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With the Benefit of Hindsight - Ziegler's new documentary podcast on scandal to start in 2021

And some bonus question you didn't ask:

What about the Barenaked Ladies concert on 2/9/2001?
This is an unpersuasive argument. The concert started at 8pm. Any traffic control on the street would have been gone shortly after the concert started. The BJC is not "right across the street" from Lasch. The most likely drive to Lasch from downtown is University Ave to Hastings. You can only see the top part of the back side of the BJC on that route. Nothing about that view would indicate a concert was going on. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
What about the ice hockey game on 2/9/2001?
This is another unpersuasive argument. It might make sense if it were the Icers hockey team, who were #2 in the ACHA, but they were in Ohio that night. The Ice Lions were the lower level of the two club hockey teams. They had a record of 6-12-2 and were on a five-game losing skid. It's doubtful there were many in attendance at Greenberg to watch them play. It's also doubtful anyone going to that game would have parked in the restricted parking area for the Lasch building when there was a sizable parking lot on the other side of Greenberg. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.
You're going with the assumption that Mike was home and watching "Rudy" and not his "working late" version. Which version do you believe?
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Sandusky never should have showered alone with children, ever. There is no school of thought that would have made it OK for somebody in his role to have been doing so. It is beyond reasonable to think he didn’t know that.
You're coming at this from a concern for the kids. I get that. However, C/S/S, IMO, were more concerned about a repeat of the '98 incident, in which a concerned mother initiated an investigation. And though that investigation failed to find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, that Mother could have sued Jerry, TSM and PSU in civil court and would have likely won a quick and lucrative settlement.

IMO, that's not to suggest C/S/S were callous to the well being of the boy, but rather felt Jerry, while well meaning, needed to be protected from himself.

As for Jerry, I think he believed his motives were beyond reproach and he hadn't done anything wrong. He was too naive to see the risk involved.
 
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You're coming at this from a concern for the kids. I get that. However, C/S/S, IMO, were more concerned about a repeat of the '98 incident, in which a concerned mother initiated an investigation. And though that investigation failed to find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, that Mother could have sued Jerry, TSM and PSU in civil court and would have likely won a quick and lucrative settlement.

IMO, that's not to suggest C/S/S were callous to the well being of the boy, but rather felt Jerry, while well meaning, needed to be protected from himself.

As for Jerry, I think he believed his motives were beyond reproach and he hadn't done anything wrong. He was too naive to see the risk involved.
I’m not coming at it from any angle about the administrators. I think they were railroaded. My comment was just about Jerry. Nobody in their right mind (even in 1998) in his position didn’t know that what he was doing was absolutely wrong. People get on my case for repeating this point over and over but it continues to amaze me that anybody tries to defend it. It is really indefensible.
 
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You say, "Ziegler did respond to you. In response to you, he asked whether you had listened to the Schultz interviews. I assume he is saying the answers to your questions are in the Schultz interviews."

Your first problem is this assumption. The answers are not in the Schultz interviews. Your second problem is that you're blatantly disingenuous. It was clear in my questions to Ziegler that I'd listened to the Schultz interviews. It was also clear in my post to which you replied that I included this very Ziegler tweet and my response to it. Here it is again:



A debate with Ziegler? My terms are simple. I posed my questions already. The ball is in his court to respond with answers that actually address the questions. If he continues to ignore them, that's his choice.

You say, "I question whether your motivation is a search for the truth. It seems to me that one of your main objectives is to find evidence that supports your current beliefs." This is a non-sequiter. The point of my post and my questions to Ziegler have nothing to do with my beliefs; they only had to do with significant evidence that Ziegler ignored in attempting to prove his date theory.

Where's your intellectual curiosity? Don't you want Ziegler to answer my questions? Have you done any independent research to answer them? (It shouldn't be hard since I cited the date and page in the transcripts, which is far more than Ziegler ever does.) Are you OK with Ziegler lying, misrepresenting things, and cherry-picking?
Thank you for your responses. They help me to see where you are coming from. I believe your motivations are important as you were discussing Ziegler's motivations and I thought your motivations were pertinent relative to attempting to determine why you were engaging Ziegler.

I do not speak for Ziegler. I don't agree with alot of what he writes unrelated to the Penn State story. However, imho I think his take on the important questions in this story are spot on. If you think he has been less than honest in this case, please cite specific examples with your best evidence you have that Ziegler is less than honest or that he has been cherry-picking..

I do have some curiousity in regards to your questions. I may have misintepreted them. My quick analysis was I thought you might be trying to show that the Dec. 29 was probably not the date based on the dates of Dranov's meeting with Schultz about the status of Mike's report and when the meeting between Curley and Raykowitz took place. Please let me know just what your questions are all about and where you think Ziegler's logic is faulty.

I, mistakenly or not, surmised that your pointed questions appeared to me as a way for you to cast doubts on the Dec. 29 date. I personally am sold on the Dec. 29 date because I wholeheartedly believe based on my research it is the only date that makes any sense. Schultz thinks it makes sense. Malcolm Gladwell thinks it makes sense. These are 2 very credible individuals who have thought long and hard about this case and they don't seem like they would be people prone to jumping to rash and faulty conclusions on such an important question. In addition, Jerry thinks this date is correct. In Ziegler's prison interview with Sandusky, Sandusky doesn't buy the Feb. 9 date because Allan Myers had school that day and there is no way he would have taken Myers out of school to go on a trip to Washington PA for a book signing event on that date. This date is also corroborated by Jerry's college roommate in a phone call with Jerry after Jerry was turned down for the UVA head coaching job. I believe that Jerry's story is credible and that he should be entitled to the presumption of innocence as most legal experts would acknowledge that his trial was patently unfair.

I would love to see you debate Ziegler. If you want to engage Ziegler in a debate, I would suggest that you provide him with your terms in a tweet and I think it is likely that you will get a response to your questions. I would be very surprised to see Ziegler ignore a tweet that you send to him asking to debate.
 
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Thank you for your responses. They help me to see where you are coming from. I believe your motivations are important as you were discussing Ziegler's motivations and I thought your motivations were pertinent relative to attempting to determine why you were engaging Ziegler.

I do not speak for Ziegler. I am not a big fan of his style and crass personality. I don't agree with alot of what he writes unrelated to the Penn State story. However, imho I think his take on the important questions in this story are spot on. If you think he has been less than honest in this case, please cite specific examples with your best evidence you have that Ziegler is less than honest or that he has been cherry-picking..

I do have some curiousity in regards to your questions. I may have misintepreted them. My quick analysis was I thought you might be trying to show that the Dec. 29 was probably not the date based on the dates of Dranov's meeting with Schultz about the status of Mike's report and when the meeting between Curley and Raykowitz took place. Please let me know just what your questions are all about and where you think Ziegler's logic is faulty.

I, mistakenly or not, surmised that your pointed questions appeared to me as a way for you to cast doubts on the Dec. 29 date. I personally am sold on the Dec. 29 date because I wholeheartedly believe based on my research it is the only date that makes any sense. Schultz thinks it makes sense. Malcolm Gladwell thinks it makes sense. These are 2 very credible individuals who have thought long and hard about this case and they don't seem like they would be people prone to jumping to rash and faulty conclusions on such an important question. In addition, Jerry thinks this date is correct. In Ziegler's prison interview with Sandusky, Sandusky doesn't buy the Feb. 9 date because Allan Myers had school that day and there is no way he would have taken Myers out of school to go on a trip to Washington PA for a book signing event on that date. This date is also corroborated by Jerry's college roommate in a phone call with Jerry after Jerry was turned down for the UVA head coaching job. I believe that Jerry's story is credible and that he should be entitled to the presumption of innocence as most legal experts would acknowledge that his trial was patently unfair.

I would love to see you debate Ziegler. If you want to engage Ziegler in a debate, I would suggest that you provide him with your terms in a tweet and I think it is likely that you will get a response to your questions. I would be very surprised to see Ziegler ignore a tweet that you send to him asking to debate.
Ziegler will only respond in the form of a formal debate? That seems odd.
 
Just curious, did Snedden have access during his investigation to all parties, email records, notes, etc?
 
Ziegler will only respond in the form of a formal debate? That seems odd.
If you want to beat Ziegler in a debate give him a 2 minute time limit to make a coherent summary of his thoughts. Otherwise you're likely to get 40 hours of ranting and raving with 1 hour of content.
 
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If you want to beat Ziegler in a debate give him a 2 minute time limit to make a coherent summary of his thoughts. Otherwise you're likely to get 40 hours of ranting and raving with 1 hour of content.
like a 19 episode podcast plus 32 hours of interviews plus 8 or 9 promotional bonus interviews released in just the last 2 weeks?

Can't imagine why the average Joe Blow hasn't put their entire life on pause and consumed that.
 
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like a 19 episode podcast plus 32 hours of interviews plus 8 or 9 promotional bonus interviews released in just the last 2 weeks?

Can't imagine why the average Joe Blow hasn't put their entire life on pause and consumed that.
You don’t have to like Ziegler to have an open mind about what did and did not happen. Common sense tells most people that the prosecution’s narrative doesn’t make sense. The AG computers had more child porn on them than Jerry’s by a score of A lot to zero.
 
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The OAG needed to disqualify Tim and Gary from being witnesses for Jerry's defense. The statute of limitations was 10 years for their alleged crimes. That's why they used 2002.
yea i get that, but my point was had the whole dates wrong issue not been brought up until the trial IMO it would have seriously hurt MM's cred. Sure he could mis remember the date, but how do you mis remember the date and also mis remember the state of the campus. And yet vividly recall a 2- second glance through a mirror
 
my first response to the above


It's ironic that you respond to my post about Ziegler not answering my questions, don't bother to address any of them yourself, and come back with a whole host of separate questions, most of which I've already addressed in the past. Regardless, here you go:
Thank you for your response. I realize that you have already addressed some of these questions and your answers don't surprise me, but I am glad that we have a basis for further discussion. I have embedded my comments as appropriate.
Do you believe the date of the v2 incident to be Feb. 9, 2001?
Yes. It's far more consistent with the evidence than 12/29/2000.​
I beg to differ. Feb. 9 has a lot of problems which have previously been discussed. Dec. 29 fits the evidence of the key individuals involved including Jerry, Mike, Allan Myers, Gary, Dr. Dranov and John McQueary. This second date change further erodes Mike's credibility and demonstrates that with a 6 week delay in his report to Joe that it wasn't with the urgency that you would expect to see in a report of child sexual assault.
Do you believe that Mike McQueary witnessed a sexual assault in the Lasch building shower?
No. I think he believed a sex assault might have happened. But according to his own testimony, he never saw an explicit sex act. How well he conveyed that to Paterno, and then to Curley and Schultz 7-10 days later is certainly up for debate. But it's clear from all involved that he was uncomfortable with what he saw. The obvious conclusion is that he suspected child abuse, which is exactly what Courtney researched for Schultz.​
I agree with you that Mike did not witness a sexual assult and that he was uncomfortable with what he saw.
Do you believe that the Freeh Report is factual?
Yes and no. It contains a lot of facts. But it also contains opinions and conclusions that are not balanced by any other possible conclusion. That's it's major fault.​
I agree. The Freeh Report is a farce and should not used as a basis for any decisions. On the contrary, I believe an investigation should be commenced to get to the bottom of how it came to be that the Penn State BOT commissioned this fraud and how they were able to avoid scrutiny of their misdeeds.
Do you believe that Spanier, Curley and Schultz knowingly enabled the acts of a CSA offender?
No.​
Agreed.
Do you believe Mike McQueary is a credible witness?
Yes. Insofar as he saw Sandusky in a shower with boy and suspected sexual abuse. I do think his level certainty in what exactly he told Curley and Schultz shifted in one direction, just as Schultz and Curley's admission about what he told them shifted in the other direction. To be clear, I think McQueary told them he suspected sex abuse. But in their meeting, I suspect Curley/Schultz pushed back to get clarity on exactly what he saw, and he had to admit he didn't exactly see anything explicit. Unfortunately, none of them said they remembered any of the questions at that meeting.​
I agree with John Snedden. I don't believe Mike is at all credible. He has told too many different versions of what he saw. I don't believe he witnessed sodomy and I don't believe he witnessed something sexual.
Do you believe the identity of v2 is known only to God?
No. But I suspect McGettigan believed those words when he made his closing arguments. I think AM believes he was V2. But any argument that asks if he isn't the real V2, why didn't the real V2 come forward, fails the logic test.​
I agree with you. V2 is known and his initials are AM. However, I don't believe McGettigan believed the words he made in the closing arguments. I believe that he knew that the OAG had interviewed AM, that AM had made a statement to Curtis Everhart saying he was not abused in the shower and was never abused by Jerry, and that AM's lawyer was Andrew Shubin. I believe the OAG was pleased that AM wasn't called to testify at the trial. I believe that Amendola's decision not to call AM was one of the biggest blunders that the defense made.
Do you believe that Frank Fina claiming that he set up a sting operation to catch the grand jury leaker proves that he was not the leaker?
No. That's just faulty logic. Just like my example immediately above. And just like any argument that claims that if the V1 case (or V2 case) falls apart, the entire case falls apart.​
Agree with you 100%. I can't believe that Judge Foradora and the Superior Court panel who heard the appeal would use this as a basis for denying Sandusky's PCRA.
Do you believe that the OAG's and the Freeh Group's investigations were independent?
Mostly, but it's clear they shared information. And that should be no surprise at all. Freeh's first press release stated that they would share information with authorities. Now, did the OAG improperly share information with Freeh? That's definitely possible.​
They were working in concert. The Freeh Group had to get OAG permission to interview witnesses. The Freeh Group shared grand jury information from Freeh, and you can bet that Freeh told the OAG everything that Laura Pauley said in her interview and knew she would be a slam dunk vote for Sandusky's guilt. In fact, the OAG should have disclosed they were collaborating with Freeh and that Pauley had been interviewed by Freeh. The McChesney diary documents the shenanigans.
Do you believe that Juror 0990, Laura Pauley, who had been interviewed by the Freeh Group before Sandusky's trial was a fair, unbiased, and open-minded juror?
It seems she was biased against PSU leadership. That's probably not too surprising since she'd been on the faculty for at least 20 years at the time of the Sandusky trial. But she's an engineer, they tend to have good analytical skills, so she was probably an open-minded juror for the Sandusky trial. Just because Freeh interviewed her shouldn't have disqualified her from being a juror. But if she lied about that during voir dire, then yeah, I'd say she was biased. I did review the public transcripts during jury selection; she was never asked about being interviewed by Freeh. If she was asked, the records are either sealed or weren't made public.​
I agree that she was biased and that there is no way she should have been on the jury panel. I believe it was juror tampering that the OAG was able to finagle her on the jury and that there should be consequences for this misconduct.
Do you believe Malcolm Gladwell is biased in his view of the case?
Yes. But only because I don't think he did any detailed independent research, and just took what Ziegler handed him about the date theory.​
I don't believe Gladwell is biased in his view of the case. I believe that he also consulted with Ray Blehar (Ray is cited in the book) and made his own independent judgments. Please detail what you believe about Ziegler's date theory that you believe is wrong.
Do you believe Mark Pendergrast does not know what he is talking about in regard to this case?
He knows a lot about the case, but just like Ziegler, he omits things that don't support his theories or outright lies about them. There's a lot of similarities between Pendergrast, Ziegler, and Freeh in that regard.​
I believe that Pendergrast know what he is talking about in this case. Please detail the outright lies that you believe that Pendergrast has made and the most important things that he omitted that don't support his theories.
Do you believe John Snedden’s federal investigation into Spanier was flawed?
No. But any suggestion that Snedden investigated the charges against Sandusky and proved him innocent (as suggested by some in this thread, and elsewhere) is absurd.​
I agree, Snedden's Spanier investigation was not flawed and that he was not commissioned to investigate the charges against Sandusky. However, in his investigation of Spanier he found that Mike McQueary was not a credible witness and that there was not a cover-up or conspiracy by senior members of the Penn State administration. In doing so, he was not aware of any credible information that was not subject to manipulation that Sandusky was a pedophile and without a doubt that Sandusky deserves a new trial.

And some bonus question you didn't ask:

What about the Barenaked Ladies concert on 2/9/2001?
This is an unpersuasive argument. The concert started at 8pm. Any traffic control on the street would have been gone shortly after the concert started. The BJC is not "right across the street" from Lasch. The most likely drive to Lasch from downtown is University Ave to Hastings. You can only see the top part of the back side of the BJC on that route. Nothing about that view would indicate a concert was going on. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.​
Maybe unpersuasive to you, but not to me and Gary Schultz. Nobody would be able to characterize the campus as quiet on the night of a big concert at the BJC.
What about the ice hockey game on 2/9/2001?
This is another unpersuasive argument. It might make sense if it were the Icers hockey team, who were #2 in the ACHA, but they were in Ohio that night. The Ice Lions were the lower level of the two club hockey teams. They had a record of 6-12-2 and were on a five-game losing skid. It's doubtful there were many in attendance at Greenberg to watch them play. It's also doubtful anyone going to that game would have parked in the restricted parking area for the Lasch building when there was a sizable parking lot on the other side of Greenberg. Take a look on google street view & see for yourself.​
The hockey arena is a lot closer to the Lasch building than the BJC.
Do you believe Sandusky when he says he was only warned not to shower Victim 6 after 1998?
No. It makes no sense that Officer Shreffler and Jerry Lauro would restrict to their admonition not to shower with kids to just a single boy. They both knew he had showered with multiple boys in the past. They both knew he gave naked bear hugs to two different boys (V6 and BK) in 1998. It makes no sense to only tell him not to shower with V6.​
I believe Jerry. Please listen to episode 5 of WTBOH, where in Ziegler's prison interview, Sandusky discusses the 1998 incident starting about 16:45. At around the 18 minute mark, he states that his concern was what happens to ZK. He asked Lauro/Shreffler if it was alright to take ZK to a Penn State game. Lauro/Shreffler said yes he could take ZK to a game but that he shouldn't work out or shower with him.

 
Thank you for your response. I realize that you have already addressed some of these questions and your answers don't surprise me, but I am glad that we have a basis for further discussion. I have embedded my comments as appropriate.

I beg to differ. Feb. 9 has a lot of problems which have previously been discussed. Dec. 29 fits the evidence of the key individuals involved including Jerry, Mike, Allan Myers, Gary, Dr. Dranov and John McQueary. This second date change further erodes Mike's credibility and demonstrates that with a 6 week delay in his report to Joe that it wasn't with the urgency that you would expect to see in a report of child sexual assault.

I agree with you that Mike did not witness a sexual assult and that he was uncomfortable with what he saw.

I agree. The Freeh Report is a farce and should not used as a basis for any decisions. On the contrary, I believe an investigation should be commenced to get to the bottom of how it came to be that the Penn State BOT commissioned this fraud and how they were able to avoid scrutiny of their misdeeds.

Agreed.

I agree with John Snedden. I don't believe Mike is at all credible. He has told too many different versions of what he saw. I don't believe he witnessed sodomy and I don't believe he witnessed something sexual.

I agree with you. V2 is known and his initials are AM. However, I don't believe McGettigan believed the words he made in the closing arguments. I believe that he knew that the OAG had interviewed AM, that AM had made a statement to Curtis Everhart saying he was not abused in the shower and was never abused by Jerry, and that AM's lawyer was Andrew Shubin. I believe the OAG was pleased that AM wasn't called to testify at the trial. I believe that Amendola's decision not to call AM was one of the biggest blunders that the defense made.

Agree with you 100%. I can't believe that Judge Foradora and the Superior Court panel who heard the appeal would use this as a basis for denying Sandusky's PCRA.

They were working in concert. The Freeh Group had to get OAG permission to interview witnesses. The Freeh Group shared grand jury information from Freeh, and you can bet that Freeh told the OAG everything that Laura Pauley said in her interview and knew she would be a slam dunk vote for Sandusky's guilt. In fact, the OAG should have disclosed they were collaborating with Freeh and that Pauley had been interviewed by Freeh. The McChesney diary documents the shenanigans.

I agree that she was biased and that there is no way she should have been on the jury panel. I believe it was juror tampering that the OAG was able to finagle her on the jury and that there should be consequences for this misconduct.

I don't believe Gladwell is biased in his view of the case. I believe that he also consulted with Ray Blehar (Ray is cited in the book) and made his own independent judgments. Please detail what you believe about Ziegler's date theory that you believe is wrong.

I believe that Pendergrast know what he is talking about in this case. Please detail the outright lies that you believe that Pendergrast has made and the most important things that he omitted that don't support his theories.

I agree, Snedden's Spanier investigation was not flawed and that he was not commissioned to investigate the charges against Sandusky. However, in his investigation of Spanier he found that Mike McQueary was not a credible witness and that there was not a cover-up or conspiracy by senior members of the Penn State administration. In doing so, he was not aware of any credible information that was not subject to manipulation that Sandusky was a pedophile and without a doubt that Sandusky deserves a new trial.


Maybe unpersuasive to you, but not to me and Gary Schultz. Nobody would be able to characterize the campus as quiet on the night of a big concert at the BJC.

The hockey arena is a lot closer to the Lasch building than the BJC.

I believe Jerry. Please listen to episode 5 of WTBOH, where in Ziegler's prison interview, Sandusky discusses the 1998 incident starting about 16:45. At around the 18 minute mark, he states that his concern was what happens to ZK. He asked Lauro/Shreffler if it was alright to take ZK to a Penn State game. Lauro/Shreffler said yes he could take ZK to a game but that he shouldn't work out or shower with him.

A grown man who has been working with children for years needing to be told not to shower alone with the children he is working with? That’s preposterous and a massive red flag.
 
A grown man who has been working with children for years needing to be told not to shower alone with the children he is working with? That’s preposterous and a massive red flag.
Agree, but TSM should have never allowed JS or anybody else to have one on one contact with troubled children. Shower or no shower.
 
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Thank you for your response. I realize that you have already addressed some of these questions and your answers don't surprise me, but I am glad that we have a basis for further discussion. I have embedded my comments as appropriate.

I beg to differ. Feb. 9 has a lot of problems which have previously been discussed. Dec. 29 fits the evidence of the key individuals involved including Jerry, Mike, Allan Myers, Gary, Dr. Dranov and John McQueary. This second date change further erodes Mike's credibility and demonstrates that with a 6 week delay in his report to Joe that it wasn't with the urgency that you would expect to see in a report of child sexual assault.

I agree with you that Mike did not witness a sexual assult and that he was uncomfortable with what he saw.

I agree. The Freeh Report is a farce and should not used as a basis for any decisions. On the contrary, I believe an investigation should be commenced to get to the bottom of how it came to be that the Penn State BOT commissioned this fraud and how they were able to avoid scrutiny of their misdeeds.

Agreed.

I agree with John Snedden. I don't believe Mike is at all credible. He has told too many different versions of what he saw. I don't believe he witnessed sodomy and I don't believe he witnessed something sexual.

I agree with you. V2 is known and his initials are AM. However, I don't believe McGettigan believed the words he made in the closing arguments. I believe that he knew that the OAG had interviewed AM, that AM had made a statement to Curtis Everhart saying he was not abused in the shower and was never abused by Jerry, and that AM's lawyer was Andrew Shubin. I believe the OAG was pleased that AM wasn't called to testify at the trial. I believe that Amendola's decision not to call AM was one of the biggest blunders that the defense made.

Agree with you 100%. I can't believe that Judge Foradora and the Superior Court panel who heard the appeal would use this as a basis for denying Sandusky's PCRA.

They were working in concert. The Freeh Group had to get OAG permission to interview witnesses. The Freeh Group shared grand jury information from Freeh, and you can bet that Freeh told the OAG everything that Laura Pauley said in her interview and knew she would be a slam dunk vote for Sandusky's guilt. In fact, the OAG should have disclosed they were collaborating with Freeh and that Pauley had been interviewed by Freeh. The McChesney diary documents the shenanigans.

I agree that she was biased and that there is no way she should have been on the jury panel. I believe it was juror tampering that the OAG was able to finagle her on the jury and that there should be consequences for this misconduct.

I don't believe Gladwell is biased in his view of the case. I believe that he also consulted with Ray Blehar (Ray is cited in the book) and made his own independent judgments. Please detail what you believe about Ziegler's date theory that you believe is wrong.

I believe that Pendergrast know what he is talking about in this case. Please detail the outright lies that you believe that Pendergrast has made and the most important things that he omitted that don't support his theories.

I agree, Snedden's Spanier investigation was not flawed and that he was not commissioned to investigate the charges against Sandusky. However, in his investigation of Spanier he found that Mike McQueary was not a credible witness and that there was not a cover-up or conspiracy by senior members of the Penn State administration. In doing so, he was not aware of any credible information that was not subject to manipulation that Sandusky was a pedophile and without a doubt that Sandusky deserves a new trial.


Maybe unpersuasive to you, but not to me and Gary Schultz. Nobody would be able to characterize the campus as quiet on the night of a big concert at the BJC.

The hockey arena is a lot closer to the Lasch building than the BJC.

I believe Jerry. Please listen to episode 5 of WTBOH, where in Ziegler's prison interview, Sandusky discusses the 1998 incident starting about 16:45. At around the 18 minute mark, he states that his concern was what happens to ZK. He asked Lauro/Shreffler if it was alright to take ZK to a Penn State game. Lauro/Shreffler said yes he could take ZK to a game but that he shouldn't work out or shower with him.

Freeh again
In an episode entitled A Smoking Gun? Part 1, Nichols charged that rather than serve Penn State, the client that paid him $8 million to investigate the sex scandal, former FBI Director Louis Freeh's main motivation was to "ingratiate himself with the NCAA," so he could become their "go-to investigator" for future collegiate scandals.

"He [Freeh] sold his client Penn State down the river in anticipation of making big bucks in the form of further business from the NCAA," Nichols said. Then, after the Freeh Report issued its faulty conclusions on Penn State based on nonexistent facts, Nichols said, "the vultures . . . swooped down on this sad case to make political hay out of this case, or to make big bucks out of the case."

The vultures were preying on "a board of trustees that had an open checkbook," Nichols said. "I think that's despicable."

"Careers were ruined, people were fired, peoples' reputations were destroyed," Nichols said. And it was all "based on a series of accusations that Freeh did not have evidence for, and knew that he did not have evidence for."

When the scandal hit, the trustees, many of whom were corporate leaders, adopted a "standard corporate model" for dealing with scandal, Nichols said.

The plan was to "fire a lot of people, scapegoat a lot of people, to express maximum contrition regardless of not having the facts to support that," Nichols said. And to "pay huge sums of money so the problem goes away."

As disclosed previously on Big Trial, Penn State paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims of abuse. They gave away the cash without checking to see whether the alleged victims had criminal records [a third of them did]. The trustees also didn't do anything to vet any of the outlandish and often contradictory tales by the claimants. None of the alleged victims were interviewed by detectives, deposed by lawyers, examined by psychiatrists, or subjected to polygraph tests.

Instead, the university's board of trustees just wrote out lottery checks that averaged more than $3 million each.

"This is someone body else's money," Nichols said, so it's "easy for them [the trustees] to pay off settlements without substantive backup because its not their money and they don't have to worry about it."

As far as the board of trustees is concerned, "it's been radio silence since then," Nichols said. "The board has taken the position to look the other way, to let sleeping dogs lie. To keep it buried, to keep it quiet and to hope that the whole unfortunate mess goes away."

Nichols has his own first-hand experiences with Louie Fresh's team of investigators, who interviewed Nichols four times. The tenor of the interviews still rankles Nichols.

"A lot of their questions were accusatory," he said; "It was not looking for the truth." Instead, Fresh's investigators were looking for "evidence or information that might support a predetermined conclusion that would scapegoat certain individuals," he said. Or support the "highly inflammatory and highly accusatory" claims that Freeh made at his press conference announcing the findings of his report.

For example, Nichols said, Fresh's investigators asked him, since he was a campus insider, at what point did he know about Sandusky's sex crimes. Nichols insisted that he didn't know anything about the subject.

But Freeh's guys weren't buying it. Their attitude was, "Obviously you knew as well, everybody knew," Nichols said. "It led me to believe . . . that they had already reached the conclusion that everybody knew that Sandusky was doing this but they were looking the other way to protect football. They had already reached the conclusion," he said, and they "wanted me to verify that."

But when Nichols read the Freeh Report, "the evidence [for a cover up] wasn't there," Nichols said. "I was taken back, I was shocked."

"It became clear to me," he said, that "the executive summary and Freeh's oral comments [at his press conference] were wild accusations that had no basis in factual support in the main report."

"His goal was not to find the truth and help Penn State, the people who paid him to $8 million to do this, but to build a case like a prosecutor, but without evidence or with flimsy evidence."

John Snedden, the former NCIS special agent who hosted the podcast, said it was clear from email exchanges and a copy of Freeh's preliminary report that Freeh didn't care that he was making unfounded accusations. In the emails, and in handwritten notes on a preliminary draft of the report, Fresh's own investigators pointed out that Freeh's accusations had no basis in facts or evidence.

But Freeh made his unfounded accusations anyway, because, according to Freeh's own emails, the "media was clamoring for what he intended to say," Snedden said.

Nichols recalled that Freeh's investigators were also "pretty intimidating" when they interviewed him.

"It was made clear to all that were interviewed [that] we must cooperate fully and freely with the Freeh investigators at the cost of our employment," Nichols said.

Snedden described the interviews conducted by Fresh's team of investigators as an "exercise in support of their predetermined conclusions."

Nichols said when he talked it over with his senior colleagues, "Every faculty senate chair came to the same conclusion that the Freeh report in our view was at odds with the truth." But that didn't stop the NCAA with issuing "huge, massive, unprecedented sanctions based on the Freeh Report," Nichols said.

When a group of former faculty Senate chairs put out a joint statement attacking the conclusions of the Freeh Report, "the board of trustees, they didn't care," Nichols said. "They didn't want to be knocked off their story line." Ditto for the media, Nichols said.

Nichols said it was "outrageous" for the NCAA to hire Freeh and his investigators as employees.
But he added, "I think the NCAA lost its moral compass long before they hired Louie Freeh."

About Graham Spanier, Nichols said, "they destroyed a great university president's career based on a hyperbolic, mean spirited, sell interested fact-void report."

And that's just the first episode of the podcast, which concludes that the Freeh Report found no smoking gun at Penn State, nor any evidence to backup their claims that it was Penn State's football-mad culture that inspired university officials to cover up and look the other way when it came to Sandusky's alleged crimes against children.

In the Smoking Gun? Part 2, Snedden and Nichols continued the discussion. Nichols said the unfounded charges in the Freeh Report, such as that Penn State "had a culture of supporting football over the well being of their own children."

"That's what Freeh alleged and that's what the NCAA parroted," Nichols said. It led to a "media feeding frenzy," the idea that the Penn State community "was so corrupt as to throw their children to the lions to protect football."
 
Agree, but TSM should have never allowed JS or anybody else to have one on one contact with troubled children. Shower or no shower.
All true but it doesn’t mean he did what he was convicted of. No evidence to that other than witnesses who had memories as adults who never told anyone about the alledged incidents when they supposedly occurred.
 

Did anyone review that article before posting?

“Each and every one of these people, including his own father, testified that Mike did not tell them he witnessed sexual abuse or a sexual act! He told five people at the time and each, including his own father, confirmed that he did not claim to have witnessed a sexual act.”
 
Did anyone review that article before posting?

“Each and every one of these people, including his own father, testified that Mike did not tell them he witnessed sexual abuse or a sexual act! He told five people at the time and each, including his own father, confirmed that he did not claim to have witnessed a sexual act.”

Only two people know what Mike told his father and one of them, after hearing from Mike, asked his son if he saw penetration/insertion.

How was that testimony addressed in the article?
 
Only two people know what Mike told his father and one of them, after hearing from Mike, asked his son if he saw penetration/insertion.

How was that testimony addressed in the article?
MM has told about 5 versions of what he said he saw. He allowed himself to be coached to fit the AGs narrative.
 
If you think he has been less than honest in this case, please cite specific examples with your best evidence you have that Ziegler is less than honest or that he has been cherry-picking..

I do have some curiousity in regards to your questions. I may have misintepreted them. My quick analysis was I thought you might be trying to show that the Dec. 29 was probably not the date based on the dates of Dranov's meeting with Schultz about the status of Mike's report and when the meeting between Curley and Raykowitz took place. Please let me know just what your questions are all about and where you think Ziegler's logic is faulty.


My questions to Ziegler were in my first and second posts. Details from the transcripts are cited by date and page. It's seems you and everybody else in this thread is ignoring them just like Ziegler. Here there are again.


So your 12/29/2000 date scenario: McQ met his dad/Dranov that night or shortly after; Dranov says he met Schultz three months or so later; Schultz clearly remembers telling him investigation is ongoing, placing that meeting 21/21-2/23/2001; and you worked backward to your date.

You say Dranov testimony is critical in your date scenario. But why did you ignore his testimony that clearly placed the night of the incident, and his meeting at the McQueary household, on 2/9/2001? (Spanier trial, 3/21/2017, p.162)
[this means a meeting 2-3 months later is in April or May]

You say Dranov testimony is critical in your date scenario. But why did you ignore his testimony that Schultz told him The Second Mile had already been informed? That places the date of his meeting with Schultz well after mid-March 2001. (Spanier trial, 3/21/2017, p.161)

You talk about Curley's 2 meetings with Sandusky. You mention Sandusky's confusion at the 1st meeting. Why did you ignore Curley's testimony that Sandusky wanted to check his calendar, did so, & confirmed the 2/9/2001 date in their 2nd meeting? (Spanier trial, 3/22/2017, p.358, 389-390)

Schultz bought into your date theory in part because he clearly remembers telling Dranov the investigation was ongoing. He said so four times (1x in 1st interview, 3x in 2nd). But Schultz testified in 2017 he had no recollection of this. Why do you think that is? (Spanier trial, 3/22/2017, p.470)
 
I happen to buy in to the Dec. date, however, that doesn't change much to me. Whenever this incident occurred, MM immediately told the story to Dad and Dr. D. Dr.D. had no compunction to protect the FB program or PSU or anyone. Yet this trusted medical professional did not tell MM to go to CYS or police or even someone in the PSU administration. Just tell Joe. Think about that for a minute...Joe. How serious was the report....Dr. D heard nothing that moved him to send the account to anyone but the head football coach....the report being about a man HE KNEW was not longer employed by PSU. It is simply impossible to believe that MM reported sexual abuse.
 
Check out the layout of the locker room. See the location of the lockers and the mirror over the sink. MM didn't see much of anything, unless he has xray eyes.
Not disagreeing. Only pointing out that even if he had seen something, the timeline (if we agree the incident happened in Dec) does not support whatever he saw being serious since he waited six weeks to talk to Joe.
 
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like a 19 episode podcast plus 32 hours of interviews plus 8 or 9 promotional bonus interviews released in just the last 2 weeks?

Can't imagine why the average Joe Blow hasn't put their entire life on pause and consumed that.
This is part of the problem. People want news that can be understood in 140 characters. They have no patience for anything more complicated than that. This story is very complicated.

I agree that there is a lot of material here. I think the production might have been better served to make 15 one hour episodes and then have supplementary material available (extra interviews, documents, etc) for those interested. But I also appreciate that they wanted to be very thorough and eliminate the "well, what about this?" from critics.
 
Dranov was not present when Mike first talked to his father.

Mike's father asked the question I referenced; it's in the transcripts.

I see how you interpreted my post. To be specific, the 2 people I was referring to were Mike and his father. My question remains; was that testimony addressed in the article?
It is also in the transactions that Mike’s father testified that he didn’t remember giving testimony that he gave just 2 months prior. IMHO, neither Mike nor his father are trustworthy.
 
I believe the issue with this as far as Joe and PSU is concerned is it is near impossible to clear him of which he's being accused. In many ways, it's actually a lot easier to prove Sandusky is innocent then to prove Joe wasn't complicit in a cover up, or at the very least, guilty of "not doing enough". It's interesting, because Scott briefly touches on it in the call with Zig. Says something to the effect of, it doesn't really matter what Mike saw, it's what he thought he saw or what people thought he saw/told Joe. Zig could make it his lifes work to prove Jerry's innocence, and even if it was proven in a court of law Sandusky was the victim of witness tampering and a completely created narrative that lead to his imprisonment, people could still say Joe didn't know that when he acted in the way he did.

I think the only thing that could ever turn public perception when it comes to Joe would be for MM to come forward and admit to a lot of things. Some of his own lies, admit he was pressured by police to change or exaggerate his story etc. Even then, not enough people would care to move the needle, and even they did it wouldn't move the needle enough to restore Joe's legacy in any way. At least not back to where it should be.

As far as sandusky goes I've run the spectrum. I went from he's definitely guilty as hell, to he's probably a pedophile but didn't really act on it in any major way, to he might just be goofy and quite frankly not all that smart.

Forget the fact that the lack of actual victims is troubling. I mean the fact that 2 of the victims were based on stories from 2nd and 3rd parties in a trial was always strange, and add that to the fact even half of the "victims" willing to come forward didn't describe anything resembling a sexual assault and it all just seems strange.

I think the most telling thing for me is that he has no victims going way back. Are we to believe the man became a pedophile in his late 50s? The lack of pornography is also a huge red flag.
 
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Dranov was not present when Mike first talked to his father.

Mike's father asked the question I referenced; it's in the transcripts.

I see how you interpreted my post. To be specific, the 2 people I was referring to were Mike and his father. My question remains; was that testimony addressed in the article?
So you believe around 10pm they discussed a sexual assault and told Mrs. M. to sit in the kitchen and mind her own business(and she complied)?
 
It's interesting, because Scott briefly touches on it in the call with Zig. Says something to the effect of, it doesn't really matter what Mike saw, it's what he thought he saw or what people thought he saw/told Joe.
Been saying this for many years. As to the guilt/innocence of Paterno, Curley, Shultz and Spanier what McQueary saw is somewhat irrelevant. It's what he told the others that is important. They didn't witness anything so their knowledge, and subsequent course of action, is 100% dependent on what they were told and what information they subsequently gathered after interviewing McQueary.
 
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This is part of the problem. People want news that can be understood in 140 characters. They have no patience for anything more complicated than that. This story is very complicated.

I agree that there is a lot of material here. I think the production might have been better served to make 15 one hour episodes and then have supplementary material available (extra interviews, documents, etc) for those interested. But I also appreciate that they wanted to be very thorough and eliminate the "well, what about this?" from critics.
There's a massive difference between a short Tweet or social media post and 40+ hours of podcasts and interviews. I agree there are lots of nuances here but 99.9% of the population isn't going to bother to listen to that much material. I'm interested in the content and even I am not going to put in that much time to listen to it because I have a busy life with other things to do. Add in Ziegler's abrasive style that is nearly unlistenable in my opinion and you have a recipe where this is going to simply be ignored except for a very small percentage of the population.

If you're trying to sway the public and you already know they have short attention spans, the ownership is on you to change your delivery method in order to attract more ears, eyeballs and interest. How much time do you think the average podcast listener spends listening? Maybe an hour a day? I'm just guessing, I have no idea. It would take people a month+ to get through this content and that's simply not going to happen, they are just going to ignore it. That doesn't even factor in the people that don't listen to podcasts at all, which I'd imagine is also a significant number. Before even publishing this material it should have been known that very few people will even bother with it. So why release it in this format without a more concise summary that would appeal to more people? Not doing so and expecting this to move the narrative at all is a fool's errand.
 
My questions to Ziegler were in my first and second posts. Details from the transcripts are cited by date and page. It's seems you and everybody else in this thread is ignoring them just like Ziegler. Here there are again.

So your 12/29/2000 date scenario: McQ met his dad/Dranov that night or shortly after; Dranov says he met Schultz three months or so later; Schultz clearly remembers telling him investigation is ongoing, placing that meeting 21/21-2/23/2001; and you worked backward to your date.

You say Dranov testimony is critical in your date scenario. But why did you ignore his testimony that clearly placed the night of the incident, and his meeting at the McQueary household, on 2/9/2001? (Spanier trial, 3/21/2017, p.162)
[this means a meeting 2-3 months later is in April or May]

You say Dranov testimony is critical in your date scenario. But why did you ignore his testimony that Schultz told him The Second Mile had already been informed? That places the date of his meeting with Schultz well after mid-March 2001. (Spanier trial, 3/21/2017, p.161)

You talk about Curley's 2 meetings with Sandusky. You mention Sandusky's confusion at the 1st meeting. Why did you ignore Curley's testimony that Sandusky wanted to check his calendar, did so, & confirmed the 2/9/2001 date in their 2nd meeting? (Spanier trial, 3/22/2017, p.358, 389-390)

Schultz bought into your date theory in part because he clearly remembers telling Dranov the investigation was ongoing. He said so four times (1x in 1st interview, 3x in 2nd). But Schultz testified in 2017 he had no recollection of this. Why do you think that is? (Spanier trial, 3/22/2017, p.470)
Thanks for your response and insights. I don't believe I was ignoring your questions. I explained my quick analysis and asked for clarifications. My analysis has not changed. Your questions revolve around previous testimony by Dr. Dranov, Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz. You are curious why Dr. Dranov said his meeting with Mike and John McQueary on Feb.9 that he said his meeting with Schultz took place 2-3 months later and that the meeting with Schultz took place before TSM/Rakowitz were informed. You mention that in Tim Curley's meeting with Sandusky that Sandusky wanted to check his calendar and confirmed the 2/9/01 date in their second meeting. You are also curious why Schultz in his 2017 testimony said that he had no recollection of telling Dranov the investigation was ongoing.

My basic analysis is that human memory is not infallible. The dates cited by Dranov, Curley, and Schultz for an incident that occurred more than 10 years earlier and perhaps polluted by other events are not reliable. In the case of Dr. Dranov, I believe that he had already been made aware of the date in the grand jury presentment (March 1, 2002) as well as the date at trial (Feb. 9, 2001) so his testimony was that to his knowledge the date of the shower incident and the meeting with himself, Mike, and John McQueary took place around the same time and he said that his meeting with Schultz took place around 2-3 months later. I believe the analysis that Ziegler has done and that Gary Schultz and Malcolm Gladwell agree with that the date of the v2 incident of Dec. 29,2000 makes an order of magnitude more sense than the Feb. 9, 2001 date that the OAG and Mike McQueary claim.

Schultz said in his interview with Ziegler that his meeting with Mike and Tim probably took place on Feb. 19th or 20 and that the meeting with Dr. Dranov and John McQueary had to take place after that but before he went on a month long vacation on Feb. 26 because the incident was over when he came back to town. He estimated that that meeting took place somewhere between Feb 21-23. The are 2 clips of the Schultz interview in Episode One, an around 2 minute clip starting around 47:45 where Gary tells why the night of Feb. 9, 2001 was not the start of spring break and was not quiet on campus. The second clip is more relevant to your questions, starts around 93:30 and goes on for around 8 minutes where Gary explains his rationale for why he believe his meeting with Dr. Dranov and John McQueary was somewhere in the Feb. 21-23 range.

 
There's a massive difference between a short Tweet or social media post and 40+ hours of podcasts and interviews. I agree there are lots of nuances here but 99.9% of the population isn't going to bother to listen to that much material. I'm interested in the content and even I am not going to put in that much time to listen to it because I have a busy life with other things to do. Add in Ziegler's abrasive style that is nearly unlistenable in my opinion and you have a recipe where this is going to simply be ignored except for a very small percentage of the population.

If you're trying to sway the public and you already know they have short attention spans, the ownership is on you to change your delivery method in order to attract more ears, eyeballs and interest. How much time do you think the average podcast listener spends listening? Maybe an hour a day? I'm just guessing, I have no idea. It would take people a month+ to get through this content and that's simply not going to happen, they are just going to ignore it. That doesn't even factor in the people that don't listen to podcasts at all, which I'd imagine is also a significant number. Before even publishing this material it should have been known that very few people will even bother with it. So why release it in this format without a more concise summary that would appeal to more people? Not doing so and expecting this to move the narrative at all is a fool's errand.
That's why I recommended hour long episodes similar to the "Serial" podcast. I guarantee no one cared about that case, but the podcast was wildly popular.

I think having all the supplemental material is great. I will listen to all of it but it is taking me awhile.
 
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It is also in the transactions that Mike’s father testified that he didn’t remember giving testimony that he gave just 2 months prior. IMHO, neither Mike nor his father are trustworthy.
This was unbelievable to me at the time, not only that he would say this but that the judge let him get away with it when the defense had a copy of the transcript of his testimony in hand.

JZ thinks John lied to protect himself. Kevin (in recent interview) believes John was genuinely confused, although he has no idea why.
 
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