Game Over

by Bill Moushey

  Schreffler’s file included narratives from the mother and son and the mental health professional, but did not include any evidence that anyone else had seen the incident. Also included in the report were three different statements from Sandusky, which were remarkably consistent. Support personnel at the football workout facility had also been questioned; all said they had seen nothing. But the detective had not questioned Joe Paterno or anyone else in the football administration.

  While Schreffler believed that Sandusky could be charged with a variety of molestation-related crimes, even if misdemeanor counts were pursued, he learned that the Centre County district attorney felt otherwise. Prosecutor Ray Gricar told the officer that the he-said-she-said evidence was laced with reasonable doubt. The child was skittish, the mother’s statements were secondhand, there was no independent corroboration of anything, and a mental health expert had said the evidence didn’t reveal the markings of a sexual predator. And there were no prospects that any additional evidence would emerge. While Schreffler and the mother believed the smoking gun was Sandusky’s admissions, Gricar determined that those admissions could become a plausible defense. If he charged Sandusky with a crime, the well-regarded coach, who had readily admitted to showering with other young men, could easily build a defense around the reasonable doubt that there was anything sexual about the event. And that is just what Sandusky said during the covert conversation with the eleven-year-old’s mother and when the investigators confronted him. Sandusky was as consistent in his commentary as he was vehement that while such an incident may not be normal in the eyes of many, it was not a molestation or assaultive in any way. Schreffler’s report was never turned over to the prosecutor’s office.

  Schreffler’s bosses accepted Gricar’s decision without ever talking with Gricar about it. Throughout the probe Schreffler reported his findings to Thomas Harmon, head of the Penn State Campus Police Department at the time.

  Harmon, in turn, had at least four conversations about Sandusky with Gary Schultz, the Penn State administrator who oversaw the campus police department. Schultz was the one who alerted the university’s general counsel, Wendell Courtney.

  The president of Penn State, Graham B. Spanier, said he was never informed about the investigation. Neither was Joe Paterno, who stated later that no one from the campus police department had ever questioned him about Sandusky or the 1998 allegations of sexual misconduct.

  Gary Schultz claimed that he had tried to keep information about the investigation quiet. Because it had been determined that Sandusky’s actions did not rise to the level of criminality or even abuse, there was no reason to besmirch his name. In Happy Valley embarrassing secrets were kept under wraps at all cost, no matter whose welfare might be jeopardized by this code of silence. But in this matter, despite Schultz’s efforts to keep the probe discreet, rumors about the incident were still bandied about. Cops are notorious gossips, and soon versions of the story of Sandusky and the boy in the shower were making their way through area police departments, local gin mills, and even in the halls of the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte.

  SCHREFFLER WASN’T SATISFIED WITH SANDUSKY’S contrition, but he would keep those feelings to himself for years. It turned out Gricar made his decision without consulting anyone, not even Karen Arnold, the lawyer in his office who prosecuted child abuse cases. Much later, some would suggest Gricar had discussed the matter with others in his office. Gricar informed Schreffler of his decision just two days after Schreffler and Lauro confronted Sandusky in the weight room. Schreffler relayed the prosecutor’s decision to Thomas Harmon or Harmon’s boss, Gary Schultz. Neither of them sought an explanation from Gricar, or ever received one from him.

  Gricar’s explanation for not bringing charges against Sandusky will never be known. He was last seen on April 15, 2005, when he took a day off from work and left his hometown of Bellefonte. He called his girlfriend to say he was going for a drive. Twelve hours later she reported him missing. The following day Gricar’s BMW Mini Cooper was discovered in the parking lot of the Street of Shops antique market in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, about fifty miles east of Bellefonte. Gricar had been known to frequent the market in the past. Police found no evidence of foul play in the car, which was locked. They did take note of a cigarette smell and found ashes on the passenger side, which was remarkable because Gricar didn’t smoke and prohibited smoking in his car. Search dogs couldn’t find a scent, and an extensive search of the Susquehanna River produced no body.

  Investigators looked into three possible scenarios: Gricar wanted to disappear; it was a homicide; or he had killed himself. Six months after the district attorney went missing, his laptop computer was found in the Susquehanna River two hundred yards downstream from the Lewisburg Bridge. The computer’s hard drive was also recovered in the river shortly thereafter, but it was so badly damaged it yielded no information.

  At the time of Gricar’s disappearance he had just announced a successful high-stakes heroin investigation and the arrest of nine suspects on charges of heroin and cocaine trafficking. Among those arrested was the alleged leader of the New York-based ring, Taji Lee. Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett called it the “largest heroin operation ever seen in Centre County.” At a press conference two weeks before Gricar disappeared, Corbett had praised the arrests, the officers who had participated in the sting, and Gricar in particular for his devotion to the undercover investigation.

  In July 2011 Gricar’s daughter, Lara, successfully petitioned a Centre County judge to have her father declared legally dead. Penn State officials had never asked him why he dropped the Sandusky case, and there was no record of an investigation having been launched in his office.

  The mother of Sandusky’s eleven-year-old accuser claimed she never got a satisfactory explanation of why the assistant coach hadn’t been charged. State welfare officials said she had in fact accepted a brief explanation of the decision.

  Four years later Sandusky was still showering with boys in the Penn State locker room. Even though he had been retired for several years, he was on campus using the facilities, within his rights.

  Chapter 5

  Independent Allegations

  Mike McQueary always dreamed of becoming a football coach at Penn State. For two years he had served as a graduate assistant on Joe Paterno’s staff. After one more year in that position he hoped to get a less menial, full-time job as a coach at his alma mater. At twenty-seven, he was smart and athletic; he had been a quarterback for Paterno during his undergraduate years. With bright red hair and a hulking six-foot-three frame, he had come to Penn State after a notable high school career with the Little Lions at State College High School. He was a good enough player to have been recruited by a number of schools, but he decided to stay home and play for the coaches he had known since he was a kid. McQueary waited his turn to start behind players destined for professional stardom. He didn’t earn the full-time starting quarterback job until 1997, when he was a senior. Once given the opportunity, he led Penn State to a 9–3 record and a place in the Citrus Bowl in Florida. His name still remains in the university’s record book for most passing yards and total offense in a single game in his first start, against the University of Pittsburgh. He also was a finalist for the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, presented annually to the nation’s most deserving senior quarterback.

  After graduating he tried to earn positions on professional teams, the Oakland Raiders in California for one, and NFL Europe’s team in Scotland. When he was unsuccessful, he worked as an assistant payroll clerk at Penn State for a year while he tried to wrangle a job on Paterno’s coaching staff. He eagerly accepted a graduate assistantship when it was offered to him three years after he graduated.

  In March 2002 almost everyone at Penn State had left campus for spring break. But Mike was staying put, enjoying the quiet. Watching a football movie on television, he was inspired to drive to Penn State football headquarters, where he wanted to pick up some tapes of pro
spective recruits to review. When he arrived just after 9 p.m., the complex was dark.

  After he entered the dark halls of the Lasch Building, McQueary went first to the support staff locker room to drop off a new pair of sneakers. He walked past coaches’ offices, an academic research center, workout facilities, rooms with whirlpools and saunas, and other fitness rooms in the state-of-the-art facility. As he was walking through the swinging wooden doors of the locker room, he heard a clap-clap-clapping sound that made him somewhat embarrassed; the sound seemed to be from wet skin-on-skin sex. His first thought was that one of the players had snuck into the complex with a paramour for some kinky action. Or maybe a custodian had brought someone in. McQueary moved gingerly toward the shower room and through the first set of double doors. As he opened the second set of doors, he looked over his shoulder at a mirror set at an angle that reflected directly into the shower room. There was the retired Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, naked with a prepubescent Caucasian boy who appeared to be no more than ten years old. The child was so small that Sandusky’s body nearly enveloped him, the coach’s hands wrapped around the naked child’s waist. The embrace appeared to be sexual in nature.

  “Jerry was directly behind him in a very, very, very close position, with Jerry’s hands wrapped around his waist or midsection,” McQueary recalled later in sworn testimony. He said his position just outside the shower room prevented Sandusky and the child from knowing he was there. He moved closer for a better look. Walking through the second set of doors, he saw that the child was facing the wall with his hands up against it. Although exactly what was going on was hidden, McQueary said it was clear to him that they were in a sexual position. “I believed Jerry was sexually molesting him and having some type of intercourse with him,” he said. He testified that he did not see Sandusky’s genitalia or penetration, but “that’s what I believe was happening.” Shocked and disturbed, McQueary retreated to the locker room and slammed his locker door shut to try to get Sandusky’s attention. He then walked back into the shower room and saw that the man and the child had separated. Less than a minute had passed since he had first stumbled on the scene.

  The three of them exchanged uncomfortable eye contact, but no words. “To be frank, I can’t describe what I was feeling or thinking,” McQueary said under oath. “Shocked and horrified, quite frankly, not thinking straight. I was distraught.” He was stunned to see a man who was not only his former coach at Penn State, but also the father of two high school friends and college teammates, sexually abusing a child.

  McQueary had always revered Sandusky, whom he had known since he was a young child, through sports and other activities. He considered the coach a down-to-earth, self-effacing gentleman always quick with a quip and a smile. McQueary had never given Sandusky’s touchy-feely interactions with kids a second thought, because he knew of his work helping troubled children through The Second Mile, founded when McQueary was just two years old. Now, for a few seconds, he stared down the two as they stood wet and naked in the shower. McQueary wasn’t able to say if the naked coach was sexually aroused because he didn’t look at his private parts, only stared into his eyes. He said he was in such a state of shock that instead of saying anything or immediately taking the child away, he quickly exited the shower room.

  Later he’d say he thought the child was safe because whatever had been happening had ended. Though the campus police headquarters was only a short distance from the Lasch Building, he didn’t go there either. Instead he went directly to his second-floor office and called his father, John McQueary, manager of medical offices in the region, and a person he trusted to guide him. The elder McQueary asked his son to come home immediately. There he and his father had an hour-long discussion, joined halfway through by his father’s friend and colleague, Dr. Jonathan Dranov. The three decided the younger McQueary should report the incident to Joe Paterno as soon as possible. McQueary went home to bed, then called the legendary football coach at about 8 o’clock the next morning, a Saturday.

  “Coach, I need to come to your house and talk to you about something,” McQueary said he told Paterno. “He said, ‘I don’t have a [full time coaching] job for you, so if that’s what it’s about, don’t bother coming over.’ ” When McQueary told him it was much more serious than that, the coach told him to come over right away. There he and Paterno sat at the kitchen table, and he explained the reason for his visit.

  “I saw Jerry with a young boy in the shower and it was way over the lines, extremely sexual in nature and I thought I needed to tell him about it,” McQueary remembered years later. Out of respect for Paterno, he did not reveal the details of what he saw, but said he was sure the legendary coach got the picture. McQueary said Paterno, then seventy-eight years old, slumped back in his chair. The coach told him he was sorry he had to witness such a thing and pledged to take action. “He said, ‘You’ve done the right thing. I know it is probably tough for you to come here and tell me this, but you’ve done the absolutely right thing,’ ” McQueary testified. Paterno told him others at the university would be in contact with him soon.

  Despite the urgency projected by Paterno during that early morning meeting, nine days passed before McQueary was contacted by Athletic Director Tim Curley, a 1976 graduate of the university. Curley, a charismatic and influential man who put Penn State on the map in many sports beyond football, summoned him to a meeting with himself and Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz. Schultz had been in charge of the Penn State Campus Police back in 1998, when Sandusky’s behavior with an eleven-year-old boy was called into question, so this would be the second time he was hearing about allegations of Sandusky’s improper conduct with a minor.

  Curley, Shultz, and McQueary met in a conference room at the Bryce Jordan Center, the school’s basketball arena and home to the athletic director’s office. “I told them I saw Jerry Sandusky in the showers with a young boy in what seemed was extremely sexual, over the lines and it was wrong,” McQueary said later to a grand jury and in criminal court. He said he told the officials more than he told Paterno, but he again refrained from describing all of the lurid details. He later insisted, “I would have described them as extremely sexual and that some sort of intercourse was going on.” He said he believed Curley and Schultz “thought it was serious what I was saying, that they would investigate it or look into it closely and they would follow up.” Asked specifically if he told the officials that Sandusky was committing a sexual act against the child, he answered, “There is no doubt at all.”

  Sometime over the next two weeks Curley and Schultz paid an impromptu visit to President Graham Spanier. Without naming McQueary, they let him know about a football staff member’s concern that Sandusky was behaving inappropriately with a child in the locker room showers. The meeting was very brief, and the two administrators provided a sanitized version of what McQueary says he had told them. Instead of an accusation of rape, they told Spanier the incident had involved “horsing around” or “horseplay” between Sandusky and the child. From their description, Spanier didn’t think the incident was very serious.

  Although they didn’t provide the details that McQueary said he had given them, they did tell the university president they were not comfortable with Sandusky and The Second Mile kids using Penn State facilities anymore. Spanier approved their plan to instruct Sandusky to stop bringing children to the football facilities or programs. The former coach was also going to be told to surrender his keys to the football complex facilities, and Curley was going to let Sandusky know of his decision to report the incident to top officials of The Second Mile.

  After their meeting Curley relayed the plans that would resolve the Sandusky issue to McQueary, who accepted what he was told with an “okay.” McQueary never had another discussion with Schultz.

  To fulfill his obligations to the president, Curley summoned Sandusky to a meeting. Initially the former coach did not admit he had even been at the Lasch Building on the night in ques
tion. At another meeting almost two weeks later he acknowledged being there for a workout without mentioning being caught naked by McQueary with a young child in the shower. Later Curley, who has no law enforcement experience, acknowledged the sanctions he issued against Sandusky were virtually unenforceable because the retired coach enjoyed emeritus status as a university retiree, on which he had negotiated lifetime use of the football facilities.

  Curley later testified that he had met with John Raykovitz, the long-time head of The Second Mile and a child psychologist. Even though Curley did not believe Sandusky’s actions in the shower rose to criminal conduct, he said he reported Sandusky to the charity because of McQueary’s report. He described Sandusky’s behavior as “inappropriate” and added, “I figured [the child] was probably a Second Mile person.”

  It remains unclear whether Raykovitz ever discussed the matter with Sandusky, but some Second Mile board members would later complain that they were never notified about Mike McQueary’s allegations, or that Sandusky had been barred from bringing Second Mile children to the Penn State football facilities. The former coach was Raykovitz’s close friend.