Page 54 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers
P. 54

CHAPTER FIVE









                                            Case Study: The Boy
                                                 in the Shower





                                                           1.


                       Prosecution:  When  you  were  a  graduate  assistant  in  2001,  did  something  occur  that  was
                         unusual?
                       McQueary: Yes.
                       P: Could you tell the jury about that occurrence?
                       March  21,  2017.  Dauphin  County  Courthouse  in  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania.  The  witness  is
                    Michael McQueary, former quarterback turned assistant coach of the Pennsylvania State University
                    football  team:  strapping,  self-confident,  with  close-cropped  hair  the  color  of  paprika.  His
                    interrogator is the Deputy Attorney General for the state of Pennsylvania, Laura Ditka.
                       McQueary: One night I made my way to the football building—Lasch Football Building—and
                         proceeded to one of the locker rooms in the building.…I opened the locker room door. I heard
                         showers  running,  heard  slapping  sounds,  and  entered  another  doorway  that  was  already
                         propped up open. My locker, in an aisle of lockers, was immediately to my right. Turned to
                         my locker, and obviously I knew someone was in the locker room taking a shower. And the
                         slapping sounds alerted me that something more than just a shower was going on.

                       At that point, Ditka stops him. What time of day was it? McQueary says, 8:30 at night on a
                    Friday. That corner of the campus is quiet. The Lasch Building is all but deserted. The doors are
                    locked.

                       P: OK. I interrupted you. I wanted to ask you another question. You’ve described something as
                         slapping sounds. You aren’t talking about like clapping, like applause?
                       McQueary: No, no.
                       P: You were talking about a different kind of sound?
                       McQueary: Yes.

                       McQueary said he looked over his right shoulder to a mirror on the wall, which allowed him to
                    see, at an angle, into the shower. He saw a man, naked, standing behind someone he called a “minor
                    individual.”
                       P: Were you able to make—you say a minor individual. Are we talking about a seventeen- or
                         sixteen-year-old, or somebody who appeared younger?
                       McQueary: Oh, younger.

                       P: OK. What would be the estimation of the age of the boy you saw?
                       McQueary: Roughly ten to twelve years old.
                       P: OK. Were they clothed or unclothed?
                       McQueary: Unclothed, naked.
                       P: Did you see any movement?
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