Why do you think any of the claimants/victims would speak with Ziegler? What would be the benefit for them?
With the Benefit of Hindsight - Ziegler's new documentary podcast on scandal to start in 2021
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Jay doesn’t know Sandusky is innocent. Nobody besides Sandusky and the accusers themselves know the truth of his guilt or innocence.
OK, word police. He strongly believes, based on more evidence than you or I have. Happy, Pappy?
There are a good number of very rational, logical, well-grounded, proud-to-know people who believe he is innocent. (I can't get there myself). In talking with a few, they tend to draw the fine-line distinction between their very strong beliefs, 99.99% certainty, and truly knowing. fwiw.
Had Sandusky's lawyer seen the Freeh Group's report of their interview of the juror, they would have discovered that she was a disgruntled employee who was already convinced, based on what she'd read in the newspapers, that Penn State had orchestrated a cover up of Sandusky's alleged crimes with children.
Had Sandusky's lawyer read that report, he would have never allowed the disgruntled and highly opinionated Penn State professor to sit on the jury that convicted Sandusky. And when Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's overwhelmed trial lawyer, was questioning the juror, Frank Fina, sitting over at the prosecutor's table, stayed silent. He never divulged that he was collaborating with Freeh's investigators on a regular basis, and may have even had his own copy of the juror's interview with Freeh's investigators.
How does the Hon. Judge Nichols get around an ethical cloud over that juror?
And in the McChesney diary, written by a former FBI agent who rose up the ranks to become the first woman to ever hold the No. 2 job in the bureau, McChesney casually drops the fact that she's been told Judge John Cleland isn't going to let anything delay Sandusky's rushed trial date.
How did she know that? In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's appeal lawyers quote an affidavit from Amendola saying it wasn't him who told McChesney. So in their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's appeal lawyers propose subpoenaing Judge Cleland to the evidentiary hearing, so he can explain that situation.
So now we already have an ethical cloud over not only one of the jurors who convicted Sandusky, and we also have a mushroom cloud over Fina, who sat silently while the juror was being questioned. And we also have an ethical cloud over the trial judge, who was hellbent on convicting Sandusky before the start of the 2012 Penn State football season, so the NCAA and Penn State could strike a deal on voluntary sanctions that would save the Nittany Lions from the death penalty.
And how does the Hon. Judge Nichols get around that?
Meanwhile, Sandusky's appeal lawyers are seeking to comb through thousands of pages of confidential documents known as the "source materials" for the Freeh Report. These are thousands of pages still under seal as the corrupt majority on the Penn State board of trustees seeks to keep an ongoing cover up in operation.
But every day, more of these documents are being leaked, on the scale of a Frank Fina type operation. And these documents that the Penn State board of trustees would like to keep secret are filled with further proof of the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State.
Much of this information may be exculpatory, as the kind of evidence of prosecutorial misconduct that Judge Nichols said didn't exist when she wrote her boneheaded opinion that denied Sandusky a new trial based on the non-existent, since-shredded credibility of Frank Fina.
Such as on March 12, 2012, when Louie Freeh's investigators got a phone call from Ronald Schreffler, a retired detective with the Penn State University Police Department. Schreffler was the detective who investigated the so-called first shower incident involving Jerry Sandusky and a young boy, back in 1998. It was an investigation of possible sex abuse that multiple authorities subsequently concluded was unfounded.
In the phone call, documented in a report by Richard Sethman, one of Freeh's investigators, Schreffler stated that "it has been clear to him from the beginning that there has been a leak of information in the attorney general's grand jury investigation of Sandusky."
How did Schreffler know that?
"In March of 2011," the report says, "Sara Ganim, a reporter for the Patriot News in Harrisburg came to his residence and asked pointed questions about the 1998 Sandusky investigation," Sethman wrote after his conversation with the retired detective.
"Ganim advised Schreffler that she had a copy of the Pennsylvania State University Police report. She made specific reference to what Schreffler had written in the report. Schreffler asked Ganim how she got a copy of the report but Ganim would not reveal her source."
[But Frank Fina is still out looking for him, a search that could end the next time Fina looks in the bathroom mirror].
Schreffler subsequently told a neighbor who was a retired state police captain "about his encounter with Ganim and of his concern for a leak in the investigation."
On April 4, 2012, Sethman and another Freeh investigator, Tom Cloud, interviewed Schreffler. During the interview, the men at the table discussed the leak to Ganim of the 1998 police report.
"Schreffler stated that he wasn't sure of how information from the 1998 investigation has been leaked to the media but felt that it must be someone involved in the investigation."
Schreffler addd that the media somehow knew that there had been a conflict between the attorney general's office and the state police over whether to include the alleged victim of the 1998 shower incident, identified as Victim No. 6, in the official ranks of Sandusky's alleged victims, which according to Schrefler, "is information that only an insider would know."
In Pennsylvania, however, it can be dangerous to underestimate the level of official corruption. So if the Pennsylvania judiciary succeeds in circling the wagons again, and denying Sandusky's latest bid for a new trial, his only remedy will be, like Graham Spanier, to head to the federal courts, in search of a judge familiar with the U.S. Constitution.
It worked for Spanier, who, as soon as he escaped the corrupt Pennsylvania judiciary, found a federal magistrate who understood the Constitution. The magistrate immediately threw out the entire bankrupt case against the former Penn State president that had been ratified by every level of that corrupt Pennsylvania judiciary.
Either way, the truth will leak out, even amid a news blackout. Because no matter what the courts do, what's in those confidential documents will be shouted all over Big Trial.
More secrets that Frank Fina and Jonelle Eshbach and Louis Freeh and Mark Dambly don't want you to know.
Tracking the truth of the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State has been a lonely vigil. Besides Big Trial, the only media outlet covering the new developments in the Sandusky case has been Search Warrant, a podcast hosted by three cops.
Big Trial was interviewed on one of those podcasts; Search Warrant has devoted a second podcast to a character witness for Sandusky who had intimate knowledge of a couple of the so-called victims in the case. The character witness also had an interesting story to tell about how one of the prosecutors in the case allegedly attempted to intimidate her after she testified.
In a brief preview of what's coming on future Search Warrant podcasts, John Snedden, a former NCIS special agent, condemned the mainstream media's "failure to follow through on their obligation to be our watchdog."
"We at Search Warrant are currently unraveling the largest case of prosecutorial misconduct you will ever see," Snedden said. He talked about the McChesney diary written by the former FBI agent who "mistakenly thought it would never see the light of day."
"The diary details blatant collusion, corruption, and criminal acts on the part of the prosecution," Snedden said, before issuing what amounts to a declaration of war.
"Nobody hates a dirty cop or a a dirty prosecutor more than we do at Search Warrant," Snedden said.
"Follow along with us as we unravel this shocking, true story of how prosecutors denied men their constitutional and civil rights to fulfill a political vendetta. Join us as the tables are turned on dirty cops and dirty prosecutors who thought they could get away with it. It's a battle of good versus evil . . . It's about justice."
Meanwhile, the man at the center of this controversy called in today from the State Correctional Institute at Somerset.
In a phone interview, Sandusky said even he was optimistic about where his long-running case is headed next.
"I've been through so much that I don't want to get excited and very optimistic, but I am encouraged," he said. Despite being locked up for 30 to 60 years, "I've been hopeful forever," Sandusky said.
"I keep hoping the people are going to realize the travesty and all of the dishonesty and deception and everything that has transpired during this whole thing," he said. "That's my hope as much as anything. That they'll open their eyes and see."
"A lot of my coaching experiences weren't easy," recalled Sandusky, who was Joe Paterno's defense coach.
"But we were fighters who battled. I was surrounded by people like that and that's how I feel about this. This is wrong and I'm going to fight as long as I can fight."
Ziegler states that there will be "tons of new stuff" in the podcast.
He also states that he doesn't "believe" that Sandusky is not guilty, he has proven it.
He also states that he doesn't "believe" that Sandusky is not guilty, he has proven it.
I will be interested to read about his proof that Sandusky is not guilty. It’s very difficult to prove a negative.
Ziegler's vehicle of proof will be a series of podcasts not a book. That being said, I doubt you will have the patience to listen to an entire podcast. I hope to summarize the key points of the podcasts with a pointer to the specific time in the podcast for people who are interested in the details.
In terms of proof, I believe Ziegler is talking about a stronger standard of the proof that juries use when they consider whether or not there is a reasonable doubt where he is convinced beyond any doubt in his mind that Sandusky is innocent.
I am convinced that Sandusky is innocent as well. I base my opinion on the facts of the case as well as the circumstantial evidence that I am aware of.
I base this on conversations and correspondence I have had with Jerry, Dottie, John Snedden, Mark Pendergrast, Gary Schultz, Al Lindsay, Dick Anderson, Ziegler, Bob Capretto and others. I also base this on a plethora of interviews I have listened to conducted by Ziegler as well as by Snedden and others, and on a review of court proceedings and briefs. In addition, my opinion is corroborated by Pendergrast's very thorough book on the case "The Most Hated Man in America" as well as Ralph Cipriano's numerous excellent posts on his bigtrial blog.
The key circumstantial evidence I have of Sandusky's innocence includes the corrpution of the OAG (Fina/Baldwin being sanctioned, Eschbach twisting McQueary's words in the gjp, the grand jury leaks, the McChesney diaries that showed collusion between the OAG and Freeh, juror tampering, etc.). Other key circumstantial evidence includes Sandusky's consistently proclaiming his innocence, not being a broken man, no pornography ever found in his possession, his hypogonadism diagnosis, and an excellent reputation before 2011. Finally, the key piece of circumstantial evidence to me is that there is no evidence that any of the 36 claimants made any contemporaneous reports of CSA to family members, friends, police, teachers, psychologists, clergy or anybody else.
I am looking forward to listening to the podcasts and I have no doubt that my belief in Sandusky's innocence will be further strengthened.
When I said I will be interested read about his proof I meant most likely in here. I can’t handle listening to him for more than a minute or two. I’ve tried in the past but I always feel like I’m being yelled at for no reason. I’d rather just get the gist from you or others here.
I continue to believe he is guilty of crimes against children based upon his continued practice of having naked contact with unrelated children after agreeing to never do so again. As always though, I am open to changing my opinion.
The trailer is out and it well worth a listen. It is 7 minutes and 57 seconds and Ziegler is only speaking for maybe 20 seconds.
As I guessed, FOX LA Sports anchor Liz Habib is the co-host. Liz is a Pitt alumnus and her brother played football at Penn State.
Mike Agovino is the executive producer and Kevin Campbell is the technical producer.
The trailer starts with a segment with Malcolm Gladwell who compliments Ziegler and states the case is hard and is not Larry Nassar. It is shrouded in mystery up to and including the most important witness (Mike McQueary).
Around the 4 minute mark there is an exchange between Ziegler and Scott Paterno where Scott alleges that Ziegler made an incredibly racist joke about OJ and his white wife and that he will tell Franco and make sure that nobody in the Penn State family will have anything to do with Ziegler. Ziegler denies the allegations
John Snedden's federal investigation will be covered in episode 4. He states that the main bad guy in the story is former Governor Tom Corbett who is clearly a very vindictive individual.
People who will be interviewed on the podcast include Gary Schultz, Al Lord, Bob Capretto, Franco Harris, A. J. Dillen (posed as a victim for 3 years), Josh Fravel, Bruce Heim, Jerry, and Dottie.
Here is a link to the trailer:
With the Benefit of Hindsight...
True Crime Podcast · 2 Seasons · Updated Semiweekly
podcasts.apple.com
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The exchange with Scott seemed like a weird thing to highlight. Maybe trying to be controversial to drum up clicks, but an odd choice.
Around the 4 minute mark there is an exchange between Ziegler and Scott Paterno where Scott alleges that Ziegler made an incredibly racist joke about OJ and his white wife and that he will tell Franco and make sure that nobody in the Penn State family will have anything to do with Ziegler. Ziegler denies the allegations
With the Benefit of Hindsight...
True Crime Podcast · 2 Seasons · Updated Semiweekly
Maybe they did it to appease Hippo's contention that they should include some opposing view points.
I agree with you that it is an odd choice.
John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.
The trailer is out and it well worth a listen. It is 7 minutes and 57 seconds and Ziegler is only speaking for maybe 20 seconds.
As I guessed, FOX LA Sports anchor Liz Habib is the co-host. Liz is a Pitt alumnus and her brother played football at Penn State.
Mike Agadino (sp?) is the executive producer and Kevin Campbell is the technical producer.
The trailer starts with a segment with Malcolm Gladwell who compliments Ziegler and states the case is hard and is not Larry Nassar. It is shrouded in mystery up to and including the most important witness (Mike McQueary).
Around the 4 minute mark there is an exchange between Ziegler and Scott Paterno where Scott alleges that Ziegler made an incredibly racist joke about OJ and his white wife and that he will tell Franco and make sure that nobody in the Penn State family will have anything to do with Ziegler. Ziegler denies the allegations
John Snedden's federal investigation will be covered in episode 4. He states that the main bad guy in the story is former Governor Tom Corbett who is clearly a very vindictive individual.
People who will be interviewed on the podcast include Gary Schultz, Al Lord, Bob Capretto, Franco Harris, A. J. Dillon (posed as a victim for 3 years), Josh Fravel, Bruce Heim, Jerry, and Dottie.
Here is a link to the trailer:
With the Benefit of Hindsight...
True Crime Podcast · 2 Seasons · Updated Semiweekly
Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.
Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.
And what did Snedden find?
"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."
The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.
But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.
On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.
Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.
"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."
On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.
"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."
When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.
What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."
"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."
So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.
"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.
In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."
"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."
As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:
"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.
At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.
"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.
"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."
As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.
"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.
At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.
Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.
Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.
"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."
Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."
That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.
But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.
"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.
"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.
"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."
On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.
"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."
About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.
"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."
As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.
Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.
It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.
"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."
Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.
"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.
Is it just me but were the defense attorneys for both JS and Spanier complete idiots?
Frankly they along with good ole Cynthia should be sued for malpractice and then disbarred.
I’d like for someone to prove he’s guilty, ziegler has proven how upside down this entire situation is. The problem is people (especially Penn Staters who are emotionally invested and traumatized by this point) can’t admit they were/are dead wrong.
Maybe they did it to appease Hippo's contention that they should include some opposing view points.
I agree with you that it is an odd choice.
Isn't Heim also a surprising person to be interviewed? He is one of the people who dropped the ball on behalf of TSM, no? If he/they had done the right thing back in 2001, none of C/S/S/P would have been blamed for anything 10 years later.
I'm not a lawyer but I think many times an attorney looks at the law, looks at the evidence and then says, well, there is very clearly not enough evidence to convict. The burden is not on us to prove innocence. We can take a fairly conservative approach and will still win.
They can tend to discount that jurors can be morons, or that judges can make incorrect (or corrupt) rulings or that prosecuting attorneys will play dirty.
“The Child in the Shower”: Penn State and Paterno’s Silence
[Update: on Wednesday night, Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier, the President of Penn State, were both fired by the University’s trustees.] My parents …
Yeah. It’s tough to prove child sexual abuse one way or the other. Especially 10+ years after it happened.
The long awaited Schultz interview and fake V going on the record? Those interviews alone will be worth listening to the series.
She certainly seems to be unbiased. LOL“The Child in the Shower”: Penn State and Paterno’s Silence
[Update: on Wednesday night, Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier, the President of Penn State, were both fired by the University’s trustees.] My parents …www.google.com
I believe that Curley reported the v2 incident to Jack Raykowitz, the CEO of TSM. I am not sure of Bruce Heim’s role at TSM. I spoke to Heim at one of the Sandusky hearings a year or two ago. He said that when the grand jury presentment came out, he like a lot of us thought that Jerry could have fooled him and might be guilty as charged. As he learned more information, his opinion changed. I believe he eventually gave some money to Jerry’s defense fund.
TSM has become a bogeyman for a lot of people who were upset that Penn State was implicated in the scandal. If Jerry is guilty, then responsibility for Jerry’s actions lies more with TSM than with Penn State. However, if Jerry is innocent then there is no culpability for Jerry’s actions from either TSM or Penn State. However that does not excuse TSM’s protocols for 1-on-1 contact with at risk children or other practices.
I am going to reserve judgment until I hear the interview with Heim. I am interested in what he has to say.
I mean Scott has no reason to make that claim up. And Zig hates OJ passionately bc he dated Ron's sister.
If you have ever spoken to Zig about OJ you'd know it's easy to trigger him, and if you think he goes crazy on this case , you haven't seen anything.
I didn’t even read the whole article. It was the first linked that popped up in a google search. But the part about not showering was quoted from the police report, wasn’t it? Biased or not doesn’t really matter there if she’s quoting the report.
I would listen to a Schultz interview. I would prefer it be done by somebody tolerable, but I would probably listen to Ziegler do it.
I don't believe anything I read anymore. I wasn't part of any conversation JS had with police. Who really knows what was said? Perhaps he was advised not to shower with that child again? I certainly would have avoided such a situation. However, I also don't know how many times he did shower with Second Mile kids after that. Does anyone? As far as Allan Myers, hell the kid was 14 and basically lived with Dottie and Jerry. I've said many times, I only know that many of the claimants are complete liars. All of them?...can't say....is Jerry 100% innocent?.....can't go that far. But I do know he wasn't raping boys in his family room while Dottie was home.
I also know that someone who was a long time close friend of Jerry.....never, ever believed any of the charges were legitimate. This person was a man I respected more than any man in my life outside of my father. So you see how I lean.
I believe that Amy Davidson Sorkin was quoting the grand jury presentment.
Once, in 1998, the State College police got involved, but the investigation went nowhere; one of the many dismaying passages in the document is this: “Detective Schreffler advised Sandusky not to shower with any child again and Sandusky said he would not.”
The alleged quote is in dispute. Sandusky has stated that he was understanding that Schreffler advised him to never again shower with zk (v6) and in the course of a 13 year friendly relationship he never did. In fact, zk has never alleged that Sandusky did anything sexual with him. In 2011, his tune changed somewhat to state he believed that Sandusky might have been grooming him. The fact still remains that in 1998 Sandusky was investigated by the Centre County DA, Penn State police, State College police, and CYS which resulted in Sandusky not being charged with any crime and not being indicated.
Now surely everyone can agree that the grand jury presentment was a pile of hot steaming bullshit.
Not so fast.
"None of it makes any sense," Snedden said about McQueary's tale. "It's not a credible story."
Back in 2001, Snedden said, Mike McQueary was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5, 240-pound former college quarterback used to running away from 350-pound defensive linemen.
If McQueary actually saw Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower, Snedden said, he probably would have done something to stop it.
"I think your moral compass would cause you to act and not just flee," Snedden said.
If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have gotten between the victim and a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"
Or, if McQueary decided he wasn't going to physically intervene, Snedden said, then why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building? The locker room where McQueary supposedly saw Sandusky with the boy in the showers.
When he was a baby NCIS agent, Snedden said, a veteran agent who was his mentor would always ask the same question.
"So John," the veteran agent would say, "Where is the crime?"
At Penn State, Snedden didn't find one.
Working on behalf of FIS, Snedden wrote a 110-page report, all in capital letters, where he catalogued the evidence that led him to conclude that McQueary wasn't a credible witness.
In his report, Snedden interviewed Thomas G. Poole, Penn State's vice president for administration. Poole told Snedden he was in Graham Spanier's office when news of the Penn State scandal broke, and Penn State's then-senior Vice President Gary Schultz came rushing in.
Schultz blurted out that "McQueary never told him this was sexual," Snedden wrote. Schultz was shocked by what McQueary told the grand jury, Snedden wrote.
"He [McQueary] told the grand jury that he reported to [Schultz] that this was sexual," Schultz told Poole and Spanier.
"While speaking, Schultz shook his head back and forth as in disbelief," Snedden wrote about Poole's observations. Poole "believes it appeared there was a lot of disbelief in the room regarding this information."
"I've never had a rape victim or a witness to a rape tell multiple stories about how it happened," Snedden said. "If it's real it's always been the same thing."
But that's not what happened with McQueary. And Snedden thinks he knows why.
"In my view, the evolution of what we saw as a result of Mike McQueary's interview with the AG's office" was the transformation of a story about rough horseplay into something sexual, Snedden said.
"I think it would be orchestrated by them," Snedden said about the AG's office, which has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
In Snedden's report, he interviewed Schuyler J. McLaughlin, Penn State's facility security officer at the university's applied research laboratory. McLaughlin, a former NCIS agent himself, as well as a lawyer, told Snedden that McQueary initially was confused by what he saw.
"What McQueary saw, apparenty it looked sexual to him and he may have been worried about what would happen to him," Snedden wrote. "Because McQueary wanted to keep his job" at Penn State.
[McLaughlin] "believes Curley and Schultz likely asked tough questions and those tough questions likely caused McQueary to question what he actually saw," Snedden wrote. McLaughlin "believes that after questioning, McQueary likely did not know what he actually saw," Snedden wrote. "And McQueary "probably realized he could not prove what he saw."
There was also confusion over the date of the alleged shower incident. At the grand jury, McQueary testified that it took place on March 1, 2002. But at the Sandusky trial, McQueary changed the date of the shower incident to Feb. 9, 2001.
There was also confusion over the identity of the boy in the showers. In 2011, the Pennsylvania State Police interviewed a man suspected of being "Victim No. 2." Allan Myers was then a 24-year-old married Marine who had been involved in Sandusky's Second Mile charity since he was a third-grader.
Myers, however, told the state police he "does not believe the allegations that have been raised" against Sandusky, and that another accuser was "only out to get some money." Myers said he used to work out with Sandusky since he was 12 or 13, and that "nothing inappropriate occurred while showering with Sandusky." Myers also told the police that Sandusky never did anything that "made him uncomfortable."
Myers even wrote a letter of support for Sandusky that was published in the Centre Daily Times, where he described Sandusky as his "best friend, tutor, workout mentor and more." Myers lived with Sandusky while he attended college. When Myers got married, he invited Jerry and Dottie Sandusky to the wedding.
Then, Myers got a lawyer and flipped, claiming that Sandusky assaulted him ten times. But at the Sandusky trial, the state attorney general's office deemed Myers an unreliable witness and did not call him to testify against Sandusky.
Instead, the prosecutor told the jury, the identity of Victim No. 2, the boy in the showers, "was known only to God."
Myers, however, eventually collected $3 million in what was supposed to be a confidential settlement with Penn State as Victim No. 2.
Mike McQueary may not have known for sure what he heard and saw in the shower. And the cops and the prosecutors may not know who Victim No. 2 really was. But John Snedden had it figured out pretty early what the source of the trouble was at Penn State.
Snedden recalled that four days into his 2012 investigation, he called his bosses to let them know that despite all the hoopla in the media, there was no sex scandal at Penn State.
"I just want to make sure you realize that this is a political hit job," Snedden recalled telling his bosses. "The whole thing is political."
Why did the Penn State situation get blown so far out of proportion?
"When I get a case, I independently investigate it," Snedden said. "It seems like that was not the case here. It wasn't an independent inquiry. It was an orchestrated effort to make the circumstances fit the alleged crime."
How did they get it so wrong at Penn State?
"To put it in a nutshell, I would say there was an exceptional rush to judgment to satisfy people," Snedden said. "So they wouldn't have to answer any more questions."
"It's a giant rush to judgement," Snedden said. "There was no debate."
"Ninety-nine percent of it is hysteria," Snedden said. Ninety-nine percent of what happened at Penn State boiled down to people running around yelling, "Oh my God, we've got to do something immediately," Snedden said.
It didn't matter that most of the people Snedden talked to at Penn State couldn't believe that Graham Spanier would have ever participated in a coverup, especially involving the abuse of a child.
Carolyn A. Dolbin, an administrative assistant to the PSU president, told Snedden that Spanier told her "that his father has physically abused him when [Spanier] was a child, and as a result [Spanier] had a broken nose and needed implants."
Spanier himself told Snedden, "He had been abused as a child and he would not stand for that," meaning a coverup, Snedden wrote.
Snedden couldn't believe the way the Penn State Board of Trustees acted the night they decided to fire both Spanier and Paterno.
There was no investigation, no determination of the facts. Instead, the officials running the show at Penn State wanted to move on as fast as possible from the scandal by sacrificing a few scapegoats.
At an executive session, the vice chairman of the PSU board, John Surma, the CEO of U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh, told his fellow PSU board members, "We need to get rid of Paterno and Spanier," Snedden said. And then Surma asked, "Does anybody disagree with that?"
"There wasn't even a vote," Snedden said. In Snedden's report, Dr. Rodney Erickson, the former PSU president, told Snedden that Spanier "is collateral damage in all of this."
Erickson didn't believe there was a coverup at Penn State, because of what Spanier had told him.
"I was told it was just horsing around in the shower," Spanier told Erickson, as recounted in Snedden's report. "How do you call the police on that?"
On the night the board of trustees fired Paterno, they kept calling Paterno's house, but there was no answer. Finally, the board sent a courier over to Paterno's house, and asked him to call Surma's cell phone.
When Paterno called, Surma was ready to tell the coach three things. But he only got to his first item.
Just put a Lenny Moore or Cappy statue where the Italian Orc Monster and its monstrous hands used to be and be done with all this noise.
I suggest we conduct a poll.....which group would you have preferred was running PSU when the scandal broke?
A. The PSU Old Guard BOT
B. The Captain and crew of the Titanic
There's an awful lot of Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" that I can see in this case.
annnnnndddd the difference would beeee?
Well ok I can see the one huge difference....The Capt. of the Titanic didn't deliberately steer his ship into the iceberg.
I’ve see the quote posted often, but I’ve never seen the source. Interesting to find out it’s disputed. It seems that relying on a disputed quote to make a conclusion about guilt or innocence is not sensible.
