(UPDATED) Why The Sandusky Investigation Died Aborning

People on the fence about whether the Penn State University board of trustees overreacted in firing legendary head football coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier might pause long enough to familiarize themselves with the background of the case.

It is not a pretty picture.

In 1998, campus police and Centre County law enforcement authorities investigated an allegation that Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s defensive coordinator, had engaged in inappropriate and possibly sexual conduct with a boy in the showers of the football team’s locker room.

A lengthy police report ensued, the boy was interviewed, a second potential victim was identified, child welfare authorities were brought in and Sandusky confessed to showering with one or both of the children.

County District Attorney Ray Gricar, who was later to disappear under mysterious circumstances probably not related to the case, chose not to prosecute because, it is widely believed, he did not want to be responsible for taking down a hometown icon.

Meanwhile, the child welfare agency also took no action and the commander of the university’s campus police force told his detective, Ronald Schreffler, to close the case.

“Sandusky admitted showering naked with Victim 6, admitted to hugging Victim 6 while in the shower and admitted that it was wrong,” said a report issued last weekend by the Pennsylvania attorney general in connection with a grand jury investigation. “Detective Schreffler advised Sandusky not to shower with any child again and Sandusky said that he would not.”

The New York Times has contacted three of the principals involved in the investigation: the two men identified by prosecutors as the police officers who worked on the case, Schreffler and Ralph Ralston, and the investigator with the state welfare department, Gerald Lauro, who was charged with determining if a child had been harmed.

Schreffler refused to comment, Ralston insisted that he played only a peripheral role in the investigation and Lauro, while acknowledging that he knew Sandusky was a prominent football coach, insisted that this did not affect his work.

Lauro also noted that all the boy had told him was that the coach had showered with him and he had felt uncomfortable. The investigator said he didn’t feel that was enough to substantiate a sex-abuse complaint and that the boy, now grown, had told the grand jury convened by the AG a much more explicit account.

A .pdf of the grand jury report is available here.