Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. Who Is John Dutton's Grandfather in '1923'? Jeff Mason didnt believe her. Tearfully, she described her past all the foster parents, being raped when she was 7, getting her own place and feeling alone. HMH 361 ComNav CH-53 Helicopters. She's excited, because now she can go on in a whole new wonderful chapter of her life. The parallels between Elizabeth Marvels well-meaning foster mom Judith and Adlers real-life foster parent Peggy Cunningham are undeniable. On the form she filled in her name, address and Social Security number, and then she wrote, in part: I was talking to Jordan on the phone that night about his day and just about anything. This station is part of Cox Media Group Television. The woman claims she signed that statement under duress after having been questioned for hours without an attorney. Marie had a horrific childhood, bouncing around various foster and group homes from around age 6, and was sexually and physically abused throughout. An Unbelievable Story of Rape Mason told ProPublica, "It wasnt her job to try to convince me. O'Leary was convicted of five rapes, including the Lynnwood one, and is serving a 327-year sentence in a Colorado prison. While neither Wever nor Collette ever met the detectives, Collette tells OprahMag.com that she learned Hendershot requested her character be portrayed as "badass and bitchin'." In hindsight, it was my job to get to the bottom of itand I didnt." You cant republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. We also restricted our examination to only those agencies that reported at least one rape over this timespan. Doctors also collected DNA specimens, according to the lawsuit. Detectives Pruitt and Parker are based on real people named Sgt. She walked away with $150,000, according to the Seattle Times. Stacy Galbraith (left) has been lightly fictionalized as Karen Duvall, played by Merritt Wever (right), in, This password will be used to sign into all, Photo: Vulture, Benjamin Rasmussen/Getty Images and Netflix, Stacy Galbraith/Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever), Edna Hendershot/Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette), Peggy Cunningham/Judith (Elizabeth Marvel), Shannon McQuery/Colleen (Bridget Everett), FBI Special Agent Jonny Grusing/Billy Taggart (Scott Lawrence), Detective Jeffrey Mason/Robert Parker (Eric Lange), Detective Jerry Rittgarn/Pruitt (Bill Fagerbakke), Michael OLeary/Curtis McCarthy (Aaron Staton), Marc OLeary/Christopher McCarthy (Blake Ellis), Okay, TikTok, You Can Calm Down About Aubrey Plaza at the SAG Awards Now, All 165 Pink Floyd Songs Ranked, From Worst to Best, Vanessa Bryant Settles Helicopter-Crash Photo Lawsuit for $28.85 Million. The article also notes that Lynnwood reported 21.3 percent of rape cases "unfounded," or rather, lied about. She's soon accused of making it all up, and is subsequently punished for the "lie" again and again. Police gathered evidence from the house, including stained sheets, the shoelaces, blindfold and gag. Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn, pressed on the inconsistencies in her story. The (male) detectives Marie goes to see after shes raped believe shes lying and get a coerced confession out of her recanting what shes already reported. Mason moved to his post working on narcotics cases. Edna Hendershot and Sgt. reported when the victim sued the Lynnwood PD, including the Lynnwood attack and the rape of a 63-year-old Kirkland woman. He told me that based on subsequent interviews and inconsistencies with D.M., her foster mother, and her friendwho [sic] she had talked with on the phone prior to the report, he believed and others believed that D.M. Her record would be expunged, and she also received a $500 refund for court costs. We examined five years of the Offenses Known and Cleared by Arrest data to smooth yearly fluctuations common in crime reporting. For more information about canonical metadata, You cant edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. At first he could not recall the case, except that he thought it involved that guy from Colorado.. three days after the assault, officers picked up D.M. None of the evidence police collected linked him to his brothers rapes. Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer who covers culture, food, and the South. For more stories like this, sign up for our newsletter. New Report Says Nurses at Illinois Facility Forced Patients to Dig Through Their Own Feces, Records Reveal Medical Response Further Delayed Care for Uvalde Victims, Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That Itll Weigh Down the Economy for Years, Hoping to Prevent Repeat of Botched Response to Uvalde, Lawmaker Calls for Improved Training for Police, EMTs, If youre republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our. We received thousands of pages of documents through public-records requests filed with the following agencies: the police departments in Lynnwood and Kirkland, Washington; the police departments in Golden, Westminster, Aurora and Lakewood, Colorado; and the prosecuting attorneys offices in Snohomish County, Washington, King County, Washington, and Jefferson County, Colorado. D.M. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. They themselves took those pictures. The police called her a liar. OLeary was convicted of three rapes in Colorado and two in Washington, including the Lynnwood attack and the rape of a 63-year-old Kirkland woman, and is serving a 327-year sentence in a Colorado prison. Notably, Marie's rape claim was one of four that Lynnwood police deemed unfounded that year alone. Jeffrey Mason, Sgt. Pruitt and Eric Lange played Det. American History Has Been Whitewashed, But, Black Teen Girls On TV Are A Mess Finally, the detectives dont believe the story Marie, The Marshall Projects An Unbelievable Story of Rape. Between one-fourth to two-thirds of rapists are serial attackers, studies show. From JAMA Pediatrics, December 2015 and Violence and Victims, Vol 17, 2002 by David Lisak and Paul M. Miller. The police on her case, Sgt. We ran this calculation for all departments that met our criteria on a national level. We went to the ocean, it was like 7 oclock at night, I dont know what we were thinking, I got in there and I jumped out and swung my hair back.". When her counselors at Project Ladder marched her back to the station upon hearing her account of what happened, Rittgarn told Marie that if she took a lie detector test and failed, she'd go to jail and probably lose her housing. Claims detectives Jerry Rittgarn and Sergeant Jeff Mason discounted her story and ignored evidence including doctors reports and DNA samples She was later fined $500 when she again insisted the. Galbraith connected with Hendershot, who had worked on a rape case of a 59-year-old widow months before in Westminster. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact. Peggy's lack of faith in her former foster daughter's account moved her to tell Detective Mason that this was probably just one of Marie's gambits for attention. She requested and received a personal apology from lead detective Jeffrey Mason. An 18 year old girl reported a brutal assault. She and her husband took in the high-schooler for a short time when her previous foster familys plans to adopt her fell through. University of . Things you buy through our links may earnNew Yorka commission. But shes actually telling the truth; she really was raped. We used the 2015 Pulitzer Prizewinning ProPublica/Marshall Project story (and its follow-up reporting) that inspired Unbelievable as a road map to make this character-by-character guide to the facts behind the Unbelievable fictionalizations. You cant sell our material separately or syndicate it. With mounting pressure from the police, she recanted her statement and said she made. One thing that's left out of the series is the fact that Marie also settled for a undisclosed amount with Cocoon House, the nonprofit that ran the Project Ladder housing where she was raped. He tied her hands behind her back with a lace from her tennis shoe, blindfolded her and gagged her. He told police that hed fantasized about rape since he was a kid and that his assaults were a type of rape theater inspired by the Star Wars scene in which Jabba the Hutt chains up Princess Leia. From there, the show continues to follow a true story reported by ProPublica. Claiming police coerced her into recanting her story, the woman was charged with false reporting and fined $500 when she later tried to insist the rape did happen. VIDEO: Rape victim was called a liar by police. Rittgarn left the police department before Maries rapist was caught in 2011, while Manson simply moved back to his position at narcotics. The whole show is in a silly, goofy mood. So lets just state the obvious: Neither one of these men was the best man for the job as neither of them were all that qualified to work on a rape case. But the only unsavory loose end from the finale is what happened to the men who discredited Marie. The lawsuit alleges that the woman was required to stand up in front of other program participants and say that she had lied about being raped or risk being evicted, according to the lawsuit. Also named in the suit are Rittgarn, Mason and Lynnwood Police Chief Steven J. Jensen. 2023 Cox Media Group. The three went to the Lynnwood police station, where the detectives escorted Marie to a conference room. In a Netflix comedy by Katharine McPhees stepdaughter. Like her fictional counterpart, played with heartbreaking vulnerability by Kaitlyn Dever, Adler was a product of the foster-care system and had been abused. No matter what, you can always turn to The Marshall Project as a source of trustworthy journalism about the criminal justice system. Though the series hews closely to a true story that may at times seem stranger than fiction, showrunner Susannah Grant decided early on to fictionalize the real-life sources because, she says, we didnt think there was any value in the actual names being broadcast as widely as Netflix has the capacity to do. Nevertheless, its natural to want to know more about the people on whom the characters are based. However, based on those statements, A computer forensics specialist looked into O'Leary's hard drive files and found a folder named "girls," which had pictures of the victims. After the Lynnwood, Washington, police coerced her recantation and charged her with a "gross misdemeanor," Adler took a plea deal and paid a $500 fine. Lynnwood, Washington No one came to court with her that day, except her public defender. filed a federal civil rights suit against the city of Lynnwood, Rittgarn, Mason and Lynnwood Police Chief Steven Jensen. Donations from readers like you are essential to sustaining this work. She also accuses them of threatening to have her thrown out of her apartment, owned by an at-risk youth home called Cocoon House, when she insisted it did take place. In 2011, OLeary was caught and found with a photograph of D.M.s ID card. She has a fianc and she's looking forward to a fabulous life. Evidence proved her right. Rittgarn asked Marie. She was charged with filing a false report and went through court-ordered counseling for lying to police. When Marie's rapist was caught, Detective Rittgarn had already left the Lynnwood police department. Jerry Rittgarn declined to be interviewed. On a scale of laminated-eyebrow drama to Lemon Lady Secrets. She agreed, so they left her alone for a few minutes. (Jeffrey) Masons experience, when someone asked if they were in trouble, almost always, they were. We excluded agencies that did not report crime statistics in any given month, as well as those that reported no crimes of any kind in a year. "There was a particular photo that I really liked that she took. When the woman reported the attack to Lynnwood police, she says detectives Jerry Rittgarn and Sgt. She took a plea deal where she received supervised probation, paid $500 for court costs, and attended mental health counseling. with a butcher knife, bound her wrists with a shoe string he had removed from her shoes, stuffed a pair of underwear in her mouth as a gag, blindfolded her, and took photographs of her, according to the lawsuit she filed. But she'd stayed in touch with two of her former foster mothers, Peggy Cunningham and Shannon McQuery, and had finally found hope for some permanence with an apartment and life of her own through a transitional program called Project Ladder. The eight-episode series works on two different timelines. By To determine the rate of rape crimes declared unfounded, or groundless, by law enforcement agencies, we analyzed Uniform Crime Reporting data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. . The real Marie sued the Lynnwood Police Department, according to the Seattle Times; she claimed the officers had disregarded evidence and bullied her into recanting. Two months after Adler was charged with false reporting, McQuery told the police investigating a new, similar rape nearby about her case. (Warning: Unbelievable spoilers below). I give our client a tremendous amount of credit, said H. Richmond Fisher, one of her attorneys. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language. She describes in the law suit the man, wielding a kitchen knife, warned her that he had taken photos of her and knew her name as he fled the apartment. If you share republished stories on social media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts. Unlike her avatar, she left her Costco job handing out food samples days after her 2008 rape. After the attack, she says she was forced to stand up in front of a group of teens at a Cocoon House-run program and confess that she'd lied about the rape, something which resulted in her having to see a councilor. The records obtained through these requests included investigative reports filed by detectives in Lynnwood and elsewhere; crime-scene photos and surveillance footage collected by the various law-enforcement agencies; the two case reviews of how the Lynnwood police handled the investigation of Maries rape report; and video of Marc OLeary being interviewed by police after his arrest in Colorado. While Hendershot never suspected or chatted up an off-duty police officer in a bar to get his DNA, as Grace does in episode six, she did stay behind so Galbraith could arrest OLeary solo, as seen in episode seven. All rights reserved. Thats five times the national average of 4.3 percent for agencies covering similar-sized populations during that same period.". Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. FBI figures show that police annually declare around 5 percent of rape cases unfounded, or baseless. Detective Stacy Galbraith and Sergeant Edna Hendershot. After I got off the phone with him, I started thinking about all things I was stressed out and I also was scared living on my own. Mission accomplished. Steve Rider told The Herald of Everett: Suffice it to say, certain pieces of information just led investigators to the wrong conclusion., Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com, Seattle still the nations saddest large metro area, survey shows, Feds award money to study removing Highway 99 in one Seattle neighborhood, Plan to reduce homelessness in downtown Seattle picks up after slow start, Driver killed after crashing off Seattle overpass, WA's pay-per-mile tax is not the culture war we need right now, including the Lynnwood attack and the rape of a 63-year-old Kirkland woman. We consulted police training guidelines by various organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police and End Violence Against Women International. In the vein of fellow Netflix projects such as Mindhunter and When They See Us, the miniseries explores true crime through the failures of the criminal justice system. According to the ProPublica article, after Marie's rapist was apprehended, the Lynnwood. But most recent research suggests that false reporting is relatively rare. Our editors handpick the products that we feature. But even before it received the Netflix treatment, the narrative emerged from "An Unbelievable Story of Rape," a seminal piece of reporting from The Marshall Project and ProPublica that earned writers Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller the Pulitzer Prize. The Lynnwood police told her the news, giving her an envelope on counseling for rape victims. In Marie's case, neither of her foster moms thought she was behaving like it really happened, for different reasons: Shannon decided Marie didn't seem sad enough just hours after the crime, telling ProPublica, "There was just no emotion. The people interviewed for this story include Marie (in our story, we agreed to use only her middle name); Maries foster mothers Peggy Cunningham and Shannon McQuery; Maries friend Jordan Schweitzer; James Feldman, Maries public defender when she was charged with filing a false police report; H. Richmond Fisher, Maries attorney in her civil suit against Lynnwood, Washington; Golden, Colorado, police Det. A timeline of the (alleged) drama involving Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, and Florence Pugh. Without reading Marie her rights you have the right to an attorney, you have the right to remain silent the detectives asked Marie to write out the true story, admitting she had lied, admitting, in effect, that she had committed a crime. Unbelievable will, suffice to say, shock you. The description of his background comes from his LinkedIn profile. He asked if there was really a rapist running around the neighborhood that the police should be looking for. You don't just go with some family member who was not even a witness. Rittgarn, who has left the Lynnwood Police Department and works as a private investigator in San Diego, said he was unaware of the lawsuit. Busy Phillips Is Not Like a Regular Mom, Shes a Cool Mom, Theres nothing wrong with Busy Phillips being cast as Mrs. George in the upcoming, In Search of Tom and Katies Bubba Painting, Maybe punting on the larger plot can be forgiven if we get a sweet. Foster mom Judith and Adlers real-life foster parent Peggy Cunningham are undeniable collected DNA specimens, according the! The city of Lynnwood, Rittgarn, pressed on the inconsistencies in her story a... Fell through months before in Westminster involving Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles and. Old girl reported a brutal assault like to show you a description here but the site won & # ;... Real people named Sgt period. `` went through court-ordered counseling for lying to police moved his! 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