There were several unnerving events the year before Sandusky’s sudden retirement from coaching. In May 1998 an angry mother contacted the campus police, who have jurisdiction over the buildings and grounds of Penn State University. She was distraught over what her eleven-year-old son had told her about his evening with Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky. Her son’s hair was wet when he got home, and when she asked him about it, he told her that he had showered with the coach in the Penn State locker room. She wanted Sandusky to be arrested.
The mother explained to the officer how her son had come to know Sandusky in the first place. The boy, an aspiring athlete, had been involved in The Second Mile for about four years. His first interaction with Sandusky was when he was seven, at a charity picnic at Spring Creek Park, a thirty-four-acre preserve about a mile from campus. The two had been in a skit together that day, and Sandusky had showed a genuine interest in the child. After that interaction Sandusky invited him to a Penn State football game, along with several other children from The Second Mile. The outing included a tailgate party organized by Sandusky’s wife. Over time a bond of trust began to develop between the two. The child was being raised by a single mother, who considered Sandusky a good father figure.
On the night the boy came home with wet hair, Sandusky had taken him to the Penn State football complex. The mother told the officer the coach had picked up her son at the house, but he did not tell her what they would be doing that night. He had not mentioned a workout at Penn State or anything about a shower. The mother had not been asked to provide the child with a change of clothes, or even a towel.
When her son returned home, he told her that during the short drive from the house to the campus, the coach had repeatedly rubbed his thigh as he sat next to him in the passenger seat of his car, a silver Cadillac. They parked at the Holuba Hall football building, where Sandusky promised him a private tour. They were the only ones in the building. Sandusky handed the boy a pair of gym shorts, even though he was already wearing gym attire. The two lifted weights for twenty minutes or so in the state-of-the-art workout room, then went to the locker room. Sandusky started an improvised game of “Polish bowling,” the object of which was to roll a ball of tape into a cup. The mother reported that the coach then started play-wrestling with her son before persuading him to take a shower, even though the boy was not perspiring.
She said the child had been so unnerved at the prospect of taking a shower with a naked man that he chose a shower as far from Sandusky as he could get. But Sandusky lured him over, saying he had a shower all warmed up right next to him. As the boy cautiously approached, the naked Sandusky grabbed him around the waist from behind and told him, “I’m going to squeeze your guts out.” He proceeded to bear-hug the child from behind, holding the boy’s back to his chest. He then lathered the child’s back with soap, took him into his arms, and lifted the boy up to the showerhead for a rinse.
According to the mother, her son was finally able to extricate himself from the coach’s grasp, dressed as quickly as he could, and asked Sandusky to take him home. When she saw her son’s wet hair and heard his story, she contacted the campus police to report the incident.
Her account landed on the desk of Detective Ronald Schreffler, one of the forty-six members of the campus police force. The short, squat Schreffler was among the best investigators the department had. But his normal caseload was geared more to minor crimes involving the population of 44,000 students than to crimes involving children. He had jurisdiction over crimes and complaints that happened on campus and within five hundred yards of its perimeter. Most calls to the station were about drinking, drugs, or assaults of varying degrees. Calls regarding The Second Mile were limited to providing security for the kids who came to Penn State to attend the organization’s summer camps or other events. The campus cops were always willing to help Sandusky and his charity whenever they could. Just about everybody in Happy Valley knew Sandusky or had heard of him. Because he had been building The Second Mile charity for more than twenty years, his reputation went beyond the football arena.
From the start, the mother’s complaint against Sandusky was handled with extreme care. Schreffler wasn’t doubting her or her son, but these allegations were against a man who was an icon in the community. He also wasn’t the only person in authority looking into the complaint; by law the Centre County Department of Children and Youth Services, the area’s child welfare agency, also had to be called in. Since it held a contract with The Second Mile for counseling services, the Centre County entity declared a conflict of interest and deferred the case to the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare in Harrisburg. The state-run agency assigned its own investigator, Jerry Lauro. Under Pennsylvania law the state is allowed sixty days to consider a complaint before it renders a decision or refers it for prosecution. Lauro’s mandate was to gather facts, regardless of the implications the complaint might have at Penn State.
Initially Schreffler and Lauro listened to the mother’s story and interviewed her son. Both investigators were concerned enough with what they heard to proceed. The possibility that Sandusky had showered with an eleven-year-old was extremely disturbing.
The mother’s account was powerful, but the son’s description of what happened was not enough to prove that Sandusky had committed a crime. The investigators weren’t confident they could take the case very far because the child was reluctant to speak out against a man he revered as a role model. From the child’s account, it was unclear whether Sandusky’s acts were sexual or simply inappropriate behavior by a man who considered himself an overgrown kid. If the welfare official determined that the complaint was legitimate, he would be required to place Sandusky’s name on the state’s watch list for sexual predators, and his work with The Second Mile would come to an abrupt end.
The next step was to bring in a mental health professional to conduct a preliminary evaluation of the child to determine whether the scenario with Sandusky had the markings of a predatory pedophile. After a short examination, the State College-based expert determined the actions were not predatory. Still, the investigators didn’t feel they had enough information; basically it was one child’s vague words against a prominent man. So they asked the mother to invite Sandusky to her home to be surreptitiously monitored. Schreffler proposed to hide in a nearby closet to listen to the conversation. But Lauro declined to accompany him. The Penn State detective then enlisted Ralph Ralston, a detective with the State College Police Department, to assist him. Both detectives were in hiding when Sandusky arrived at the condominium on May 13, 1998.
The boy’s mother got right to the point. She demanded to know why the coach had showered with her son and why he had given him a naked bear hug. More important, she wanted to know whether he was stimulated sexually by the encounter.
Sandusky was taken aback and answered the question evasively. Yes, he sheepishly admitted, he had showered with her son, but that was nothing new for him because he had showered with other boys from The Second Mile under his care. He also claimed the episode had not been sexual in nature. The mother then pressed him on whether their private parts had touched during the bear hug. Sandusky said that he wasn’t sure. “I don’t think so . . . maybe,” he admitted in the conversation. The mother demanded that the coach never shower with another boy again, including her son, but Sandusky made no promises.
The encounter between the mother and Sandusky provided admissions from Sandusky, but the detectives needed more evidence to build a case of molestation, especially since the mental health professional’s report suggested that Sandusky did not fit the profile of a child molester. A second confrontation with the coach was set up for six days later, but this time Lauro, the state welfare investigator, was not made aware of it.
During the second meeting at the condominium, the boy’s mother posed her questions in stronger terms. She demanded that Sandusky never have contact with her son again, and he agreed. His parting words to her were “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.”
Although Lauro was unaware that a second meeting between Sandusky and the child’s mother had taken place, he agreed with Schreffler that it was time to confront the coach directly. Rather than setting up an appointment that would give Sandusky time to prepare, the men wanted to conduct a surprise interview. After two days of failed attempts to find him, on June 1, 1998, Lauro and Schreffler located Sandusky. They found him working out in a Penn State football weight room. Lauro did all the talking. He confronted Sandusky with the mother’s complaint. After some prodding, Sandusky admitted to showering with the boy, but insisted there was no sexual intent. From his facial expression it was unclear whether Sandusky was concerned about the accusations; he looked at the investigator inquisitively, as if he were trying to fathom why anyone would accuse him of harming a boy he cared so much about. Sandusky said he probably should not have showered with the boy and promised not to do it again. As the conversation ended, Sandusky repeatedly insisted he had done no wrong. “It wasn’t sexual, honest,” he said. Sandusky did not seek legal counsel after the contact with the investigators.
Lauro believed the probe merited more investigation. But just a few days after the discussion with Sandusky, he learned from Schreffler that Penn State police had closed the investigation and would not file charges. Schreffler did not tell him who made the decision to end the investigation or offer a clear explanation why.
Not until 2011 did the welfare investigator realize that he did not know everything about what had transpired back in 1998. Lauro had not been informed about the second meeting between Sandusky and the mother. He had also not been given an opportunity to review the police report, which he learned was ninety-five pages long. Had he known about Sandusky’s comments during that second meeting, the state’s probe would likely have taken a different course. In fact, when Lauro returned to Harrisburg after his initial meeting with Sandusky, he told his superiors that he felt the Penn State campus police wanted him out of the probe and out of town as soon as possible. With little information to go on other than Sandusky’s denials, he too closed his case with an “unfounded” ruling, meaning the welfare probe was dead as well. In 1998 he memorialized the event in a one-page report.
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.