District Attorney Ray Gricar drops the ball
Posted on January 19th, 2013 in
Keisling on Pennsylvania Politics,
News and Commentary
#5 in a Series from the Jerry Sandusky Trial transcripts
By Bill Keisling
In 1998, young victims surrounded Jerry Sandusky.
Why didn’t DA Ray Gricar make a serious attempt to find and interview them?
The roles of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare and Centre County Children and Youth Services also remain troubling and require an extensive public inquiry.
At the time of his strange disappearance in 2005, Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar enjoyed a reputation as an honest, competent and no-nonsense law enforcement officer.
“Ray would prosecute his own mother,” or so goes the myth.
The record in Jerry Sandusky’s case forces a reexamination of Gricar’s career and reputation.
In the Sandusky case, Ray Gricar badly fell down on the job, and put an unknown number of young boys at risk.
On the evening of May 3, 1998, Jerry Sandusky drove 11-year-old Zach home after
showering with the boy on the Penn State campus.
Zach’s mother, Deb McCord, that night attended an award banquet for a local volunteer group. She returned home shortly after Zach.
Zach told his mother he’d had a good time with Sandusky. Almost as an afterthought, on his way out of the room, the boy chattily told his mother,
“We took a shower, just in case you’re wondering why my hair’s wet.”
His mother would say it was an odd habit of her son’s to
“add topics he finds upsetting at the end of talk.”
She went to her son’s room a few minutes later to tuck him in to bed. She asked what happened.
“I knew you’d make a big deal out of it,” Zach told her. He didn’t want to get Sandusky in trouble. He wanted to go to the football games and sit on the bench. He wanted to look at the Internet on Jerry’s computer. As for taking a shower, he said Coach Sandusky told him,
“All the guys do!”
None of this sat right with Deb McCord.
She began a flurry of activity that would put Sandusky in a lot of hot water outside the shower room. Only the odd intervention of the local district attorney, Ray Gricar, would save Jerry Sandusky.
Zach was already seeing a psychologist in town for some behavioral issues. The first thing the next morning McCord called the psychologist’s emergency voicemail line, and asked her to return her call quickly, before her kids awoke.
The psychologist, Alycia Chambers, recalled that McCord told her, “‘I need you to tell me I’m crazy,
‘ because she did not want to believe that her suspicions were true.”
Chambers told Zach’s mother that she
“was not overreacting and that she should proceed with reporting” her concerns about Sandusky showering with the boy.
It’s important to note that McCord and Chambers were independent of Second Mile, the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Penn State University, and the knot of conflicted interests and players that Sandusky had brought together in State College.
McCord knew a policeman’s wife, who shared with her some contact numbers for the police.
At 11 am that morning, McCord phoned Detective Ron Schreffler of the Penn State University police department. She complained that a member of the university staff had been showering with her son.
Schreffler worked for the university police department since 1972. One former officer with the department tells me that Schreffler was often given the department’s most important and
“sensitive” cases, including those involving bomb scares and sports gambling.
Both Schreffler and psychologist Chambers would, in the days following, write reports about all this, providing us with some of the few contemporaneous records, and fresh memories, of these events.
Officer Schreffler asked McCord to bring her son down to the police department. The boy and his mother arrived within the half hour, Schreffler writes in his report.
From the start, Schreffler noticed several interesting things about young Zach.
Zach, Schreffler noted, was very cool, and didn’t seem to hold a grudge against Sandusky. Zach seemed to
like Sandusky, and repeatedly said he didn’t to want to get the coach in any trouble. For the most part, the boy had a good memory (other than a blackout following the shower). And he was
very talkative.
In other words, Zach was a policeman’s dream.
“He was very laid back,” Schreffler recalled years later of Zach. It was Zach’s mother who appeared to be the most agitated and upset.
Schreffler immediately set about to tape-record an interview with Zach. Zach repeated his account of what had happened the night before with Sandusky.
Toward the end of the interview, Zach said something that would be of interest to any good cop.
Zach told Detective Schreffler that he had a friend named Brandon, who also was in the Second Mile. Zach said he’d asked Brandon if he’d ever gone into the shower with Sandusky.
Brandon, Zach told the cops, said that Sandusky had wrestled with him, and had squeezed
him in the shower.
It’s worth stepping back for a moment to consider what Zach had just told the cops.
For years Sandusky had been molesting kids with impunity. Matt, Dustin and Brett, and no doubt other kids close to Sandusky, at the time were being sexually molested.
The police now had
one victim who was talking, and they knew the identity of a
second victim.
Years later, in 2012, when Sandusky was finally brought to trial, young witnesses like these, and others like them, would be the deciding factor in convicting the coach.
Now, in 1998, it was the job of the cops, and District Attorney Ray Gricar, to find
the other victimized kids, interview them, and stop Sandusky from doing further harm.
Like many small-town cops, PSU’s Officer Schreffler had some idea what to do. He also had an idea what
not to do with the case.
The same afternoon he interviewed Zach, Schreffler took two important steps.
At about 1 pm, he reported Zach’s story to the Centre County Children and Youth agency. He spoke with caseworker John Miller.
At 4 pm, Schreffler contacted Assistant District Attorney Karen Arnold, who worked for DA Gricar.
“I contacted (the DA’s office) early on in the investigation because of the allegations and the fact that Karen Arnold was the assistant district attorney that was handling child-related cases, so I wanted to get them on board right away,” Schreffler says.
Schreffler would further explain to Louis Freeh’s staff in January 2012 that,
“he decided to call the prosecutor at the outset of the investigation so he did not have to ‘worry about Old Man sticking their nose in the investigation,’
which he knew from experience could occur.”
In other words, Detective Schreffler was concerned about possible interference from his higher-ups at Penn State. As we now know, this was a real concern.
During their first phone conversation, Assistant DA Karen Arnold told Detective Schreffler to interview
“everyone” — including Zach’s friend Brandon —
“as soon as possible.”
A few hours later, at 6 pm that same night, Center County CYS case worker John Miller arrived at Schreffler’s office. The two went together to Brandon’s house and interviewed the second boy at about 8 pm that night.
Brandon’s story would be familiar to the other boys. He told the investigators he’d met Sandusky through the Second Mile program, and that he’d been on campus twice with the coach.
“Sandusky took (Brandon) to the gym to lift weights,” Schreffler wrote in his 1998 report. The boy
“said that they used the treadmill and the universal gym. He also said that he wrestled ‘Jerry’ and he tried to pin Jerry.”
Brandon
“went on to say that he had taken a shower with ‘Jerry.’ (W)hile in the shower ‘Jerry’ come up from behind and lifted him up in a bear hug. Brandon demonstrated used a chair how he was hugged.”
The police now had
two witnesses on record. And both boys were quite talkative and helpful.
Jerry Sandusky now was tantalizingly close to getting caught.
All the police now had to do, obviously, was to identify and interview the other Second Mile victims, such as Matt, Dustin, and Brett (and God knows who else), and Sandusky’s goose would be cooked.
But unusual interference from higher-ups in the DA’s office, and Children and Youth Services, prevented that from happening.
Enter Ray Gricar and PA DPW
The next day, on May 5, 1998, officials at the Centre County Children and Youth office held a meeting to decide
“what to do,” according to notes found in Freeh’s report.
CYS officials advised Detective Schreffler that they’d decided to kick the Sandusky matter upstairs, to their overseers in the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare in Harrisburg.
The reasons for kicking the matter upstairs, and who was involved in this decision, aren’t clear, and deserve thorough public investigation. The stated reason concerned conflicts of interest. But it was also because Sandusky was considered a VIP. Think football. Second Mile. Foster home. Referrals. Contracts.
The local CYS office had
multiple long-standing conflicts of interest with Sandusky’s Second Mile.
Most obviously, CYS had contracts to place kids in Second Mile’s foster home, while Second Mile’s executive director, Jack Raykovitz, held a contract with Centre County CYS to perform child evaluations.
But the conflicts ran deeper than that.
In his 2012 report (
itself financed by Penn State), former FBI director Louis Freeh attempts to superficially explain some of what happened next, and why:
“There were several conflicts of interest with (Centre County) CYS’s involvement in the case (e.g., CYS had various contracts with Second Mile including placement of children in a Second Mile residential program; the Second Mile’s executive director had a contract with CYS to conduct children’s evaluations; and the initial referral sheet from [psychologist Alycia] Chambers indicated the case might involve a foster child
). In light of these conflicts, the (state) Department of Public Welfare (‘DPW’) took over the case from CYS on May 5, 1998. DPW officials in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania took the lead because of Sandusky’s high profile and assigned it to caseworker Jerry Lauro.”
Even so, the state DPW would soon
kick the matter back down to the county Children and Youth agency. Why was this? Who was involved in this decision(s)? Again, the matter requires full public investigation.
Detective Schreffler says,
“when I first contacted Centre County Children and Youth Services, they contacted the State Department of Welfare, stating that the State Department of Welfare was going to take over the investigation, and then it went back to the county. There was some confusion there.”
State DPW investigator Lauro would now sit in on some of the interviews with Detective Schreffler.
Even so, within a few days, by May 9, the state DPW kicked the case back down to Centre County CYS, and the local agency
appointed its own counselor, John Seasock, to interview Zach. (At the time, Seasock was not licensed by the state.) This despite the fact that Zach had already been
“evaluated” by his own
licensed state-registered psychologist, Dr. Chambers.
Seasock, I should add, was
under contract with the county CYS agency.
As such,
both the state and local children and youth protective agencies were already deeply involved, and share blame.
“We were totally against it,” Schreffler says of Seasock’s evaluation of Zach.
“The District Attorney did not want it. The police did not want it.”
Who wanted Seasock involved?
“Children and Youth Services and the State Department of Welfare,” Schreffler recounts. But he mentions no names.
Freeh relates,
“During the (May 9) meeting with Seasock the boy described the incident with Sandusky. Given that the boy did not feel forced to engage in any activity and did not voice discomfort to Sandusky, Seasock opined that ‘there seems to be no incident which could be termed as sexual abuse, nor did there appear to be any sequential pattern of logic and behavior which is usually consistent with adults who have difficulty with sexual abuse of children.’
Seasock’s report ruled out that the boy ‘had been placed in a situation where he was being groomed for future sexual victimization.’” (This incidentally was at odds with psychologist Chambers’ evaluation; Chambers clearly recognized Sandusky’s grooming pattern.)
After speaking with Zach, CYS’s Seasock would issue a report exonerating Sandusky.
Freeh writes,
“On May 9, 1998, Schreffler discussed the outcome of Seasock’s evaluation with Seasock. While Seasock said he identified some ‘gray areas,’
he did not find evidence of abuse and had never heard of a 52 year old man ‘becoming a pedophile.’
When Schreffler questioned Seasock’s awareness of details of the boy’s experience, Seasock acknowledged he was not aware of many of the concerns Schreffler raised but stated Sandusky ‘didn’t fit the profile of a pedophile,’
and that he couldn’t find any indication of child abuse.”
Freeh, in his report, moreover notes,
“Seasock served as an independent contractor at Penn State from 2000 to 2006. His first payment from Penn State was made on April 20, 2000 for $1,236.86. His total payments were $11,448.86. The Special Investigative Counsel did not find any evidence to suggest that these payments had any relation to Seasock’s work on the Sandusky case in 1998. According to the Second Mile’s counsel, there was no business relationship between Seasock and the Second Mile.”
(I’ll note that Freeh himself was paid $6.5 million by Penn State to produce
his incomplete report, which many have since called poorly undertaken, selective, and a whitewash.)
The bottom line, of course, is that counselor Seasock got things wrong.
Seasock, like DPW’s Lauro, in fact got things dreadfully and tragically wrong.
DA Gricar orders appearance of an investigation
Even so, we should keep in mind, Seasock, CYS, and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare did not oversee the police, or the Centre County District Attorney’s office.
That job belonged to DA Ray Gricar.
A few days into the investigation Gricar strangely intervened, and removed Assistant DA Karen Arnold from the case.
“Ray was my boss and he said he would handle it,” former ADA Arnold told me.
“I only had the Sandusky case for a few days. I don’t know why Ray handled it the way he did. I can’t read his mind. I’m not a mind reader.”
“I had talked to Karen Arnold, I would say, probably at least two or three occasions, and Mr. Gricar at least two occasions,” Schreffler remembers.
As
criminologists, and not social workers, Gricar and his law enforcement team had to do one thing, and one thing only, to crack the case: they had to identify and interview the many Second Mile kids surrounding and victimized by Jerry Sandusky.
Matt, Dustin, Brett and the others. In fact, a circa-1998 photo shows Sandusky surrounded by many of these victims.
But no one would interview these kids for
almost 15 years
Detective Schreffler explains what instead happened: “(I) contacted the DA’s office, gave them an update of what was going on, and there was a subsequent plan to make another phone call to Mr. Sandusky with the intent of having him come back to (Zach’s) house to solicit more conversation.”
Rather than trying to locate and interview more victimized Second Mile kids, as was required to crack the case and protect the kids, Gricar’s plan became to try to trap Sandusky into
implicating himself.
For some reason Gricar thought everything hinged on a
mea culpa from Sandusky. But it didn’t work.
The plan was to have Zach’s mom call Sandusky and to ask the coach to drop by her house as a subterfuge for the cops to overhear what he might say. This would happen not once but
twice, while Det. Schreffler and two different State College borough cops eavesdropped from other rooms.
On one of these visits, Sandusky would famously tell Zach’s mother,
“I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”
Freeh writes,
“Sometime between May 27, 1998 and June 1, 1998, the local District Attorney (Ray Gricar) declined to prosecute Sandusky for his actions with the boy in the shower in the Lasch Building on May 3, 1998. A senior administrator of a local victim resource center familiar with the 1998 incident said the case against Sandusky was ’severely hampered’
by Seasock’s report.”
Gricar’s defenders say that the case was fatally undercut by the actions of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare.
No doubt DPW muddied the waters. (Freeh notes that DPW informed police on May 13, 1998 that the state agency wanted
to “resolve the matter quickly.”)
But leaving the blame solely on the incompetence or conflicts of the state DPW and county Children and Youth Agency doesn’t ring true.
The social workers, the psychologists, the cops and the DA’s office could have, had they chosen to do so, pushed the case, together or separately.
This in fact is what finally broke the case years later.
Instead, in 1998, those involved, including DA Ray Gricar, collectively decided
not to push the case.
On June 1, perhaps even
after DA Gricar decided to close the case, Schreffler and DPW’s Jerry Lauro interviewed Sandusky.
In their interview with Sandusky, Det. Schreffler took Seasock’s advice.
Freeh writes,
“Seasock recommended that someone speak with Sandusky about what is acceptable with young children and explained, ‘The intent of the conversation with Mr. Sandusky is not to cast dispersion (sic) upon his actions but to help him stay out of such gray area situations in the future.’”
Schreffler explains that he and Lauro
“advised (Sandusky) that we were investigating an allegation of an incident that occurred on May 3rd between 7 and 9 p.m. and started talking to him about Zachary. During the course of the interview, (we) asked him if he had ever been in the shower with other young boys. He stated that he had. He was asked if there was anything sexual that took place. He said not. He was concerned about the effect it would have on Zach as far as if he did anything to upset Zach. The interview as far as my questioning probably was about 15 minutes.
“I did say to (Sandusky), ‘I would tell you not to shower with young boys again,’
and he stated something to the effect he did think maybe it was inappropriate, that he wouldn’t do it again.”
Sandusky obviously was lying. Even so, he got the telegraph from DPW
and DA Gricar.
Jerry Sandusky would never again attempt to shower with, or molest, Zach.
It would be a different story with other boys.
Detective Schreffler says he phoned DA Gricar after this June 1 interview with Sandusky.
“I felt there should be some charges, something, but the DA didn’t feel there should be,” Schreffler says. It was DA Gricar’s decision, Schreffler adds.
At the end of his 12-page,
1998 police report, Det. Schreffler wrote,
“Reporting Officer advised Sandusky not to shower with any child. Sandusky stated he wouldn’t. CASE CLOSED.”
It’s worth recapping the large number of officials and agencies that were ineffectively involved in this failed 1998 police incident: the Penn State University police; State College Borough Police; the Centre County DA’s office; Centre County Children and Youth (including unknown managers, a caseworker and a psychologist); the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (including unknown officials and an investigator).
Other questions remain: Did DA Gricar consult with anyone in Harrisburg, at the attorney general’s office? A review of Gricar’s telephone and mail records is warranted.
The bottom line is that
none of these agencies or individuals did much to stop Jerry Sandusky, or to help the victimized kids, who could have been easily found.
The obvious should be stated: a complete public investigation of this 1998 incident is required to determine the causes of these systemic failures, and to ensure that it won’t happen again.
Smart career move
As for DA Ray Gricar, Louis Freeh’s report notes
, “The District Attorney at the time of the 1998 incident has been missing for several years and has been declared dead.”
DA Gricar was set to retire later in2005, a few months after his mysterious and famous disappearance.
Had he lived, Ray Gricar certainly would have taken heat for stopping the 1998 investigation involving Zach and Brandon.Due to DA Gricar’s inactions, Sandusky would be given a green light.
Thanks in
large part to Gricar, Jerry Sandusky would proceed to molest a long list of kids with impunity.
Thanks to Ray Gricar, the stage was set for all that was to come.
For Ray Gricar, his disappearance would turn out to be a smart career move.
TIMELINE OF 1998 CYS/DPW INVESTIGATION by Ray Blehar
May 3, 1998 9:00PM Victim 6 dropped off at home by Sandusky.
May 4, 1998 7:43AM Mother of Victim 6 calls Dr. Chambers.
May 4, 1998 11:25AM Mother and Victim 6 report incident to police.
May 4, 1998 12:25PM
[1] Police Det. Schreffler explains incident to J. Miller, CYS.
May 4, 1998 3:00PM Victim 6 and Mother meet with Dr. Chambers.
May 4, 1998 8:10PM Miller and Schreffler interview B.K. (friend of V6).
May 4, 1998 9:30PM Miller and Schreffler re-interview Victim 6.
May 5, 1998 9:00AM CYS holds meeting to decide “what to do.”
May 5, 1998 1:55PM J. Lauro, DPW, informs Police he will be assigned to case.
Lauro states Sandusky will be interviewed on 7 May.
May 7, 1998 11:00AM Lauro meets with police.
Lauro rec’d transcribed interviews of V6 & B.K.
Lauro reviewed case file of J. Miller (CYS).
May 7, 1998 11:15AM Lauro and police go to residence of Victim 6.
Lauro interviews mother of Victim 6.
May 7, 1998 ADA Arnold advises police to postpone evaluation of V6.
May 8, 1998 11:20AM Police inform CYS to postpone evaluation of V6.
May 8, 1998 11:40AM
[2] Police inform DPW to postpone evaluation of V6.
May 8, 1998 11:55AM Lauro informs police to DPW is going forward with evaluation.
May 8, 1998 2:00PM Victim 6 evaluated by John Seasock, contractor of CYS.
May 9, 1998 12:30PM Seasock informs police of results of evaluation of V6.
Seasock states Sandusky does not fit profile of a pedophile.
May 11, 1998 3:10PM Seasock returns call of mother of Victim 6. Advises Sandusky’s
calls to her son are customary weekly follow ups by Second Mile.
Mother states her daughter who is SM is not called weekly.
May 13, 1998 Police informed that DPW wants to “resolve the matter quickly.”
< 18 day inactive period >
June 1, 1998 11:00AM Schreffler and Lauro interview Sandusky. Determine no sexual assault occurred.
[1] According to Pa. 055 § 3490.171 (b) CYS was required to immediately file a report with ChildLine (DPW) and according to Pa. 055 § 3490.56 (a), CYS was required to notify The Second Mile within 24 hours of receipt of the report of suspected abuse. (4)(b) The Second Mile was required to implement a plan of supervision. (4)(c) CYS was also required to notify The Second Mile of the results of the investigation.
[2] See Appendix A, 1998 University Park Police Report, page 10
[1] See Appendix A, 1998 University Park Police Report, page 10
- allowed Al Lord to sit in one of the nice high back leather seats from now on .......his - purely coincindental 
