Berkeley Professor, Best Selling Author, Dr. Frederick Crews Has Died; His Last Message Was of Jerry Sandusky’s Innocence

Dr. Frederick Crews died peacefully at age 91 on June 21, 2024.

I knew the former head of Berkeley English department and author for less than a year, but he got me started on one of the most important adventures of my life.

On October 1, 2023, I published an article which, though not about Jerry Sandusky, mentioned the old settled belief that he was guilty of raping a boy in the locker room showers at Penn State and that Joe Paterno and others were guilty of a coverup.

A Surprising Email

The following day, I received an email from Frederick Crews, someone unknown to me.

He wrote: “The truth about the Sandusky case is exactly opposite to what the public believes. Please read this, just for starters: A Shower Of Lies: Spanier, Sandusky And The Mess At Penn State.

(I later learned that Crews had a Google alert for “Jerry Sandusky” and he told me that every time Jerry’s name appeared in the media, he would doggedly send the writer one of his articles and a note. He said he had been doing this for years and I was the first to respond to him, let alone actually write a story.)

I read Crews’ article and my jaw dropped. How could this be? Was Jerry Sandusky railroaded?

And who is this Frederick Crews?

Wait. He was then 90 years old, a Ph.D professor emeritus of literature at UC Berkeley from 1958 until his retirement. I looked at his bio.

A Distinguished Career

He was chair of the English department, and the author of 14 books, including the best selling The Pooh Perplex, (1963). A serious critic of Freud and “recovered memory” psychotherapy, he wrote the classic The Memory Wars (1995).

That was interesting, for, according to Crews, the Sandusky case was built on repressed memory, something I did not know, and I think few others know.

But there was more, Crews demolished Freud in his 2017 biographical study: The Making of an Illusion.

Yes, Crews was respected. He was no gadfly. He was a contributor of the New York Review from 1964 to 2017, writing on topics such as creationism, theosophy, the UFO cult, Big Pharma, and the Rorschach test. Crews also wrote the classic composition manual, The Random House Handbook (1974), which through six editions reached over a million readers.

As I looked online, I saw that, at Berkeley, Crews won a Distinguished Teaching Award, a Faculty Research Lectureship, and the Berkeley Citation, and was chosen a Berkeley Fellow. He received Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and became a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

He was a distinguished doubter, a man unafraid to challenge conventional thinking.

A New Cause

And later, I learned that from 2018 to his death this month, he “devoted himself to one cause, arguing for the innocence of the convicted ‘child molester’ Jerry Sandusky, whom he had come to know.”

In Crews’ view, the Sandusky case was “an egregious instance of prosecutorial misconduct.”

I spoke to Crews on the phone, and he sounded like a middle aged man. He was eager for me to take up the cause. After I got off, I asked an editor friend, why would a distinguished retired college professor, at age 90, put his reputation on the line for one of the highest profile open and shut prosecutions in legal history?

And I answered my own question: He believed it, and he was no fool. I was not convinced, however. Not yet. But I became convinced.

After studying the case for 25 days, I wrote to Crews, “Looks to me like Sandusky is innocent.”

Crews replied at once: “Thank you for saying so! I hope, now, that you’ll be able to convey that opinion as a journalist. If you have time for the reading, here’s a fuller account of the case: Sandusky: The House of Cards.

A Growing Network

It was another excellent article he had written, which had received too little attention.

Through Crews, I met other serious writers and researchers who believe Sandusky is innocent. This strengthened my confidence. I was in good company.

First and foremost, he insisted I read Mark Pendergrast’s The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rusth to Judgment, and got me a copy of the book. Crews called Pendergrast’s book ‘a forensic masterpiece,’ and it is.

Any human being on the face of the earth who reads this book will never look at the Sandusky case as a fair trial.

Crews also introduced me to Ralph Cipriano, who had published Crews’ articles and wrote quite a few himself.

Crews also introduced me to the writings of John Ziegler, the first man who did not know Jerry Sandusky to proclaim Sandusky’s innocence. His work is voluminous, and it tremendously helped me.

Crews also introduced me to Jerry’s wife Dottie Sandusky, a former coach with Sandusky and his true friend, Dick Anderson, and finally, through Dottie, I spoke with Jerry Sandusky from prison. I have interviewed Sandusky more than 100 times.

A New Direction

It took me more than two months to publish my first story, which repeated the line I first got from Crews, on December 10, 2023.

The story was The Sandusky Case is Exactly Opposite to What the Public Believes’: The Case Against Jerry Sandusky Reexamined

It immediately attracted interest, and I’ve written more than 50 stories now, including two which I co-authored for the Daily Mail, one of the most read publications in the world.

The bottom line is that Sandusky is innocent, though when Crews contacted me, perhaps only a few thousand knew it, and millions believed otherwise – that he was guilty.

How could the courts be wrong? How could eight trial accusers be liars? How could prosecutors cheat and police mislead, and Penn State Trustees sell a man down the river to save a college football season?

Over the next eight months, as I published stories to an ever widening audience, Crews and I spoke frequently. He often offered editorial suggestions. He was a stickler for punctuation, and he would send me meticulously noted corrections to my copy. I remember he hammered me on my failing to use the word “had” when it was, at least in formal writing, appropriate.

Indeed, I told him once that I cannot now even use the word “had” anymore without thinking of him.

We disagreed on only one point: I believe all eight accusers at Sandusky’s trial knew they were lying. He thought it was at least possible that some of them, through bogus repressed memory therapy, might have been hypnotized to believe Sandusky molested them when he did not molest them.

A Final Conversation

My co-author at the Daily Mail, Emma James, probably did the last interview of Frederick Crews about a week before he died. He was brilliant in his answers to her questions, and sounded nothing like an old man who had only days to live.

On June 17, I wrote my final email to Crews, which mentioned that the Daily Mail article would soon be published.

“I’ll be sure to send it out when it is live – or perhaps you’ll get the Google alert first. ”

A Final Message

Less than an hour later, Crews responded.

“Dear Frank,

Sandusky’s Message

Fred Crews was an active man, who competed in local road races until age 72, and remained a skier, swimmer, bodysurfer, and mountain hiker into his mid-eighties. He rode his motorcycle until he was 87.

It was typical of Crews that he wrote his own obituary and released it hours before he died.

Long ago, he chose the sardonic text for his tombstone: “‘But I thought I had tenure!”

Crews gave me permission to republish his works on Sandusky, and I have already published several of them. In accordance with his wishes in the coming days, I will publish the remaining articles, which he updated shortly before he died.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

See Full Bio