Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell Page 0,111

C. J. Brainerd and V. F. Reyna, The Science of False Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); E. F. Loftus and K. Ketcham, The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994); R. J. McNally, Remembering Trauma (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); R. Ofshe and E. Watters, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Scribner, 1994); D. L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

“I am contacting you…Jerry Sandusky and a child”: Geoffrey Moulton, Jr., Report to the Attorney General of the Investigation of Gerald A. Sandusky, May 30, 2014, Appendix J, filesource.abacast/commonwealthofpa/mp4_podcast/2014_06_23_REPORT_to_AG_ON_THE_SANDUSKY_INVESTIGATION.pdf.

Let’s be clear. The Sandusky case is weird. Ever since Sandusky’s arrest and conviction, a small group of people have insisted that he is innocent. The most outspoken is the radio talk-show host John Ziegler, a conservative-leaning journalist. Ziegler is involved with three others in the website framingpaterno, which is devoted to poking holes in the prosecution’s case against Sandusky.

As I mention in my discussion of the Sandusky case, Ziegler is the one who persuasively argues that there was at least a five-week lag between McQueary’s spotting Sandusky in the shower and his telling anyone in the Penn State leadership about it. See John Ziegler, “New Proof that December 29, 2000, Not February 9, 2001, was the Real Date of the McQueary Episode,” The Framing of Joe Paterno (blog), February 9, 2018, framingpaterno/new-proof-december-29-2000-not-february-9th-2001-was-real-date-mcqueary-episode. Ziegler thinks this is evidence that McQueary didn’t see what he thought he saw. I think it suggests—in the context of default to truth—that McQueary had doubts about what he saw. Needless to say, there is a big difference between those two interpretations.

Ziegler has uncovered a number of other facts, which for reasons of space and focus I did not include in the chapter. (The Sandusky case is a very very deep and winding rabbit hole.) According to Ziegler’s reporting, at least some of Sandusky’s victims are not credible. They appear to have been attracted by the large cash settlements that Penn State was offering and the relatively lax criteria the university used for deciding who would get paid.

In the course of reporting this chapter, I corresponded on several occasions with Ziegler and chatted with him on the phone. He generously shared a number of documents with me—including the memo written by private investigator Curtis Everhart. I’m not convinced of Ziegler’s ultimate conclusion—that Sandusky is innocent. But I do agree with him that the case is much more ambiguous and unusual than the conventional press accounts suggest. If you would like to go down the Sandusky rabbit hole, you may want to start with Ziegler.

A second (and perhaps more mainstream) Sandusky skeptic is author Mark Pendergrast, who published The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment in 2017. Pendergrast argues that the Sandusky case was a classic example of a “moral panic” and the frailty of human memory. I drew heavily from Pendergrast’s book in my account of the Aaron Fisher and Allan Myers cases. One of the noteworthy things about Pendergrast’s book, I must say, is the back cover, which has blurbs from two of the most influential and respected experts on memory in the world: Richard Leo of the University of San Francisco, and Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California at Irvine.

Here is what Loftus had to say: “The Most Hated Man in America tells a truly remarkable story. In all the media coverage the Sandusky case has received, it’s amazing that no one else has noticed or written about so many of these things, including all the ‘memories’ that were retrieved through therapy and litigation. One would think that the sheer insanity of so much of this will have to eventually come out.”

What do I think? I have no idea. I will let others tackle the morass of conflicting evidence and speculation and ambiguity that is the Sandusky case. My interest is simply this: if the case is such a mess, how on earth can you put Spanier, Curley, and Schultz behind bars?

the “graduate assistant…reported what he had seen”: Sandusky Grand Jury Presentment, November 5, 2011, cbsboston.files.wordpress/2011/11/sandusky-grand-jury-presentment.pdf, pp. 6–7.

McQueary’s email to Jonelle Eshbach was obtained by Ray Blehar, a blogger in the Penn State area. Ray Blehar, “Correcting the Record: Part 1: McQueary’s 2001 Eye-witness Report,” Second Mile – Sandusky Scandal (SMSS): Searching for the Truth through a Fog of Deception (Blog), October 9,