Police: No Link Between Long-Missing Prosecutor, Sandusky Case
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- Investigators and friends of a former central Pennsylvania district attorney don't believe there's any link between his 2005 disappearance and his decision to not charge then-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky with child molestation in a 1998 case.
Still, Bellefonte police Det. Matthew Rickard told The Associated Press that he's planning to review former Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar's handling of the allegations against Sandusky 13 years ago—just to be thorough.
"There's no evidence or anything that has ever come to my attention that in any way suggests the Sandusky investigation had anything to do with the disappearance of Ray Gricar," said Rickard, the lead investigator in Gricar's disappearance.
Nonetheless, Rickard said he'll review the case. "I am looking into that, I guess, for my own curiosity ... but I don't expect this to lead to anything."
Sandusky, who retired as defensive coordinator in 1999, was charged on Saturday by the Pennsylvania Attorney General with molesting eight boys—including one whose mother contacted Penn State and State College police in 1998. According to a 23-page grand jury presentment, the woman reported that Sandusky held her son, then 11, in a sexually suggestive manner while showering in a football building on Penn State campus. Sandusky knew the boy through his charitable program, The Second Mile.
Detectives were sufficiently concerned about the allegation that they eavesdropped, with the woman's permission, on two conversations she had with Sandusky that May. The woman confronted Sandusky about how he hugged her son in the shower, asked whether Sandusky was aroused by it and whether Sandusky's "private parts" had touched the boy, the grand jury found.
After responding, "I don't think so ... maybe," Sandusky went on to say, "I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won't get it from you. I wish I were dead," authorities said.
Those detectives have since testified before the grand jury that recommended charges—including indecent assault, corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children—against Sandusky for the 1998 case and dozens more charges involving seven other boys allegedly molested from 1994 through 2009.
Sandusky's arrest also resulted in perjury charges against two Penn State administrators and led to the ouster of football Coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier. Those events have spotlighted Gricar's 1998 decision to not file charges when the same detectives first brought him evidence about the boy now labeled "Victim 6" in the grand jury document.
Gricar can't explain that decision because he was last seen April 15, 2005, about nine months before he was to retire as DA, after telling his girlfriend he was going for a drive. His car later was found abandoned at an antiques market in Lewisburg, about 50 miles east of the courthouse where he worked in Bellefonte—the county seat about 10 miles northeast of the university.
Gricar's laptop was found three months later in the nearby Susquehanna River, without its hard drive, which was found separately—and upriver—that October. Investigators later said Gricar had done searches on another computer about how to destroy a hard drive, without explaining why that might be relevant to his disappearance.
Rickard has yet to determine whether Gricar was a homicide victim, committed suicide or went into hiding for unexplained reasons. Earlier this year, Lara Gricar, the ex-prosecutor's daughter, got a Centre County judge to declare him legally dead.
Montour County District Attorney Robert Buehner Jr., a close friend of Gricar's, believes he was likely murdered. He defended Gricar's honesty and said there's likely a sound, legal explanation why Gricar didn't charge Sandusky in 1998.
Buehner believes Gricar likely reviewed Sandusky's comments to the boy's mother and determined they "were so ambiguous that it was not a 'confession', it was not an 'admission."'
Stacy Parks Miller, the current Centre County DA, didn't return a call for comment; her office rejected two Right-to-Know requests filed on Thursday by the AP. The office said it couldn't release records about Gricar's disappearance because that investigation is ongoing. Gricar's file on the 1998 allegations against Sandusky also can't be released, Miller's office said, because "there are no such records in the office."
The State College police have yet to respond to a request for any records on their 1998 investigation. Ronald Schreffler, a retired Penn State detective who investigated, said he doesn't want to taint the Sandusky investigation, but might speak after Sandusky's preliminary hearing next month.
Still, Buehner said there's nothing necessarily suspicious about Gricar's decision not to prosecute. He said Gricar often told him he'd never had anyone at Penn State try to influence a case involving someone at the school.
As evidence that Gricar had the guts to not prosecute someone contrary to popular opinion, Buehner recalled the case of Scott Paxson, a star defensive tackle accused of raping a woman at his campus apartment in December 2004.
Gricar was criticized for not prosecuting that case. His successor, Michael Madeira, charged Paxson 15 months later with aggravated indecent assault and indecent assault but dropped the charges in the midst of Paxson's trial in September 2006. Paxson, who maintained his innocence, pleaded guilty to summary disorderly conduct—akin to a traffic ticket—and paid a $300 fine.
Rickard, the police detective investigating Gricar's disappearance, said Gricar's refusal to prosecute Paxson dovetails with what he knows of the prosecutor.
"Ray was a hard-charger. If there was something there, I'm convinced he would have gone after that," he said, referring to the 1998 case and any other case Gricar refused to prosecute.
Rickard has gone through Gricar's personal effects, his desk drawers, his note-filled day planner and found nothing to suggest Gricar was still involved with—or otherwise concerned about—the Sandusky case by the time he disappeared.
"I can say that prior to Ray's disappearance, there was absolutely nothing going on with Ray Gricar and Jerry Sandusky," Rickard said.
Kenneth Mains—a detective friend of Rickard's in nearby Lycoming County who specializes in old missing-persons cases—said he understands where such speculation comes from.
"I see what everybody else sees," Mains said of the Gricar case. "He ran away, he killed himself, or he was killed. And until he's found, people are always going to wonder—especially with this Sandusky (stuff)."
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
