The Sandusky Trial: The Coached Narratives Behind the Conviction

This is the fifth of a series.

By John Atwell Moody

Sandusky Silenced by a Lie: The Fake Rebuttal Witness Who Never Took the Stand

I mentioned elsewhere that Matt Sandusky had said in his Rossman police interview that there had never been any inappropriate touching. In a leaked police interview during the time of the actual trial, he’d said he has no recollection of any oral or anal sex with Sandusky. Actually, that story gets a bit more complicated.

I mentioned there is a lawyer no-one was trusting — he and his therapist were dedicated, but misguided enough to tell kids what they have to say in court even if it’s not true.

This is complicated, but one of the things Ziegler did after some years was send a really nice kid, AJ Dillen, to gain the confidence of these two, asking if he can keep his phone on record since he has special needs; and eventually he’d just asked, wait a minute, how do I know I actually was abused at all?

The lawyer said, oh, that’s between you and the therapist. The therapist said, oh, that’s between you and the lawyer. When Dillen said, so, how do we even know that Sandusky is guilty at all, the lawyer was like, gee, wow, I never even thought about that.

What is complicated is, when it was announced that Matt is saying during the trial that Jerry abused him and he’s going to testify, the first point is, it wasn’t actually Matt at all who said that, it is that misguided lawyer who said it. I already mentioned that people like McGettigan knew not to listen to one word of that.

The lawyer’s press reports saying that Matt is accusing Jerry led Joe Amendola to decide not to let Jerry testify in case Matt would be called in rebuttal. Later McGettigan said he had no intention of putting Matt on the stand, and he really would have relished questioning Sandusky directly.

He Said ‘No’—They Heard ‘Cha-Ching’: The Business of Memory in the Sandusky Case

To be totally fair, the strange lawyer wasn’t totally unethical with AJ Dillen, who’d actually introduced himself by saying he had been abused in a particular way. The lawyer changed the story so Dillen would be able to collect compensation, and when Dillen suggested maybe it never happened, the lawyer basically said, then just go home.

Matt’s notion that he’s going to start remembering later reflects a more accurate accusation. The lawyer interview of Shawn Sinisi we’ve looked at was already by the same strange lawyer; we could use it since there was no financial motive to tamper with testimony about a T shirt game.

Another section of the Sinisi interview — and all were eventually published posthumously — shows the same lawyer’s method of fabricating a witness statement which, applied to Matt so early is what must have inspired Matt’s unique sharp commentary, and would have ended the trial as a truce between gentlemen if Matt had been unleashed to face McGettigan.

The lawyer chooses a date, saying, thank God for the internet, right, then [52] “Do you remember him soaping you up and washing you in the shower?” Sinisi says “No.” The lawyer says “OK, um, do you remember him lifting you up to the shower head and putting your head in the shower head?” Sinisi says, “No.”

This second event which Sinisi denies, about lifting him up to a shower head, is actually copy/pasted from much earlier very careful testimony from someone else which had cleared Sandusky, and could create a believable MO if the lawyer can get Sinisi to say it.

They move to a different room when time is up and the lawyer tries again [53], “You were just about to talk to me about the shower head.” The lawyer suggests Sinisi can change his answer without being embarrassed as a female assistant is no longer there.

Sinisi remembers both events in the same words which the lawyer had magically predicted, “He put soap on like my head and my back and lifted me up, like, under the shower head…” The lawyer asks more and Sinisi says “I remember feeling it.” Now the lawyer volunteers information of his own “And that was around where your butt was.”

Sinisi saying ‘no’ about being lifted up isn’t explainable on the grounds of embarrassment. Getting lifted up is not embarrassing. The lawyer rejected Sinisi’s ‘no,’ insisting ‘you were just about to tell me.’ Then his Frankenstein-like surgery threads the lifted-up modus operandi which he introduced and is insisting on — a staggeringly cruel thing to do because these are the words from a historical document which had always proved Sandusky’s innocence — onto a brutal vertical pain-in-the-butt of his own invention to bait a hook, if Sinisi had survived, to dangle over the deep pockets of a university facility, to fish for money.

To Be Continued…

1. Page 10. of Exhibit B of CP-14-0002421-2011
2. Page 22. of exhibit B of CP-14-0002421-2011

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