Page 63 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

have been made, and that the accuser…is only out to get some money,” the police report read.
“Myers continues to be in touch with Sandusky one to two times a week by telephone.” Myers told
the police that he had showered in the locker room with Sandusky many times after workouts and
nothing untoward had ever happened.
Two months later, Myers went further. He walked into the offices of Sandusky’s attorney and
made a stunning revelation. After reading the details of McQueary’s story, he realized that he had
been the boy in the shower that night. Curtis Everhart, an investigator for Sandusky’s lawyer, wrote
a synopsis of his interview with Myers. It is worth quoting at length:
I asked the specific question: “Did Jerry ever touch you in a manner that you felt to be improper,
or caused you to feel concern about his invading your personal space?” Myers answered with a
very pronounced, “Never ever did anything like that ever occur.”

Myers stated, “Never in my life while with Jerry did I ever [feel] uncomfortable or violated. I
think of Jerry as the father I never had.”…Myers stated on Senior Night at a West Branch High
School football game, “I asked Jerry to walk onto the field with my mother. It was announced on
the loudspeaker ‘Father Jerry Sandusky’ along with my mother’s name.
“I invited Jerry and Dottie to my wedding. Why would I ask Jerry, my father figure at Senior
Night, ask Jerry and Dottie to be at my wedding, and the school asked me to ask Jerry to speak at
my graduation, which he did, if there was a problem.…Why would I travel to games, go to his
house, and make all the trips if Jerry had assaulted me? If that had happened, I would want to be
as far away from him as possible.”
Myers described the night in question clearly:
Myers stated he and Jerry had just finished a workout and went into the shower area to shower
and leave. “I would usually work out one or two days a week, but this particular night is very
clear in my mind. We were in the shower and Jerry and I were slapping towels at each other
trying to sting each other. I would slap the walls and would slide on the shower floor, which I am
sure you could have heard from the wooden locker area. While we were engaged in fun as I have
described, I heard the sound of a wooden locker door close, a sound I have heard before. I never
saw who closed the locker. The grand jury report says Coach McQueary said he observed Jerry
and I engaged in sexual activity. This is not the truth and McQueary is not telling the truth.
Nothing occurred that night in the shower.”
A few weeks later, however, Myers signed up with a lawyer who represented a number of alleged
Sandusky victims. Myers then made a statement to police in which he completely changed his tune.
He was one of Sandusky’s victims, he now said.
You can be forgiven if you find this confusing. The boy in the shower was the most important
witness in the whole case. Prosecutors had been searching high and low for him, because he would
be the final nail in Sandusky’s coffin. So finally he surfaces, denies anything happened, then almost
immediately flips, saying actually something did happen. So did Myers become the key prosecution
witness in the Sandusky trial? That would make sense. He was the most important piece in the
whole puzzle. No! The prosecution left him at home because they had no confidence in his story. 7
The only time Myers ever appeared in court was to testify at Sandusky’s appeal. Sandusky had
asked for him to testify, in the vain hope that Myers would revert to his original position and say
that nothing happened in the shower. Myers did not. Instead, as Sandusky’s lawyers read back to
Myers each of the statements he had made less than a year before about Sandusky’s innocence,
Myers sat there stone-faced and shrugged at everything, including a picture of him standing happily
next to Sandusky. Who are the people in the photo? he was asked.
Myers: That’s myself and your client.
Defense: And when was that picture taken? If you know.
Myers: That I do not remember.
It was a picture of Myers and Sandusky at Myers’s wedding. In all, he said he didn’t recall thirty-
four times.
Then there was Brett Swisher Houtz, a Second Mile child with whom Sandusky had been very
close. He was probably the most devastating witness at Sandusky’s trial. Houtz told of being