Sunday, June 22

"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.






21 comments:

  1. Can you explain why Second Mile and any of it's executive officers are NOT part of this cover-up? All of these events took place while Sandusky was actively involved with Second Mile and had nothing to do with the Penn State Football program directly.

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    1. Terry,
      I think your question is why haven't the officers of Second Mile been charged for their role in covering up Sandusky's crimes. :-)

      First, it is an indisputable fact -- that even the Patriot News reported -- that Second Mile covered up Sandusky's abuse finding and loss of his ChildLine clearance from the public -- including its own Board, donors, and the community at large.

      Next, it is also an indisputable fact -- reported by more than one media outlet - that Second Mile officials had concerns about Sandusky and certain boys prior to 2008.

      It is also an indisputable fact that Penn State informed Second Mile of the 2001 incident on the PSU campus, and that Second Mile officials knew it involved Sandusky showering with a boy.

      So, there is no doubt Second Mile covered up Sandusky's crimes. The OAG's failure to prosecute Second Mile is truly puzzling, as is the PSU BOT's failure to point out Second Mile's responsibility in the case.

      At this point, all we "know" is the OAG, Freeh, Corbett, and the PSU BOT threw Paterno and PSU officials under the bus for enabling Sandusky and the Second Mile has been allowed to skate.

      The Feds will have something to say about that later -- and it won't be good news for The Second Mile.

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    2. Ray I believe I read where TSM was also aware of the 1998 incident. They then had both incidences in front of them and were actually trained to recognize child molestation. It still does not excuse Spanier from not reporting the 2001 incident. As for everyone saying Joe should have done more, that is a bunch of hog wash, because Joe talked to McQueary, and knew he was ok with his talk with Curley, and Schultz. And the only think we can actually take from the After talking to Joe email is that Joe was at least aware that Curley was researching McQueary's accusations. So why should Joe get involved.

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    3. Under the law, Spanier did not have to report the incident because PSU is not a public school.

      This determination originates from the definition of a student under 23 Pa.C.S. § 6303. Definitions. (a) Student.

      Student." An individual enrolled in a public or private school, intermediate unit or area vocational-technical school who is under 18 years of age.

      From that definition it is obvious that “school” rules in the statute apply to public school students ages K-17, thus PSU was not an educational institution under the statute.

      I suspect TSM was notified 1998 incident, but no one at the charity or at CYS will admit it.

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  2. Cheers to you, Ray, for your dogged clamp onto this glaringly injust story.

    And, THANK YOU for what must be a tremendous amount of time you're giving this effort.

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  3. What is taking the feds so long? Any updates on their investigation?

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    1. The Feds aren't talking. A similar investigation they ran called "Kids for Cash" took two years to bring to trial. I expect their investigation to take at least that long -- or longer.

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  4. What alphabet soup federal agency is conducting the investigation? About 87 attend the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. I also hope it's a criminal investigation and not civil or administrative.

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    1. FBI, USDOJ, and Postal Inspectors. It is a criminal investigation.

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    2. Are any of these investigating individuals the same as those who investigated the "Kids for Cash" crimes? The Sandusky/ Second Mile case certainly seems to involve kids for cash. Are the Feds and/or notpsu looking at common players in these two cases?

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    3. Wow, just read the script for the recent film "Kids for Cash" (http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14179). Some of the local police are portrayed as accomplices. Some prosecutors and others as enablers.

      Wow...

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    4. The lead prosecutor of "Kids for Cash", Gordon Zubrod, is leading the Second Mile investigation.

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    5. Yay!

      I see Sandusky's 2013 appeal was "moved" to Luzerne County. I also recall someone from the Sandusky saga being interested in a position at PSU's Wilkes-Barr campus.

      Are there other connections between Centre County and Luzerne County that may be relevant to the Sandusky/TSM and Kids for Cash cases???

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    6. There is a possibility of abuse of Federal grants (foster care/adoptive care/juvenile justice) related to the case.

      We'll just have to wait and see.

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  5. Ray I am curious about your thoughts on Feudale? There is certainly an indication he was in on the real cover up based on the trial transcripts. What do we know about him and any previous cases and/or ties to TSM?

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    1. No TSM ties that I am aware of, but he was the judge for Corbett's BonusGate investigation. Reliable sources tell me that BonusGate also had leak problems with the Patriot News.

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  6. The reason Moulton did not find the smoking gun on Corbett is because the shredders were burned out and thrown away by that time. Perhaps the Feebs (FBI) were onto the Second Mile before Sandusky erupted. One can only hope!

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    1. I think Corbett was just too busy running for Governor to be concerned about a 15 year old who was sexually abused by a famous football coach and founder of a well-known PA children's charity.

      Like Spanier left it mainly to Curley and Schultz to handle the Sandusky shower incident in 2001, I think Corbett left his underlings deal with the Sandusky case, and they botched it again and again until they got a fluke email tip to speak with Mike McQueary in Nov. 2010.


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    2. You are right. The time line says it all. Nothing happened until Corbett won the election. Corbett was elected to run the AG office; he also had a Primary and General election for Governor, fundraising for a state-wide election (including The Second Mile contributions), political appearances for the election for Governor, Sandusky, Bonusgate, Computergate, Ramaley, Deweese and Stetler on the table.

      The delay in the Sandusky investigation was a direct result of Corbett's political aspirations. He did not do his job of supervising some of the most important cases in recent history.

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  7. Perhaps ineptitude of the investigators may have been due to their lack of training and experience in child abuse cases. State Police Commissioner Noonan wouldn't let his Troopers talk to Moulton so I suspect there is still bad news for Noonan and his force that he wants to keep secret.

    Having victim 1 phone Sandusky and try to get Sandusky to incriminate himself seemed like a very long shot since Sandusky knew victim 1 had turned him into the police.

    Not quickly getting a search warrant for victim 1's crime scene (Sandusky's home) made no sense.

    Why didn't the police try a stakeout or video surveillance of Sandusky's home? If victim 9 was still sleeping over at Sandusky's home every weekend until his 16th birthday (July 29, 2009), they would have soon identified a second victim.

    It seems like the investigators were ignorant of CYS and DPW policy that destroyed all records of unfounded child abuse complaints. Had they talked to Centre County CYS officials early on, some of them would have remembered the 1998 investigation.

    Victim 1 met Sandusky through Second Mile yet the investigators took a couple of years to ask Second Mile officials if Sandusky was ever accused of inappropriate behavior around boys. That question would have revealed the 2001 incident.

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