You go Sandy !
Today’s CDT
November 01, 2018 09:59 AM
‘Unfounded rush’
In response to a [previous] letter, I also believe Jerry Sandusky is an innocent man. I have followed this travesty since the beginning and have read/followed Mark Pendergrast, Ralph Cipriano, and John Ziegler. These three men have actually investigated this case.
There was an unfounded rush to judgment from the very beginning, which happened immediately after Joe Paterno was fired by the Board of Trustees. This entire case should be TOTALLY investigated from the beginning. There was not one ounce of proof of Mr. Sandusky’s guilt -- not one -- only grown men claiming they were abused when they found out PSU could be sued.
The so-called “victims,” their attorneys, and the psychologists using repressed memory should be ashamed. The men who claim they were sexually abused saw dollar signs. I would easily venture a guess as to what kind of life these “victims” were leading before becoming multimillionaires. Can you? - Sandra C. Lane, Lititz, PA https://www.centredaily.com/
Today’s CDT
November 01, 2018 09:59 AM
‘Unfounded rush’
In response to a [previous] letter, I also believe Jerry Sandusky is an innocent man. I have followed this travesty since the beginning and have read/followed Mark Pendergrast, Ralph Cipriano, and John Ziegler. These three men have actually investigated this case.
There was an unfounded rush to judgment from the very beginning, which happened immediately after Joe Paterno was fired by the Board of Trustees. This entire case should be TOTALLY investigated from the beginning. There was not one ounce of proof of Mr. Sandusky’s guilt -- not one -- only grown men claiming they were abused when they found out PSU could be sued.
The so-called “victims,” their attorneys, and the psychologists using repressed memory should be ashamed. The men who claim they were sexually abused saw dollar signs. I would easily venture a guess as to what kind of life these “victims” were leading before becoming multimillionaires. Can you? - Sandra C. Lane, Lititz, PA https://www.centredaily.com/
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018
What's PSU President Barron Hiding? Big Trial Knows!
image: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1OlEm2LI...s400/Screen+Shot+2018-11-09+at+8.59.22+AM.png
By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net
The plane that flew over Beaver Stadium towed a banner that said -- "PRES BARRON: WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? RELEASE THE REPORT!"
Former Penn State Trustee Anthony Lubrano took to the skies last month in his campaign to get Penn State President Eric Barron to release the findings of an investigation into the so called "source materials" for the Louis Freeh Report on the Penn State sex scandal. The investigation into the Freeh Report, done by a minority group of trustees, was buried by the majority on the PSU board as part of an ongoing coverup of epic proportions, aided by an astounding lack of curiosity on the part of the mainstream media.
As to what PSU is hiding, Big Trial's readers know the answers, because this past summer, we printed many of those big secrets contained in the confidential "source materials." What are they hiding? That the Freeh Report was filled with faulty opinions dressed up as facts, that Freeh had a conflict of interest, and that Freeh's investigators were colluding with former deputy attorney general Frank Fina in a manner that violated state grand jury secrecy laws and may have contaminated both probes. And that's just for starters.
<tbody>
</tbody>In June, Big Trial printed the highlights of a seven-page "executive summary of findings of that internal review of the Freeh Report, dated Jan. 8, 2017, plus a 25-page synopsis of evidence gleaned from the confidential source materials.
The findings of the minority trustees: Freeh "disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's crimes at Penn State.
And: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics."
The Freeh Report, the executive summary found, relied on "deeply-flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses, and faulty investigative methods that resulted in "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.
In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees charged Freeh with a conflict of interest. The minority trustees offered as proof confidential internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.
On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."
In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
A spokesperson for Freeh, the former judge and FBI director, never responded to a Big Trial request for comment.
In July, Big Trial ran more top secret stuff from the source materials -- a series of internal emails at the Freeh Group that showed that former deputy attorney General Frank Fina was routinely and repeatedly leaking grand jury secrets to Freeh's investigators.
The emails showed that Fina was routinely swapping inside dope with Freeh's guys and playing good cop-bad cop on witnesses such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin, even though the grand jury's investigation of Penn State was supposed to be secret. And that Freeh's investigators, who were acting as private citizens, had no right to access grand jury secrets.
<tbody>
</tbody>
When asked about this breach of grand jury secrecy, and whether Freeh's team was authorized to share grand jury secrets with Fina, Freeh courageously declined comment.
Another big secret contained in those source materials -- Penn State's board of trustees utterly failed in their fiduciary duties to investigate claims of abuse before they paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims.
Confidential documents showed that Penn State's trustees, presently engaged in that ongoing coverup, didn't subject the now-wealthy young lads to criminal background checks, depositions by lawyers, or examinations by forensic psychiatrists before they handed out the big checks. The so-called "victims" never even had to divulge their real names while they were cashing in.
No wonder Penn State wants to keep that report on the source materials sealed. Because it makes them looked like easy marks squandering millions of dollars on suspect "victims" with ever-changing and highly implausible stories that were often the product of therapy sessions featuring scientifically discredited memory recovery therapy.
In ordinary times, the shocking degree of incompetence and malfeasance that took place at Penn State during that big sex scandal might have aroused the curiosity of the mainstream media, and maybe even prompted them to reconsider their hysterical rush to judgment in the Sandusky case.
Especially in the light of another Big Trial bombshell, that the headline allegation of the 2011 grand jury presentment --- that Jerry Sandusky raped a 10-year-old boy in the showers -- probably never happened, according to a previously unknown federal investigation conducted back in 2012 on the Penn State campus by former NCIS special agent John Snedden.
Contrary to what Freeh found, Snedden concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State because there was no credible evidence or a credible witness to show that a sex crime had ever occurred in the PSU showers.
But the mainstream media remains silent on the Snedden investigation and subsequent 110-page report, as well as the accumulating evidence that Penn State, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general, along with cops and therapists, completely botched the Sandusky investigation.
Because the members of the media have their own credibility to protect, or what's left of it.
Memo to the minority trustees: President Barron reports to the board of trustees and not the other way around. He's never going to willingly release that report, and neither will the majority board members.
The only solution: do what Frank Fina did, leak the damn thing. Hopefully, the report is available as a PDF or word document. Email that file to ralph@bigtrial.net and I'll take care of the rest.
image: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BA7_FE7u...s640/Screen+Shot+2018-11-09+at+8.59.22+AM.png
POSTED BY RALPH CIPRIANO AT <a class="timestamp-link" href="http://www.bigtrial.net/2018/11/whats-president-barron-hiding.html" rel="bookmark" title="permanent link" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration-line: none;"><abbr class="published" title="2018-11-11T10:33:00-05:00" style="border: none;">10:33 AM</abbr>
TRIAL: PENN STATE SEX ABUSE SCANDAL
Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2018/11/whats-president-barron-hiding.html#ujRDQmPkSGAX0CQy.99
What's PSU President Barron Hiding? Big Trial Knows!
image: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1OlEm2LI...s400/Screen+Shot+2018-11-09+at+8.59.22+AM.png
for BigTrial.net
The plane that flew over Beaver Stadium towed a banner that said -- "PRES BARRON: WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? RELEASE THE REPORT!"
Former Penn State Trustee Anthony Lubrano took to the skies last month in his campaign to get Penn State President Eric Barron to release the findings of an investigation into the so called "source materials" for the Louis Freeh Report on the Penn State sex scandal. The investigation into the Freeh Report, done by a minority group of trustees, was buried by the majority on the PSU board as part of an ongoing coverup of epic proportions, aided by an astounding lack of curiosity on the part of the mainstream media.
As to what PSU is hiding, Big Trial's readers know the answers, because this past summer, we printed many of those big secrets contained in the confidential "source materials." What are they hiding? That the Freeh Report was filled with faulty opinions dressed up as facts, that Freeh had a conflict of interest, and that Freeh's investigators were colluding with former deputy attorney general Frank Fina in a manner that violated state grand jury secrecy laws and may have contaminated both probes. And that's just for starters.
image: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iBncOQNL...400/Screen+Shot+2018-11-11+at+10.47.37+AM.png
|
| Fraudulent Freeh |
<tbody>
</tbody>
The findings of the minority trustees: Freeh "disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's crimes at Penn State.
And: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics."
The Freeh Report, the executive summary found, relied on "deeply-flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses, and faulty investigative methods that resulted in "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.
In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees charged Freeh with a conflict of interest. The minority trustees offered as proof confidential internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.
On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."
In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
A spokesperson for Freeh, the former judge and FBI director, never responded to a Big Trial request for comment.
In July, Big Trial ran more top secret stuff from the source materials -- a series of internal emails at the Freeh Group that showed that former deputy attorney General Frank Fina was routinely and repeatedly leaking grand jury secrets to Freeh's investigators.
The emails showed that Fina was routinely swapping inside dope with Freeh's guys and playing good cop-bad cop on witnesses such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin, even though the grand jury's investigation of Penn State was supposed to be secret. And that Freeh's investigators, who were acting as private citizens, had no right to access grand jury secrets.
image: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fIRsPKqV...400/Screen+Shot+2018-11-11+at+10.50.11+AM.png
|
| Leaky Frank Fina |
<tbody>
</tbody>
When asked about this breach of grand jury secrecy, and whether Freeh's team was authorized to share grand jury secrets with Fina, Freeh courageously declined comment.
Another big secret contained in those source materials -- Penn State's board of trustees utterly failed in their fiduciary duties to investigate claims of abuse before they paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims.
Confidential documents showed that Penn State's trustees, presently engaged in that ongoing coverup, didn't subject the now-wealthy young lads to criminal background checks, depositions by lawyers, or examinations by forensic psychiatrists before they handed out the big checks. The so-called "victims" never even had to divulge their real names while they were cashing in.
No wonder Penn State wants to keep that report on the source materials sealed. Because it makes them looked like easy marks squandering millions of dollars on suspect "victims" with ever-changing and highly implausible stories that were often the product of therapy sessions featuring scientifically discredited memory recovery therapy.
In ordinary times, the shocking degree of incompetence and malfeasance that took place at Penn State during that big sex scandal might have aroused the curiosity of the mainstream media, and maybe even prompted them to reconsider their hysterical rush to judgment in the Sandusky case.
Especially in the light of another Big Trial bombshell, that the headline allegation of the 2011 grand jury presentment --- that Jerry Sandusky raped a 10-year-old boy in the showers -- probably never happened, according to a previously unknown federal investigation conducted back in 2012 on the Penn State campus by former NCIS special agent John Snedden.
Contrary to what Freeh found, Snedden concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State because there was no credible evidence or a credible witness to show that a sex crime had ever occurred in the PSU showers.
But the mainstream media remains silent on the Snedden investigation and subsequent 110-page report, as well as the accumulating evidence that Penn State, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general, along with cops and therapists, completely botched the Sandusky investigation.
Because the members of the media have their own credibility to protect, or what's left of it.
Memo to the minority trustees: President Barron reports to the board of trustees and not the other way around. He's never going to willingly release that report, and neither will the majority board members.
The only solution: do what Frank Fina did, leak the damn thing. Hopefully, the report is available as a PDF or word document. Email that file to ralph@bigtrial.net and I'll take care of the rest.
image: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BA7_FE7u...s640/Screen+Shot+2018-11-09+at+8.59.22+AM.png
POSTED BY RALPH CIPRIANO AT <a class="timestamp-link" href="http://www.bigtrial.net/2018/11/whats-president-barron-hiding.html" rel="bookmark" title="permanent link" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration-line: none;"><abbr class="published" title="2018-11-11T10:33:00-05:00" style="border: none;">10:33 AM</abbr>
TRIAL: PENN STATE SEX ABUSE SCANDAL
Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2018/11/whats-president-barron-hiding.html#ujRDQmPkSGAX0CQy.99
| RalphCipriano (@RalphCipriano1) |
| 11/29/18, 12:25 PM On the Parallels Between the Catholic Church And Penn State Sandusky Scandal: bit.ly/2QoR5KM #CatholicChurch #Sandusky #PennState pic.twitter.com/bz6V7Erq2t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIEOWlr93TY |
<tbody>
</tbody>
Short, sweet, and right to the point. Ralph wakes up another one with facts and the truth
1/23/19, 3:19 PM
"It's a mess..." Listen as Investigative Reporter and author @RalphCipriano1 of @BigTrialBlog is interviewed regarding a case of #Mediamalpractice ‘01-23-2019 Radio Interview with Investigative Reporter and author’ on #SoundCloud #np soundcloud.com/user311151076/…
1/23/19, 3:19 PM
"It's a mess..." Listen as Investigative Reporter and author @RalphCipriano1 of @BigTrialBlog is interviewed regarding a case of #Mediamalpractice ‘01-23-2019 Radio Interview with Investigative Reporter and author’ on #SoundCloud #np soundcloud.com/user311151076/…
[FONT="]Monday, February 11, 2019[/FONT]
[FONT="]Penn State Cover Up Ends With Leak Of Louis Freeh's Top-Secret Report Card; He Flunked And Penn State Wants Their $8.3 Million Back
By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net[/FONT]
http://www.bigtrial.net/2019/02/penn...aking.html?m=1
[FONT="]Penn State Cover Up Ends With Leak Of Louis Freeh's Top-Secret Report Card; He Flunked And Penn State Wants Their $8.3 Million Back
By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net[/FONT]
http://www.bigtrial.net/2019/02/penn...aking.html?m=1
[h=2]THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2019[/h][FONT="][h=3]Unholy Triangle At PSU: The Media, Prosecutors And Plaintiff's Lawyers[/h]
image: [url]https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qjQKbESb9XA/XGVU88QkIeI/AAAAAAAAGCE/XxarkHcCThEy1FLSCsyXNp6KSouxaObdQCK4BGAYYCw/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-02-14%2Bat%2B6.45.02%2BAM.png
[/URL]By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net
Alexander H. Lindsay Jr. was happy to read the formerly confidential report done by seven Penn State trustees cataloging the many faults and failures of the Louis Freeh Report.
"We agree with the substance of the [trustees'] report" on Freeh, Lindsay said. "But it doesn't go far enough."
Lindsay, a former Butler County assistant district attorney and a former assistant U.S. Attorney under Dick Thornburg, is the long-suffering defense lawyer for Jerry Sandusky. His review of the Freeh Report is far more succinct than the 113-page trustees' review.
"It's total fiction from top to bottom," Lindsay said about the Freeh Report, which the NCAA used as the basis for imposing draconian sanctions on Penn State. Lindsay has the same view of the 2011 grand jury presentment, a report that had to invent a lurid rape in the showers of an imaginary child to brand his client forever as a raging, serial pedophile.
"They're all wrong," Lindsay said about the twin works of fiction issued by Freeh and the attorney general's office still venerated by the media. But in the view of Lindsay, a lone voice in the wilderness, his guy is totally innocent. And, Lindsay will tell you, Jerry and his loyal wife, Dottie, also happen to be "two of the bravest and most courageous people I have ever known."
Ask Lindsay how an innocent man winds up in jail, and he cites the work of "an unholy triangle of forces that push these things ahead [in lurid, high profile media cases] and result in false convictions."
He's talking about the convergence of a hysterical media, overzealous prosecutors, and hungry plaintiff's lawyers. All of this was on vivid display at Penn State, as Lindsay is about to explain.
The Unholy Triangle
When a public figure is charged with a lurid crime such as the sexual abuse of children, Lindsay said, "the media are off to the races." They can be counted on to report a "salacious" view of the story, Lindsay said, elevating hysteria and sensationalism over truth and rational thought.
Especially when they are being fed by "overzealous, over aggressive prosecutors who want to make the case," Lindsay said. The prosecutors go to work to convict the accused in the court of public opinion, before the case ever goes to trial. They are typically aided by willing dupes and accomplices in the media, who are all too happy to run with sensational prosecutorial leaks that may or may not be true.
The final ingredient of the unholy triangle, Lindsay said, are "plaintiff's lawyers who look at the diocese [of Philadelphia] or Penn State as a gold mine because it's easy money, and they're so vulnerable."
"I'm a plaintiff's lawyer," Lindsay said, so he fully understands the lure of suing the church or Penn State.
But as far as playing defense goes, whether it's the church or the university, "They're not so much concerned with the truth but with damage control," Lindsay said. "And these plaintiff's lawyers are suing for money, and the plaintiff's lawyers are loving it."
That's exactly what happened at Penn State. Let's start with overzealous prosecutors, who in this case, were not above inventing crimes to put a defendant in jail.
To turn Sandusky into a serial child rapist, and Paterno into an accomplice, the prosecutors had to invent a lurid rape in the showers of a 10-year-old boy, a crime that for two decades has gone without a known victim. The prosecutors did it by twisting the words of Mike McQueary, a confused dope with a known gambling problem and an affinity for sending pictures of his penis to women not his wife.
A guy like that would be putty in the hands of scheming prosecutors and cops. Even though McQueary subsequently stated in an email to a lead prosecutor and the lead investigator in the case a week after the erroneous grand jury report was issued that he never really saw a rape in the showers. The written response of the prosecutor: keep quiet.
Armed with a deliberately false document, the hysterical media went nuts, especially when they had a chance to crucify Joe Paterno, a former Republican Mr. Clean, as an enabler of an assistant coach on an imaginary rape spree. Instead of carrying torches and pitchforks the media mob was armed with cameras and microphones.
In the Sandusky case, Lindsay said, the grand jury "becomes a weapon for an unscrupulous prosecutor." The many leaks from that grand jury, according to state law, should have been investigated by the appointment of a special prosecutor, Lindsay said. But it never happened. In Sandusky's case, Lindsay lamented, all the "safeguards that are built into the grand jury process have been stood on its head."
Finally, the greedy plaintiff's lawyers showed up at Penn State, in search of millions of dollars in easy money. They would not be disappointed.
Sadly, I know how this game works. In the case of the Philadelphia archdiocese, a former altar boy named "Billy Doe" -- real name Danny Gallagher -- made up a story about being sexually abused in serial attacks by two priests and a schoolteacher.
In the criminal courts, Gallagher not only sent three innocent men to jail -- the alleged attackers -- but also Msgr. William J. Lynn, who was falsely accused of not monitoring an abusive priest.
And in the civil courts, thanks to the work of Slade McLaughlin, a Philadelphia plaintiff's lawyer, the altar boy -- a junkie hustler, serial liar and total fraud -- collected $5 million in what was supposed to be a confidential settlement from the Catholic Church.
Gallagher got his cash without offering a single shred of evidence to support his allegations. Indeed, as the Philly D.A.'s former lead detective in that case, Joe Walsh, subsequently came forward to testify in court, all of the evidence, including the testimony of the altar boy's parents -- a cop and a nurse -- and the testimony of Gallagher's older brother -- an altar boy and sexton at the same church -- contradicted Billy Doe's cockamamie and constantly changing stories of abuse.
That's how easy it is for an alleged victim to collect in a high-profile sex abuse case preferably targeting a public figure, or a Catholic priest. You don't need any evidence, all you need is an alleged victim willing to tell a story.
image: [url]https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-amE36oARdXw/XGV3lLmR_rI/AAAAAAAAGDA/cl1vpJ4Gl3AAuMPBjdfnP74mp-bdgn5KwCK4BGAYYCw/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-02-14%2Bat%2B9.07.01%2BAM.png
[/URL]The same Slade McLaughlin who collected $5 million for a complete fraud in Philadelphia, represented a dozen of the alleged victims at Penn State. In all, 36 alleged victims were awarded a total of $118 million -- $3.3 million each.
The money was approved by a board of trustees at Penn State that, according to a lawsuit filed against the university by its own insurance carrier, did little or nothing to vet any of the stories of the alleged victims.
And what a motley crew they were, a conga line of Billy Does. They came with constantly changing stories, thanks to the work of their therapists who presumably used hypnosis and guided imagery to recover supposedly long-buried [and constantly changing] memories of abuse.
A third of these future millionaires had criminal records. But for the plaintiff's lawyers at Penn State, it was easy money. Their clients didn't even have to give up their real names on the way to the bank.
A Moral Lecture From Mr. Integrity
At Penn State, with the trustees' report out of the barn, the people who had been stonewalling the release of the report for nine months shifted to damage control in their best efforts to continue the cover up.
In the wake of the leak of the trustees' report on Louis Freeh, Mark Dambly, the former ruffian and cocaine dealer who is the president of the Penn State board of trustees, called the release of the report card on Freeh a "reprehensible" step that would supposedly undermine a culture where Penn State employees can confidentially report wrongdoing.
Wrong, Mr. Dambly. The release of the report done by the Penn State trustees affirms a culture where Penn State employees can continue to confidentially report wrongdoing. But if something reported confidentially turns out to be actually wrong, to right that wrong, it may be necessary to lay those facts out in the open.
In this case, the report by the minority trustees outed the majority trustees, now led by Dambly, for their collusion, political interference, and ultimate dereliction of duty in their handling of the supposedly independent investigation done by Louis Freeh. Sorry if you were on the wrong end of that, Mr. Dambly.
As the guy who for nine months who led the cover up of the trustees' report, Dambly, a known scoundrel, predictably retreated to the high moral ground. He was enabled by his accomplices in the media who have their own asses to cover. Like Susan Snyder of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but more on that later.
Reporters may have given Dambly cover, but the former drug dealer wasn't safe on twitter. In response to Dambly's statement, "PSUpittsfordNY" posted a video clip of Dambly lying his ass off when reporter Gary Sinderson confronted Dambly about his criminal past.
image: [url]https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gK1EKVAu5fE/XGVlYGNu8nI/AAAAAAAAGCU/pzzEs8ThrYEBayfKjl8QrCzzKu5yFFRkwCK4BGAYYCw/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-02-14%2Bat%2B7.54.34%2BAM.png
[/URL]It's great stuff because in 2012, Dambly was a Penn state trustee who had supported criminal background checks for university employees. Reporter Sinderson of WJAC Johnstown Channel 6 turned the tables on Dambly in a video posted on youtube.com by asking if he had been arrested in 1979.
"I'm not aware of that," Dambly responded twice on camera. As he was walking away, in unreleased video recorded by the TV station, Sinderson asked Dambly about his alleged association with members of an infamous cocaine ring.
"I don't recall that either," Dambly said.
When asked by his fellow trustees during an executive session about his arrest, Dambly replied that it was "undocumented." But it was documented. And there are law enforcement types around who still remember Dambly's role in the cocaine ring.
First, the arrest. Back in 1979, on the weekend of a Penn State-Temple football game, Dambly was involved in an incident where three students got beaten up during a fight in the Pugh Street parking garage.
Dambly was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. If convicted, he faced a fine of $2,500 and a year in jail. Dambly promptly hired R. Bruce Manchester of Bellefonte, PA as his lawyer. On Nov. 17, 1979, Manchester sent Dambly a letter telling him he had been offered a plea bargain by the Centre County District Attorney's Office that included pleading guilty to disorderly conduct, spending five days in jail, and paying a $200 fine. It was a deal that Dambly took.
"By pleading guilty you will have a police record which may have to be disclosed on various occasions in the future," Manchester wrote Dambly. "You stated to me on Wednesday the 28th that your career goal is to be a real estate broker."
TV reporter Sinderson also asked Dambly about the infamous "Dr. Snow" yuppie cocaine ring run by Larry Lavin, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania dental school, that operated between 1978 and 1984.
In 1986, a judge sentenced three dentists to jail for their roles in the ring that the FBI said was then the largest known cocaine distribution enterprise in the history of the Philadelphia area, grossing up to $5 million a month.
A retired investigator who worked the Lavin case and sought anonymity said that a former FBI agent, Leo Pedrotty, who has since died, became Dambly's handler after Dambly decided to wear a wire to get himself out of a legal jam.
"Pedrotty was responsible for placing the recording equipment on Dambly and monitoring the results as Dambly secretly recorded conversations about the massive drug operation," the investigator wrote. "In exchange, Dambly would not be prosecuted and there would be no asset forfeiture action."
And this is the guy who's giving us a moral lecture about what constitutes being "reprehensible" in the Penn State scandal.
Accomplices In the Media
image: [url]https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uqda_lVVpXw/XGVlj_kjoII/AAAAAAAAGCc/gYQnd_3RmW0SjcZhHJZFj-Hgz3pbrGSlQCK4BGAYYCw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-02-14%2Bat%2B7.55.16%2BAM.png
[/URL]Finally, to keep up with the unending work of accomplices in the media, we come to one Susan Snyder, staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
I happen to know from my own sources that Snyder, who allegedly covers higher education, has turned a deaf ear for years on requests to look into what really happened at Penn State. Nothing to see here folks. We got it right the first time.
But when I wrote a blog post earlier this week about WJAC-TV having a copy of the trustees report on Freeh, I mentioned that the Inquirer also had the report, but was sitting on it.
Snyder and her newspaper promptly sprang into action. Or should I call it reverse action.
Her story is a textbook example of media bias and slanted news coverage. She and her newspaper should be ashamed of themselves, but I know from long experience that they fancy themselves as above all that.
Snyder begins her "objective" piece by noting in the lead paragraph that the report is the work of "longstanding critics" of Freeh.
Holding her nose, she then prints one paragraph of quotes from the trustees' report that dares to be critical of Freeh.
Then, in paragraph Three, she writes: "The report, signed by seven alumni-elected members of the school's board of trustees, attempts to make its case by highlighting emails and handwritten comments by investigators that seem to question the report's conclusions and Freeh's motivation, evidence that they say was ignored or never shared, a list of key people Freeh's team never interviewed, and questioned the interviewers couldn't answer."
Paragraph Four: "In many ways, it's a summary of claims that Penn State defenders have made in the years since the scandal broke, this time with material from Fresh's investigation that they say bolsters their view. For years, they have challenged prosecutors' suggestions that head football coach Joe Paterno and school administrators may have ignored a serial predator in their midst. They seethed at the NCAA sanctions, fumed at Fresh's report, and ran en masse for alumni seats on the board."
Paragraph Five: "When they got elected, they sued the university and won access to the hundreds of thousands of interviews notes and documents that Freeh, also a former judge, used to prepare his report, then spent hundreds of hours poring over them."
Paragraph Six: Penn State's leadership criticized the release of the report, and Freeh dismissed it as inconsequential, biased and inaccurate, a misguided attempt to turn back the clock and exonerate the university and its former leaders -- since convicted of endangerment -- for not stopping Sandusky years earlier.
Paragraph Seven: "The deniers continue to embarrass the many thousands of outstanding Penn State students, faculty and alumni by blindly disregarding the uncontroverted facts in favor of a misguided agenda," Freeh said in a statement.
Paragraph Eight: "It's release continues what has been an unending battle for those who believe that the former Penn State leaders perhaps made some misjudgments about how to handle Sandusky but did nothing intentionally wrong, and that a vaunted football program was scapegoated."
Again, this is a shining example of outrageously biased and slanted journalism, partisan commentary, reverse spin and damage control dressed up as a news story. By somebody, who, if what the trustees wrote was true, has a conflict of interest because she and her newspaper blew the story.
In the first eight paragraphs of her story, Snyder quotes the critics for precisely one paragraph, while spending a total of six paragraphs impugning the alleged motives of those same critics. Then she spends one paragraph allowing Freeh to defend himself, and another paragraph quoting university "leadership" who were actively engaged in covering up the report.
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</tbody>Instead of reporting the news, she's editorializing. And in classic fashion, she's impugning the motives of the people who wrote the report, rather than deal with the evidence that the report presents.
On twitter, and in an email, I asked Snyder how, as "one reporter to another," she could ignore that the trustees wrote about a contemporaneous but previously unknown federal investigation on the Penn State campus. A federal investigation that concluded that the only witness to the alleged shower rape, Mike McQueary, wasn't credible, and that there was no official cover up at Penn State.
The federal investigation, done in 2012, was disclosed in 2017 after the filing of a Freedom of Information request. The investigation was conducted for six months on the Penn State campus by former NCIS Special Agent and cold case investigator John Snedden, who wrote a 110-page report posted online.
Snedden's report, and many comments he made in two interviews with Big Trial, were quoted extensively by the trustees in their report. But Snyder willfully ignored it. She also did not respond on twitter to my comments, or to an email I sent her.
In her story, Snyder, in full cover up mode, gave Freeh a platform for a couple more paragraphs to take shots at his critics, such as calling them "a gang of deniers" who wrote a "misguided, tilted, dishonest and biased" report.
Of course, she didn't ask Freeh any hard questions, like whether he really did have a conflict of interest, as the trustees asserted in their report. The evidence of this was disclosed in Fresh's own internal emails, published in the trustees report, where he openly stated that he wanted to use the Penn State investigation as a stepping stone to become the "go-to investigator" for the scandal-plagued NCAA.
Snyder also didn't ask Freeh, as I did last year, about the many emails in the so-called Freeh source materials that show that former deputy Attorney General Frank Fina was routinely leaking grand jury secrets, along with grand jury transcripts, to Freeh and his investigators, in blatant and repeated violations of state law.
When I asked Freeh as a private citizen while he was investigating Penn State, to explain how he and his investigators were authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, he declined comment.
But Snyder wasn't going to ask Freeh any hard questions; instead she published verbatim a four-page statement he put out impugning the messengers.
Why? Because Snyder is no objective journalist on this story. She's a partisan actively involved in carrying water for the prosecutors, Louis Freeh and Penn State trustees, all of whom are still actively engaged in an ongoing cover up of their own collusion, misconduct, and dereliction of duty in the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State.
It's shameful but sadly, it's nothing new for the Inquirer. In the Billy Doe scandal, as I have previously mentioned, after publishing more than 60 news stories and editorials that presented Billy as a legitimate victim of sex abuse, and castigating the church and the accused defendants, the Inquirer has never written one story that tells its readers it was a phony prosecution, and that the accused were innocent. Even after the D.A.'s office let the last innocent guy sent to jail -- a Catholic schoolteacher falsely convicted of child rape -- out nearly a dozen years early.
This time, in another sex abuse case that they blew to hell, instead of ignoring the truth, the Inky is actively involved in leading the cover up. They're attacking the messengers and shielding the miscreants, to ensure that the truth never comes out.
Shameful and corrupt.
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for BigTrial.net
Alexander H. Lindsay Jr. was happy to read the formerly confidential report done by seven Penn State trustees cataloging the many faults and failures of the Louis Freeh Report.
"We agree with the substance of the [trustees'] report" on Freeh, Lindsay said. "But it doesn't go far enough."
Lindsay, a former Butler County assistant district attorney and a former assistant U.S. Attorney under Dick Thornburg, is the long-suffering defense lawyer for Jerry Sandusky. His review of the Freeh Report is far more succinct than the 113-page trustees' review.
"It's total fiction from top to bottom," Lindsay said about the Freeh Report, which the NCAA used as the basis for imposing draconian sanctions on Penn State. Lindsay has the same view of the 2011 grand jury presentment, a report that had to invent a lurid rape in the showers of an imaginary child to brand his client forever as a raging, serial pedophile.
"They're all wrong," Lindsay said about the twin works of fiction issued by Freeh and the attorney general's office still venerated by the media. But in the view of Lindsay, a lone voice in the wilderness, his guy is totally innocent. And, Lindsay will tell you, Jerry and his loyal wife, Dottie, also happen to be "two of the bravest and most courageous people I have ever known."
Ask Lindsay how an innocent man winds up in jail, and he cites the work of "an unholy triangle of forces that push these things ahead [in lurid, high profile media cases] and result in false convictions."
He's talking about the convergence of a hysterical media, overzealous prosecutors, and hungry plaintiff's lawyers. All of this was on vivid display at Penn State, as Lindsay is about to explain.
The Unholy Triangle
When a public figure is charged with a lurid crime such as the sexual abuse of children, Lindsay said, "the media are off to the races." They can be counted on to report a "salacious" view of the story, Lindsay said, elevating hysteria and sensationalism over truth and rational thought.
Especially when they are being fed by "overzealous, over aggressive prosecutors who want to make the case," Lindsay said. The prosecutors go to work to convict the accused in the court of public opinion, before the case ever goes to trial. They are typically aided by willing dupes and accomplices in the media, who are all too happy to run with sensational prosecutorial leaks that may or may not be true.
The final ingredient of the unholy triangle, Lindsay said, are "plaintiff's lawyers who look at the diocese [of Philadelphia] or Penn State as a gold mine because it's easy money, and they're so vulnerable."
"I'm a plaintiff's lawyer," Lindsay said, so he fully understands the lure of suing the church or Penn State.
But as far as playing defense goes, whether it's the church or the university, "They're not so much concerned with the truth but with damage control," Lindsay said. "And these plaintiff's lawyers are suing for money, and the plaintiff's lawyers are loving it."
That's exactly what happened at Penn State. Let's start with overzealous prosecutors, who in this case, were not above inventing crimes to put a defendant in jail.
To turn Sandusky into a serial child rapist, and Paterno into an accomplice, the prosecutors had to invent a lurid rape in the showers of a 10-year-old boy, a crime that for two decades has gone without a known victim. The prosecutors did it by twisting the words of Mike McQueary, a confused dope with a known gambling problem and an affinity for sending pictures of his penis to women not his wife.
A guy like that would be putty in the hands of scheming prosecutors and cops. Even though McQueary subsequently stated in an email to a lead prosecutor and the lead investigator in the case a week after the erroneous grand jury report was issued that he never really saw a rape in the showers. The written response of the prosecutor: keep quiet.
Armed with a deliberately false document, the hysterical media went nuts, especially when they had a chance to crucify Joe Paterno, a former Republican Mr. Clean, as an enabler of an assistant coach on an imaginary rape spree. Instead of carrying torches and pitchforks the media mob was armed with cameras and microphones.
In the Sandusky case, Lindsay said, the grand jury "becomes a weapon for an unscrupulous prosecutor." The many leaks from that grand jury, according to state law, should have been investigated by the appointment of a special prosecutor, Lindsay said. But it never happened. In Sandusky's case, Lindsay lamented, all the "safeguards that are built into the grand jury process have been stood on its head."
Finally, the greedy plaintiff's lawyers showed up at Penn State, in search of millions of dollars in easy money. They would not be disappointed.
Sadly, I know how this game works. In the case of the Philadelphia archdiocese, a former altar boy named "Billy Doe" -- real name Danny Gallagher -- made up a story about being sexually abused in serial attacks by two priests and a schoolteacher.
In the criminal courts, Gallagher not only sent three innocent men to jail -- the alleged attackers -- but also Msgr. William J. Lynn, who was falsely accused of not monitoring an abusive priest.
And in the civil courts, thanks to the work of Slade McLaughlin, a Philadelphia plaintiff's lawyer, the altar boy -- a junkie hustler, serial liar and total fraud -- collected $5 million in what was supposed to be a confidential settlement from the Catholic Church.
Gallagher got his cash without offering a single shred of evidence to support his allegations. Indeed, as the Philly D.A.'s former lead detective in that case, Joe Walsh, subsequently came forward to testify in court, all of the evidence, including the testimony of the altar boy's parents -- a cop and a nurse -- and the testimony of Gallagher's older brother -- an altar boy and sexton at the same church -- contradicted Billy Doe's cockamamie and constantly changing stories of abuse.
That's how easy it is for an alleged victim to collect in a high-profile sex abuse case preferably targeting a public figure, or a Catholic priest. You don't need any evidence, all you need is an alleged victim willing to tell a story.
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The money was approved by a board of trustees at Penn State that, according to a lawsuit filed against the university by its own insurance carrier, did little or nothing to vet any of the stories of the alleged victims.
And what a motley crew they were, a conga line of Billy Does. They came with constantly changing stories, thanks to the work of their therapists who presumably used hypnosis and guided imagery to recover supposedly long-buried [and constantly changing] memories of abuse.
A third of these future millionaires had criminal records. But for the plaintiff's lawyers at Penn State, it was easy money. Their clients didn't even have to give up their real names on the way to the bank.
A Moral Lecture From Mr. Integrity
At Penn State, with the trustees' report out of the barn, the people who had been stonewalling the release of the report for nine months shifted to damage control in their best efforts to continue the cover up.
In the wake of the leak of the trustees' report on Louis Freeh, Mark Dambly, the former ruffian and cocaine dealer who is the president of the Penn State board of trustees, called the release of the report card on Freeh a "reprehensible" step that would supposedly undermine a culture where Penn State employees can confidentially report wrongdoing.
Wrong, Mr. Dambly. The release of the report done by the Penn State trustees affirms a culture where Penn State employees can continue to confidentially report wrongdoing. But if something reported confidentially turns out to be actually wrong, to right that wrong, it may be necessary to lay those facts out in the open.
In this case, the report by the minority trustees outed the majority trustees, now led by Dambly, for their collusion, political interference, and ultimate dereliction of duty in their handling of the supposedly independent investigation done by Louis Freeh. Sorry if you were on the wrong end of that, Mr. Dambly.
As the guy who for nine months who led the cover up of the trustees' report, Dambly, a known scoundrel, predictably retreated to the high moral ground. He was enabled by his accomplices in the media who have their own asses to cover. Like Susan Snyder of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but more on that later.
Reporters may have given Dambly cover, but the former drug dealer wasn't safe on twitter. In response to Dambly's statement, "PSUpittsfordNY" posted a video clip of Dambly lying his ass off when reporter Gary Sinderson confronted Dambly about his criminal past.
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"I'm not aware of that," Dambly responded twice on camera. As he was walking away, in unreleased video recorded by the TV station, Sinderson asked Dambly about his alleged association with members of an infamous cocaine ring.
"I don't recall that either," Dambly said.
When asked by his fellow trustees during an executive session about his arrest, Dambly replied that it was "undocumented." But it was documented. And there are law enforcement types around who still remember Dambly's role in the cocaine ring.
First, the arrest. Back in 1979, on the weekend of a Penn State-Temple football game, Dambly was involved in an incident where three students got beaten up during a fight in the Pugh Street parking garage.
Dambly was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. If convicted, he faced a fine of $2,500 and a year in jail. Dambly promptly hired R. Bruce Manchester of Bellefonte, PA as his lawyer. On Nov. 17, 1979, Manchester sent Dambly a letter telling him he had been offered a plea bargain by the Centre County District Attorney's Office that included pleading guilty to disorderly conduct, spending five days in jail, and paying a $200 fine. It was a deal that Dambly took.
"By pleading guilty you will have a police record which may have to be disclosed on various occasions in the future," Manchester wrote Dambly. "You stated to me on Wednesday the 28th that your career goal is to be a real estate broker."
TV reporter Sinderson also asked Dambly about the infamous "Dr. Snow" yuppie cocaine ring run by Larry Lavin, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania dental school, that operated between 1978 and 1984.
In 1986, a judge sentenced three dentists to jail for their roles in the ring that the FBI said was then the largest known cocaine distribution enterprise in the history of the Philadelphia area, grossing up to $5 million a month.
A retired investigator who worked the Lavin case and sought anonymity said that a former FBI agent, Leo Pedrotty, who has since died, became Dambly's handler after Dambly decided to wear a wire to get himself out of a legal jam.
"Pedrotty was responsible for placing the recording equipment on Dambly and monitoring the results as Dambly secretly recorded conversations about the massive drug operation," the investigator wrote. "In exchange, Dambly would not be prosecuted and there would be no asset forfeiture action."
And this is the guy who's giving us a moral lecture about what constitutes being "reprehensible" in the Penn State scandal.
Accomplices In the Media
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I happen to know from my own sources that Snyder, who allegedly covers higher education, has turned a deaf ear for years on requests to look into what really happened at Penn State. Nothing to see here folks. We got it right the first time.
But when I wrote a blog post earlier this week about WJAC-TV having a copy of the trustees report on Freeh, I mentioned that the Inquirer also had the report, but was sitting on it.
Snyder and her newspaper promptly sprang into action. Or should I call it reverse action.
Her story is a textbook example of media bias and slanted news coverage. She and her newspaper should be ashamed of themselves, but I know from long experience that they fancy themselves as above all that.
Snyder begins her "objective" piece by noting in the lead paragraph that the report is the work of "longstanding critics" of Freeh.
Holding her nose, she then prints one paragraph of quotes from the trustees' report that dares to be critical of Freeh.
Then, in paragraph Three, she writes: "The report, signed by seven alumni-elected members of the school's board of trustees, attempts to make its case by highlighting emails and handwritten comments by investigators that seem to question the report's conclusions and Freeh's motivation, evidence that they say was ignored or never shared, a list of key people Freeh's team never interviewed, and questioned the interviewers couldn't answer."
Paragraph Four: "In many ways, it's a summary of claims that Penn State defenders have made in the years since the scandal broke, this time with material from Fresh's investigation that they say bolsters their view. For years, they have challenged prosecutors' suggestions that head football coach Joe Paterno and school administrators may have ignored a serial predator in their midst. They seethed at the NCAA sanctions, fumed at Fresh's report, and ran en masse for alumni seats on the board."
Paragraph Five: "When they got elected, they sued the university and won access to the hundreds of thousands of interviews notes and documents that Freeh, also a former judge, used to prepare his report, then spent hundreds of hours poring over them."
Paragraph Six: Penn State's leadership criticized the release of the report, and Freeh dismissed it as inconsequential, biased and inaccurate, a misguided attempt to turn back the clock and exonerate the university and its former leaders -- since convicted of endangerment -- for not stopping Sandusky years earlier.
Paragraph Seven: "The deniers continue to embarrass the many thousands of outstanding Penn State students, faculty and alumni by blindly disregarding the uncontroverted facts in favor of a misguided agenda," Freeh said in a statement.
Paragraph Eight: "It's release continues what has been an unending battle for those who believe that the former Penn State leaders perhaps made some misjudgments about how to handle Sandusky but did nothing intentionally wrong, and that a vaunted football program was scapegoated."
Again, this is a shining example of outrageously biased and slanted journalism, partisan commentary, reverse spin and damage control dressed up as a news story. By somebody, who, if what the trustees wrote was true, has a conflict of interest because she and her newspaper blew the story.
In the first eight paragraphs of her story, Snyder quotes the critics for precisely one paragraph, while spending a total of six paragraphs impugning the alleged motives of those same critics. Then she spends one paragraph allowing Freeh to defend himself, and another paragraph quoting university "leadership" who were actively engaged in covering up the report.
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| Two Stories The Inky Blew To Hell: Sandusky & Lynn |
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On twitter, and in an email, I asked Snyder how, as "one reporter to another," she could ignore that the trustees wrote about a contemporaneous but previously unknown federal investigation on the Penn State campus. A federal investigation that concluded that the only witness to the alleged shower rape, Mike McQueary, wasn't credible, and that there was no official cover up at Penn State.
The federal investigation, done in 2012, was disclosed in 2017 after the filing of a Freedom of Information request. The investigation was conducted for six months on the Penn State campus by former NCIS Special Agent and cold case investigator John Snedden, who wrote a 110-page report posted online.
Snedden's report, and many comments he made in two interviews with Big Trial, were quoted extensively by the trustees in their report. But Snyder willfully ignored it. She also did not respond on twitter to my comments, or to an email I sent her.
In her story, Snyder, in full cover up mode, gave Freeh a platform for a couple more paragraphs to take shots at his critics, such as calling them "a gang of deniers" who wrote a "misguided, tilted, dishonest and biased" report.
Of course, she didn't ask Freeh any hard questions, like whether he really did have a conflict of interest, as the trustees asserted in their report. The evidence of this was disclosed in Fresh's own internal emails, published in the trustees report, where he openly stated that he wanted to use the Penn State investigation as a stepping stone to become the "go-to investigator" for the scandal-plagued NCAA.
Snyder also didn't ask Freeh, as I did last year, about the many emails in the so-called Freeh source materials that show that former deputy Attorney General Frank Fina was routinely leaking grand jury secrets, along with grand jury transcripts, to Freeh and his investigators, in blatant and repeated violations of state law.
When I asked Freeh as a private citizen while he was investigating Penn State, to explain how he and his investigators were authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, he declined comment.
But Snyder wasn't going to ask Freeh any hard questions; instead she published verbatim a four-page statement he put out impugning the messengers.
Why? Because Snyder is no objective journalist on this story. She's a partisan actively involved in carrying water for the prosecutors, Louis Freeh and Penn State trustees, all of whom are still actively engaged in an ongoing cover up of their own collusion, misconduct, and dereliction of duty in the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State.
It's shameful but sadly, it's nothing new for the Inquirer. In the Billy Doe scandal, as I have previously mentioned, after publishing more than 60 news stories and editorials that presented Billy as a legitimate victim of sex abuse, and castigating the church and the accused defendants, the Inquirer has never written one story that tells its readers it was a phony prosecution, and that the accused were innocent. Even after the D.A.'s office let the last innocent guy sent to jail -- a Catholic schoolteacher falsely convicted of child rape -- out nearly a dozen years early.
This time, in another sex abuse case that they blew to hell, instead of ignoring the truth, the Inky is actively involved in leading the cover up. They're attacking the messengers and shielding the miscreants, to ensure that the truth never comes out.
Shameful and corrupt.
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Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2019/02/an-unholy-triangle.html#a5adpihOYOtmaPjS.99[/FONT]
big trial | philadelphia trial blog giving readers an unvarnished, uncensored, insider's view of the biggest courtroom drama
big trial (@bigtrialblog) 2/22/19, 9:45 am
sandusky's lawyer, former ncis special agent snedden to speak
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[h=2]friday, february 22, 2019[/h][font="][h=3]press conference in happy valley[/h]
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[/url]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o9nj256e_...1600/screen+shot+2019-02-22+at+9.27.26+am.pngon monday at 10 a.m., al lindsay, jerry sandusky's appeals lawyer, will talk to the media about his reaction to the report of seven penn state trustees on the "flawed methodology and conclusions" of the louis freeh report.
"of course we are gratified that somebody in a position of authority has challenged the freeh report, which, of course, we believe was flawed in many ways," lindsay said in a press release. "i must reluctantly state, however, that there is a significant flaw in the a7 report. The report accepts as gospel that jerry sandusky actually did these things. So much of what is wrong in the freeh report and the a7 response, is that we are operating under that paradigm. Of course, it is our position from day one that jerry sandusky is absolutely innocent of the charges and was convicted of the various counts only by a very flawed criminal trial."
also appearing with lindsay will be john snedden, a former ncis special agent who conducted a contemporaneous but previously unknown federal investigation on the penn state campus for six months in 2012 and found no official cover up.
In the press release, snedden described previous investigations at penn state as "politically motivated, agenda-driven, and collusive."
"what does that previously unknown concurrent and independent federal investigation have to say about this whole mess?" snedden said in the press release. "monday at 10 a.m. Be there."
the press conference will be held at the country inn & suites by radisson, 1357 east college avenue, state college pa.
Also appearing at the press conference will be ralph cipriano of bigtrial.net. Cipriano will talk about how confidential documents show that the entire board of trustees at penn state paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims of sandusky -- an average of $3.3 million each -- without having those alleged victims questioned by lawyers, forensic psychiatrists or detectives, or subjected to polygraph tests or criminal background checks.
"easy money," is how big trial has described the payouts at penn state.
Lindsay presently has an appeal before the state supreme court on sandusky's behalf filed under the post-conviction relief act. "hopefully, we will be granted a new trial," lindsay said.
The press conference caps some recent new developments in the so-called penn state sex scandal. The report done by the trustees on freeh was recently leaked. The leaking of that report, and perhaps the contents as well, are expected to dominate a meeting of the full board of trustees at penn state today.
Meanwhile, former penn state president graham spanier, who was the subject of snedden's investigation, yesterday lost his appeal to the state supreme court of his conviction of one count of endangering the welfare of a child. As a result of the appeal, spanier may be headed to jail to serve a sentence of two months, followed by two months of home confinement.
posted by ralph cipriano at <a class="timestamp-link" href="http://www.bigtrial.net/2019/02/press-conference-in-happy-valley.html" rel="bookmark" title="permanent link" style="color: Rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration-line: None;"><abbr class="published" title="2019-02-22t09:40:00-05:00" style="border: None;">9:40 am</abbr>
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tuesday, march 28, 2017
special agent who investigated spanier blows up case
fis special agent john snedden
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by ralph cipriano
for bigtrial.net
what if everything you thought you knew about the so-called penn state sex abuse scandal wasn't true?
http://www.bigtrial.net/2017/03/spec...anier.html?m=1
what if that infamous locker room incident that mike mcqueary supposedly witnessed 16 years ago -- featuring a naked jerry sandusky cavorting in the showers with an underage boy -- had nothing to do with sex? And what if the only two officials at psu who ever spoke directly to former psu president graham spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?
And what if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated u.s. Special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called penn state scandal but nobody knew about it until now?
[FONT="]Exactly right Joe ! [/FONT][FONT="]
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[FONT="][h=1]Letter to the editor | Take another look at Sandusky case[/h]
- By Joseph R. Stains
- <time datetime="2019-02-24T00:50:00-05:00" class="x_tnt-date x_asset-date x_text-muted" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">19 hrs ago</time>
Regarding the Feb. 17 column on the Freeh Report controversy.
Louis Freeh’s findings in reports, including the Jerry Sandusky case, are often based on speculation more than evidence.
The (John) Snedden report of 2012 reached vastly different conclusions.
The Sandusky case is under scrutiny – especially the 2001 shower assault. Consider:
• The grand jury dated the incident at March 2002. When the visit to Joe Paterno was confirmed February 2001, reason to re-date it was belatedly sought and sold.
• The eyewitness’ father and doctor interviewed him the night it happened. Both testified that he could not describe seeing any activity – only that he heard slapping sounds. They concluded there was nothing to report. No indictment resulted. Weeks later, Timothy Curley and Gary Schultz questioned him carefully and reached the same conclusion. Ten years later, they were indicted.
• From 2001-2011, the witness socialized with Sandusky and volunteered for his fundraisers.
• In 2010, police solicited his testimony. He then could not identify Sandusky in the same space as the youth. In 2011, he placed them in direct contact, but could not verify anything sexual. Rape, described only in the report (leaked to media), was refuted by the witness in an email, unknown to others until after the trial.
• The person self-identified as Victim 2 in the shower went on record in 2011 that Sandusky never abused him. Years later, PSU awarded him damages, though he never specified assault in the incident.
This case begs for fresh review. The unpleasant digging will not end until it happens.
Joseph R. Stains
Mt. Hope
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[h=1]'This Is Not Going to Go Away.' Sandusky's Attorney Discusses Continued Pursuit of New Trial, Alumni Trustee Report[/h]by Geoff Rushton on February 25, 2019 3:22 PM
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Jerry Sandusky's post-conviction attorney said he will continue to pursue a new trial for his client and that if a new one is granted, he believes he will prove Sandusky's innocence.
Attorney Al Lindsay spoke at a press conference Monday at the Country Inn & Suites in State College, where he was joined by a former federal investigator, a longtime colleague and friend of Sandusky and an investigative journalist.
The press conference was spurred by a few recent developments. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Superior Court granted a re-sentencing for Sandusky, but denied his request for a new trial for the former Penn State football assistant coach, who was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison after being convicted in 2012 on 45 counts related to child sexual abuse. Lindsay said he will now petition the state Supreme Court for a new trial, and if that is denied will take it to federal court.
"Anybody who thinks this thing can be suppressed and suppressed and is going to go away, I have two words for you: dream on," Lindsay said. "This is not going to go away. Thirty years from now there will be books written about this [asking] ‘How did our system go so wrong?’"
Last week, meanwhile, seven Penn State alumni trustees' review of the Freeh Reportwas leaked and offered a highly critical look at the university-commissioned investigation and conclusions of former FBI director Louis Freeh's team.
Lindsay praised the report for its insight but said it was flawed because it accepted the premise that Sandusky committed the crimes for which he was convicted. The report, he said, refers to the concept of a "pillar of the community pedophile," who uses his stature to prey on children and dupe other adults.
"To be that type of pedophile, you have to be a very conniving, secretive person," Lindsay said. "In the report, they state themselves that Jerry Sandusky is like a big kid. Those of us who know Jerry well, the idea that he could keep anything secret is ridiculous. This guy is as open as you could possibly imagine... Too many people know Jerry Sandusky and they’ve been intimidated and cowed and [are] afraid to say this is impossible that he could have committed these crimes."
The alumni trustees' report said Freeh's team was compromised by collaboration with the state attorney general's office and the NCAA and ignored critical evidence to conclude that former President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, Senior Vice President Gary Schultz and Coach Joe Paterno knew about Sandusky's actions and covered them up.
The accusations against Paterno and the administrators stemmed from former football assistant Mike McQueary's 2001 report of seeing Sandusky with a boy in a locker room shower. That incident also was a key piece of the prosecution's case against Sandusky. The former administrators said they had not been told of sexual contact, and McQueary has testified that while he believes what he saw was sexual, he did not explicitly describe it as rape, as was stated in a grand jury presentment.
"We like to say McQueary is the Christmas tree upon which all the ornaments were hung," Lindsay said. "[He] is very, very vulnerable to good cross-examination because there were so many different versions of the McQueary testimony."
Lindsay criticized Sandusky's trial attorney, Joe Amendola, for numerous alleged missteps, actions which have formed the basis of Sandusky's post-conviction relief appeal. Among those, Lindsay said Amendola handed off cross-examination of McQueary at trial at the last minute to co-counsel Karl Rominger.
"Karl Rominger had an hour to prepare that cross-examination, the most significant cross-examination maybe in the history of American jurisprudence," Lindsay said. "That’s the kind of ineffective trial counsel Mr. Sandusky had in this case."
The boy at the center of the shower incident was not identified at trial, but Lindsay has argued throughout appeals that he did come forward and first said nothing happened, then retained a lawyer and received a monetary settlement from the university. Lindsay said both prosecutors and Amendola agreed not to identify him at trial.
The alumni trustees' report cites former NCIS agent John Snedden's investigation to determine if Spanier should maintain high-level federal security clearance for potential government work. Snedden, who spoke on Monday, found no wrongdoing by Spanier and has been critical of Freeh's investigation as well.
But, Lindsay said, the alumni trustees report does not note that Snedden's investigation concluded Sandusky had done nothing criminal.
"There was no cover up. There was no conspiracy," Snedden said. "There was nothing to cover up."
Snedden said his investigation led him to believe that Freeh's report was pre-determined "to satisfy his clients and handlers," and was used to justify decisions made by the Penn State Board of Trustees.
"It is abundantly clear now Freeh was not interested in any exculpatory information as it would adversely impact his already written pre-determined conclusions," said Snedden, who also questioned McQueary's credibility as a witness and the political motivations of the attorney general's office and former Gov. Tom Corbett.
Former Penn State assistant coach Dick Anderson, who worked alongside Sandusky for decades, described his own experience of being interviewed by Freeh's team, which told him the interview would not be recorded and he could not have access to any notes taken. He said he was met with leading statements such as "We hear that Joe Paterno runs everything at this university." Anderson said the perception of Paterno having an outsize or improper influence on university operations was far from the truth.
Anderson added that while he was not personally threatened or bullied by Freeh investigators, he knew many others who were, some to the point of tears.
"Louie Freeh was deceptive and dishonest," Anderson said. "He hurt many people and a great institution with a false narrative."
Investigative reporter Ralph Cipriano, a former Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer writer who has covered the Sandusky case in depth on BigTrial.net, said the alumni trustees report "just scratches the surface of the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State."
That, he said, is the university's payment of $118 million to 36 people who said they were abused by Sandusky. Those claimants were not interviewed, deposed or subjected to background checks, he said.
Cipriano cited his conversations with a former FBI agent who privately investigated more than 150 abuse cases for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and noted several "red flags" in the Penn State case. He said those included that for the 36 claims of abuse over four decades, there were no contemporaneous complaints, that stories changed frequently and that much-criticized repressed memory therapy seemed to be used to recall the incidents.
He also said that Sandusky's medical records show multiple ailments and genetic conditions that would make it unlikely Sandusky would be sexually aggressive.
Cipriano said "we in the media often get sex abuse wrong," and that the Sandusky case has been "a journalistic disaster."
Lindsay said the case in the media was built on the earliest stories and that he challenges journalists to look into it more closely.
"This is one heck of a story about how all of this happened," Lindsay said. "My deal is to challenge the media. OK that was a story. You built on a narrative. But we need to start a new narrative, that the whole doggone thing is preposterous. It’s a horror story and it deserves attention."
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Attorney Al Lindsay spoke at a press conference Monday at the Country Inn & Suites in State College, where he was joined by a former federal investigator, a longtime colleague and friend of Sandusky and an investigative journalist.
The press conference was spurred by a few recent developments. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Superior Court granted a re-sentencing for Sandusky, but denied his request for a new trial for the former Penn State football assistant coach, who was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison after being convicted in 2012 on 45 counts related to child sexual abuse. Lindsay said he will now petition the state Supreme Court for a new trial, and if that is denied will take it to federal court.
"Anybody who thinks this thing can be suppressed and suppressed and is going to go away, I have two words for you: dream on," Lindsay said. "This is not going to go away. Thirty years from now there will be books written about this [asking] ‘How did our system go so wrong?’"
Last week, meanwhile, seven Penn State alumni trustees' review of the Freeh Reportwas leaked and offered a highly critical look at the university-commissioned investigation and conclusions of former FBI director Louis Freeh's team.
Lindsay praised the report for its insight but said it was flawed because it accepted the premise that Sandusky committed the crimes for which he was convicted. The report, he said, refers to the concept of a "pillar of the community pedophile," who uses his stature to prey on children and dupe other adults.
"To be that type of pedophile, you have to be a very conniving, secretive person," Lindsay said. "In the report, they state themselves that Jerry Sandusky is like a big kid. Those of us who know Jerry well, the idea that he could keep anything secret is ridiculous. This guy is as open as you could possibly imagine... Too many people know Jerry Sandusky and they’ve been intimidated and cowed and [are] afraid to say this is impossible that he could have committed these crimes."
The alumni trustees' report said Freeh's team was compromised by collaboration with the state attorney general's office and the NCAA and ignored critical evidence to conclude that former President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, Senior Vice President Gary Schultz and Coach Joe Paterno knew about Sandusky's actions and covered them up.
The accusations against Paterno and the administrators stemmed from former football assistant Mike McQueary's 2001 report of seeing Sandusky with a boy in a locker room shower. That incident also was a key piece of the prosecution's case against Sandusky. The former administrators said they had not been told of sexual contact, and McQueary has testified that while he believes what he saw was sexual, he did not explicitly describe it as rape, as was stated in a grand jury presentment.
"We like to say McQueary is the Christmas tree upon which all the ornaments were hung," Lindsay said. "[He] is very, very vulnerable to good cross-examination because there were so many different versions of the McQueary testimony."
Lindsay criticized Sandusky's trial attorney, Joe Amendola, for numerous alleged missteps, actions which have formed the basis of Sandusky's post-conviction relief appeal. Among those, Lindsay said Amendola handed off cross-examination of McQueary at trial at the last minute to co-counsel Karl Rominger.
"Karl Rominger had an hour to prepare that cross-examination, the most significant cross-examination maybe in the history of American jurisprudence," Lindsay said. "That’s the kind of ineffective trial counsel Mr. Sandusky had in this case."
The boy at the center of the shower incident was not identified at trial, but Lindsay has argued throughout appeals that he did come forward and first said nothing happened, then retained a lawyer and received a monetary settlement from the university. Lindsay said both prosecutors and Amendola agreed not to identify him at trial.
The alumni trustees' report cites former NCIS agent John Snedden's investigation to determine if Spanier should maintain high-level federal security clearance for potential government work. Snedden, who spoke on Monday, found no wrongdoing by Spanier and has been critical of Freeh's investigation as well.
But, Lindsay said, the alumni trustees report does not note that Snedden's investigation concluded Sandusky had done nothing criminal.
"There was no cover up. There was no conspiracy," Snedden said. "There was nothing to cover up."
Snedden said his investigation led him to believe that Freeh's report was pre-determined "to satisfy his clients and handlers," and was used to justify decisions made by the Penn State Board of Trustees.
"It is abundantly clear now Freeh was not interested in any exculpatory information as it would adversely impact his already written pre-determined conclusions," said Snedden, who also questioned McQueary's credibility as a witness and the political motivations of the attorney general's office and former Gov. Tom Corbett.
Former Penn State assistant coach Dick Anderson, who worked alongside Sandusky for decades, described his own experience of being interviewed by Freeh's team, which told him the interview would not be recorded and he could not have access to any notes taken. He said he was met with leading statements such as "We hear that Joe Paterno runs everything at this university." Anderson said the perception of Paterno having an outsize or improper influence on university operations was far from the truth.
Anderson added that while he was not personally threatened or bullied by Freeh investigators, he knew many others who were, some to the point of tears.
"Louie Freeh was deceptive and dishonest," Anderson said. "He hurt many people and a great institution with a false narrative."
Investigative reporter Ralph Cipriano, a former Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer writer who has covered the Sandusky case in depth on BigTrial.net, said the alumni trustees report "just scratches the surface of the scandal behind the scandal at Penn State."
That, he said, is the university's payment of $118 million to 36 people who said they were abused by Sandusky. Those claimants were not interviewed, deposed or subjected to background checks, he said.
Cipriano cited his conversations with a former FBI agent who privately investigated more than 150 abuse cases for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and noted several "red flags" in the Penn State case. He said those included that for the 36 claims of abuse over four decades, there were no contemporaneous complaints, that stories changed frequently and that much-criticized repressed memory therapy seemed to be used to recall the incidents.
He also said that Sandusky's medical records show multiple ailments and genetic conditions that would make it unlikely Sandusky would be sexually aggressive.
Cipriano said "we in the media often get sex abuse wrong," and that the Sandusky case has been "a journalistic disaster."
Lindsay said the case in the media was built on the earliest stories and that he challenges journalists to look into it more closely.
"This is one heck of a story about how all of this happened," Lindsay said. "My deal is to challenge the media. OK that was a story. You built on a narrative. But we need to start a new narrative, that the whole doggone thing is preposterous. It’s a horror story and it deserves attention."
[h=3]Cipriano: 'An X-Rated Comic Book' That Cost Penn State $118 Million[/h][FONT="][/FONT]
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Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2019/03/an-x-rated-comic-book-that-cost-penn.html#VAt5OOiL7VTZRqQq.99[/FONT]
[FONT="]3/10/19, 8:20 AM[/FONT]
[FONT="]Discredited Former Political Appointee Louie Freeh’s Fantasy of Self-imagined Impunity Comes to a Crashing Halt: Big Trial: Former Federal Agent On Attorney General & Louis Freeh: 'Two Politically Motivated, Agenda-Driven & Collusive Reports' bigtrial.net/2019/03/federa…[/FONT]
"So the PA disciplinary board has determined Sandusky’s prosecutor should be censured for lying to the grand jury judge (this wasn’t the only time he lied to him), a judge who lost his title due to misconduct in the case, in an effort to flip Penn State’s lawyer, who has also been recommended for censure....
But there is no need to question the entire investigation?!! Unreal. " JZ
https://www.law.com/thelegalintelli...7lowmNg7z38i-HzEr6bvM&slreturn=20190226123027
But there is no need to question the entire investigation?!! Unreal. " JZ
https://www.law.com/thelegalintelli...7lowmNg7z38i-HzEr6bvM&slreturn=20190226123027
