An Attorney General’s office investigator testified that Jerry Sandusky’s autobiography “Touched” help lead them to alleged victims who took the stand in the trial this week.
Anthony Sassano talked about investigators sorting through long lists of boys connected to The Second Mile. He testified about paging through dozens of issues of TV Guide to pin down dates. He told jurors of brainstorming sessions that ended with finding key witnesses.
Sassano said the Attorney General’s office investigation into Jerry Sandusky began in December of 2008. That is when the state police in Clinton County passed along the report of alleged Victim 1, a student at Central Mountain High School that alleged abuse by Sandusky.
During the investigation, Sassano testified that an anonymous email got passed along to the AG’s office saying that investigators should talk to Mike McQueary. When they contacted McQueary, he shared his story that he witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy on the Penn State campus.
Sassano told jurors to pin down an exact date when that incident happened, he looked through two years worth of TV Guide magazines. That’s because McQueary told investigators that he was watching the football movie “Rudy” on cable the night he decided to go to the Lasch Football Building and saw the alleged Sandusky assault. Sassano was able to determine that was a Friday night in February 2001.
Sassano said at a brainstorming session among investigators led them to thinking about talking to janitors at the Lasch building just to see if any of them had witnessed the McQueary incident or anything else. Those investigators figured janitors would be the only ones in the building at that time.
That brainstorming proved successful. Sassano said that led to the report from janitors that one of them witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy in the showers in 2000. PSU janitor Ronald Petrosky testified in court Wednesday about that alleged assault.
Sassano said it was not easy finding potential victims. Most of the alleged victims who testified said they didn’t want to talk to police. They didn’t go to investigators, investigators came to them.
Sassano testified that they contacted victims that appeared in photos in Sandusky’s autobiography “Touched.” He said after a search warrant was served on Sandusky’s home, investigators also found lists from The Second Mile that had asterisks next to the names of alleged victims.
