A breakthrough in the investigation of Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky came from a random posting on the Internet, the New York Times reported Thursday.
Investigators with the Pennsylvania attorney general's office — who were already convinced Sandusky was a serial molester — were alerted to an Internet forum posting that mentioned a football coach had kept silent about abuse he had witnessed years earlier, sources told the newspaper.
The posting, on a forum where people chatted about Penn State athletics, allowed them to draw up a list of coaches likely to have seen something, which in turn led them to Penn State's wide receivers coach Mike McQueary.
Investigators set up a meeting in a parking lot a little over a year ago, the newspaper reported, at which McQueary unburdened himself about having witnessed a 10-year-old boy being raped by Sandusky in 2002.
Sandusky, 67, is accused of abusing eight boys, some on campus, over 15 years.
Sandusky, giving his first public statement to NBC's Rock Center on Monday, acknowledged that he had "horsed around" with boys in the shower but insisted there was no sexual intent.
Sandusky to Costas: "I am innocent of those charges"
Meanwhile, ex-NFL player and former Nittany Lions star LaVar Arrington expressed fury about Sandusky's denials and failure to apologize to those affected by the scandal, .
Speaking on his radio show, he said: "You know what I'm pissed off about? He didn't say he was sorry to those kids. He didn't say he was sorry to the kids at Penn State. He didn't say he was sorry to the players, he didn't say was sorry to me, [to] us."
Special commissionA lawyer said Wednesday that his client will testify that he was sexually abused by Sandusky, and Pennsylvania state lawmakers are starting to plan for a special commission that will examine the legal issues raised by the child sex-abuse scandal.
"I am appalled by the fact that Mr. Sandusky has elected to re-victimize these young men at a time when they should be healing," Harrisburg attorney Ben Andreozzi said in a statement released by his office. "He fully intends to testify that he was severely sexually assaulted by Mr. Sandusky."
Pennsylvania legislative leaders said they will set up a bipartisan, bicameral commission to consider changes to state law in the wake of the scandal. The plan was described as being in the planning stage, including meetings of leaders and their aides.
Topics are likely to include mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, and the legal definition of child abuse, said Senate Democratic spokeswoman Lisa Scullin.
Also Wednesday, Penn State campus police and their counterparts in State College said they had no record of McQueary reporting an alleged sexual assault by Jerry Sandusky on a 10-year-old boy in a campus shower.
The details ran counter to McQueary's claims in an email to former teammates and made available to The Associated Press this week.
McQueary, then a graduate assistant for the football team, wrote in the email that he had discussions with police about what he saw. In the email, McQueary did not specify which police department he spoke to.
State College borough police Chief Tom King said McQueary didn't make a report to his department.
Campus police referred questions on the Sandusky case to the university's public information office.
"At this point we have no record of any police report being filed in 2002" by McQueary in connection with the Sandusky case, university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said, adding police searched their records Wednesday.
The football building is on university property, so campus police would have been the most likely to respond for a police call.
Mountz also noted the 23-page grand jury report was the state attorney general's summary of testimony, so it's unclear what McQueary's full testimony was.