas.
2) Failure to form a multi-disciplinary task force to conduct the investigation.
3) Use of investigators without requisite background in child abuse investigations.

Report 3 also found the investigation to have faltered in performing routine investigative actions, such as:
1) running identification checks with the department of motor vehicles;
2) running criminal background checks; and
3) promptly following up on leads.

One of the key conclusions of Report 3 was that Sandusky could have been arrested by the end of the Summer of 2009, had the police and investigators followed the leads at their disposal.  In retrospect, I would adjust the date forward to the early summer of 2009, given that the police's first stop (after Sandusky's home) should have been The Second Mile.

Corbett and Fina

While early reports were that the report would be a "complete vindication" of Corbett, I suspect those reports are wrong.  Undoubtedly, Corbett will share some of the blame for the lagging investigation and, in the worst case, be identified as endangering the welfare of Victim 9 -- who was abused during the 2009 investigation.

The media has been silent about Frank Fina.  More importantly, the Fina camp has also been silent.  Given some of the highly unusual circumstances in the Sandusky case - most notably that the two most sensational crimes did not have known victims, one incident was based purely on hearsay, and that the grand jury presentment contained falsehoods -- Fina may be in more trouble than Corbett.

Corbett left the AG's office and accept the role of Governor in January 2011. In his wake, Pennsylvania State Police Chief, and formerly the head of the AG's Criminal Investigations Divsion, Frank Noonan, told the press that he was "involved in every resource decision" in the case and defended assigning just one state trooper to the case.

Similarly, then AG Bureau of Narcotics Supervisor, Randy Feathers, stated, “I was asked weekly if I had enough personnel.” He added, “I never asked for help until 2011 when we had many more subpoenas and more evidence. Then I got eight more troopers and four more agents.”

It appears that Noonan and Feathers took the heat off Corbett for the lack of resources for the Sandusky investigation.

Looking Forward to the Timeline and New Information

Scratching together information on the public record about the case was an interesting endeavor and, as I recently learned, building a completely accurate timeline was nearly impossible.  Court documents were extremely helpful in building the timeline, however, I can't say the same for the coverage by the Patriot News (P-N).

For example, the P-N reported that the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) obtained the 1998 University Park police report around the same time they talked with McQueary.   This would put their recovery of the report in November 2010.  Louis Freeh reported that the PSP recovered the file in January 2011.

Similarly, the P-N reported that Sara Ganim had found the mother of one of the victims while she was working for the Centre Daily Times.  However, later evidence revealed that Ganim found the mother of Victim 6 in January (after she had joined the P-N) and tracked down the mother of Aaron Fisher in February 2011.   (More to come on this in an upcoming report).

Moulton's report will contain an exhaustive timeline of the Sandusky investigation.  It will be very interesting to see who testified at the grand jury and when that testimony occurred.

I don't expect all of the answers tomorrow, but we will get to see and hear some new pieces of the puzzle.

And come a bit closer to finding the truth.