(Warning: Unbelievable spoilers below). The True Story Behind Netflix's Unbelievable, Beanie Feldstein & Kaitlyn Dever Talk 'Booksmart', 9 Books That Tackle Sexual Assault Head on, The Obamas First Netflix Project Is About Trump, Gayle Says March Is a Good Month for TV Lovers, A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn, pressed on the inconsistencies in her story. 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. Social scientists examining police records in detail and using methodologically rigorous standards cite similar, single-digit rates. From research and studies summarized in a Department of Justice-funded study, Policing and Prosecuting Sexual Assault in Los Angeles City and County, 2012 by Cassia Spohn and Katharine Tellis and from an analysis by ProPublica and The Marshall Project of FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program data, 2008-2012. If you share republished stories on social media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts. 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. The real-life counterpart of Bill Fagerbakkes hard-hearted Detective Pruitt, Jerry Rittgarn threatened Adler with jail if she failed a polygraph. 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The women of, Sam Levinson and the Weeknd Allegedly Turned, Theres No Red Button You Can Push to Stop. As previously noted, Detective Rittgarn left the department prior to Marie's rapist being caught. From the crime scene, they identified muddy track marks that came from Adidas ZX 700 mesh shoes. (For example, yesterday can be changed to last week, and Portland, Ore. to Portland or here.), You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. When Marie's rapist was caught, Detective Rittgarn had already left the Lynnwood police department. 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. .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}Facts You Didn't Know About That '70s Show, The Cast of 'The Mandalorian' in Real Life, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3, Episode 1 Recap, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3 is About to Commence, The Underworld Crossover of the Century Is Coming. 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. What do you think should happen to someone who would lie about something like this? Rittgarn asked. Join Facebook to connect with Jerry Rittgarn and others you may know. Based on the story of a teenager whose rape was discounted by the male detectives investigating her case, the show also concentrates on the female detectives who, years later, connected her assault to a serial rapist they had caught. The whole show is in a silly, goofy mood. At first he could not recall the case, except that he. The journalists who wrote it, T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, were separately working on the story for their respective outlets when they decided to collaborate on one long piece. Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn, pressed on the inconsistencies in her story. But most recent research suggests that false reporting is relatively rare. O'Leary was convicted of five rapes, including the Lynnwood one, and is serving a 327-year sentence in a Colorado prison. In 2014, she sued and settled with the city for $150,000. and her family We strongly believe that Cocoon House and its employees acted appropriately on behalf of the client.. Unbelievable is based, almost word for words at times, off of The Marshall Projects An Unbelievable Story of Rape, published in 2015. An Unbelievable Story of Rape Neither one of them received any sort of formal punishment, even after an internal investigation was launched. After the man left, Marie maneuvered a drawer open with her feet, cut herself free with scissors, and called for help. The real woman known as Marie in the original articleMarie is her middle namereported her rape to Lynnwood, Washington police on August 11, 2008. FBI figures show that police annually declare around 5 percent of rape cases unfounded, or baseless. Adler was 16 when she became Cunninghams first foster kid. 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. Then there was an investigation. I give our client a tremendous amount of credit, said H. Richmond Fisher, one of her attorneys. I wrote about it last year here. Jayne Tainis Doris Laird is based on the 65-year-old fraternity housemother whose teddy bear, like her fictional counterparts, yielded some DNA. filed a federal civil rights suit against the city of Lynnwood, Rittgarn, Mason and Lynnwood Police Chief Steven Jensen. OLeary was 33 when he was sentenced to 327 and a half years for the Colorado attacks and an additional 68 and a half years for the two Washington rapes, including Adlers. She was later woken up by a stranger who was holding one of her own knives; he tied her up with her own shoelaces, blindfolded and gagged her, and raped her while wearing a condom. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. In 2008, an 18-year-old from Lynnwood, Washington claimed that she was raped by an intruder in the middle of the night. He's declined to speak with any outlets and told Miller and Armstrong he'd only discuss the case if they paid him towhile maintaining his non-factual beliefs about "victims who lie" and a "biased story.". Edna Hendershot and Sgt. But the only unsavory loose end from the finale is what happened to the men who discredited Marie. 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. Well never put our work behind a paywall, and well never put a limit on the number of articles you can read. reported when the victim sued the Lynnwood PD, including the Lynnwood attack and the rape of a 63-year-old Kirkland woman. 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. Read the story here. It was like she was telling me that shed made a sandwich." All Rights Reserved. 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. While the other survivors of Marc OLearys crimes have been anonymized in Unbelievable, their experiences also reflect the true stories that allowed the detectives to connect their cases. As with Merritt Wevers compassionate detective, it was a fluke that Galbraiths police-officer husband, David not the karaoke-singing Max the Knife remembered that his Colorado department had seen a similar rape in which the attacker had made his victim shower and scrupulously cleaned her. For more stories like this, sign up for our newsletter. She said it was about 7 a.m. when she woke to find a man standing over her bed with a butcher knife and wearing latex gloves. The victim, now 23, is living out of state and engaged to be married, according to her attorneys. Trevor Materasso; Lakewood, Colorado, police detective Aaron Hassell; Kirkland, Washington, police officer Audra Weber; Lynnwood police Sgt. The eight-episode series works on two different timelines. The description of his background comes from his LinkedIn profile. And even if you decide there's not enough evidence to convict, you don't go after an alleged rape victim, Ward said. Sgt. 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. Sep 21, 2019. 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. She named Mason and. 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. UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. The third doubter was an anonymous caller. We reviewed Maries civil suit against Lynnwood, which included such legal exhibits as the medical report from the day she reported being raped and case notes from Project Ladder, the transitional housing program to which she belonged. We also ran the same calculation for Washington state law enforcement agencies that cover cities of the same size as Lynnwood to account for possible variations due to the size of a jurisdiction or local laws. 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. Marie dialed Stacy Galbraith in the fall of 2016; she'd been working as a truck driver by then and called from the road. Jerry Rittgarn declined to be interviewed. It was also detailed in the "Anatomy of Doubt" episode of the podcast This American Life. However, based on those statements, In December 2015, ProPublica and the Marshall Project co-published An Unbelievable Story of Rape. 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. We also restricted our examination to only those agencies that reported at least one rape over this timespan. No, Marie told him, her voice soft, her eyes down. Rittgard left the police force before OLearys arrest, but the case review found that threatening her with imprisonment and the possible loss of her housing was coercive, cruel, and unbelievably unprofessional. In the book-length follow-up to their original reporting, journalists T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong said Rittgarn had objected to his work being labeled as bullying and wanted money to talk to them. Heres how ProPublicas T. Christian Miller and the Marshall Projects Ken Armstrong wrote about this fateful day in their Pulitzer-winning article: In Sgt. Facebook gives people the power. We may earn a commission from these links. Thats five times the national average of 4.3 percent for agencies covering similar-sized populations during that same period.". Rittgarn asked Marie. Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn, pressed on the inconsistencies in her story. Rodney Cohnheim and Commander Steve Rider; and Marc OLeary, who was interviewed at the Sterling Correctional Facility in Colorado. A police narrative from Detective Jerry Rittgarn states, "I talked with Sgt. After OLeary was caught, McQuery apologized to Adler and later told This American Life she was shocked that Adler was willing to forgive her for such a huge thing., Like Scott Lawrences effective Fed, FBI special agent Jonny Grusing was a crucial part of the task force that aided the detectives work. 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