Toni Collettes intensity as Detective Grace Rasmussen doesnt line up with Edna Hendershots reportedly easygoing demeanor. , updated Grusings search for similar rape cases turned up an old unsolved burglary (Lillys story) with evidence the honeycomb glove pattern, the Adidas shoe print, and the white Mazda pickup truck that connected all the known rapes. He said he believed she had made the story up a spur-of-the-moment thing, not something planned out. He also told her he had taken photos of her and knew her name, and left. Privacy Policy and Donations from readers like you are essential to sustaining this work. "Based on her answers and body language it was apparent that [Marie] was lying about the rape," he wrote in a report. 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. A stranger, later known to be OLeary, entered her Lynnwood apartment, threatened plaintiff D.M. A timeline of the (alleged) drama involving Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, and Florence Pugh. Everything You Never Thought to Ask About In-flight Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discoverys licensing chief on how movies and TV get on planes, editing decisions, and the curious case of. She agreed, so they left her alone for a few minutes. Unbelievable will, suffice to say, shock you. She began crying and said she kept seeing visions of him on top of her, the lawsuit says. That year, she reported being bound, gagged, and raped by a man who broke into her home. For more information about canonical metadata, You cant edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. in a police car and took her to the station, where Rittgarn told her there were inconsistencies in her story. Rittgarn, on the other hand, had been a detective for 11 years, but had a background in helicopters and the aerospace industry. O'Leary was convicted of five rapes, including the Lynnwood one, and is serving a 327-year sentence in a Colorado prison. His LinkedIn page indicates he works for a private investigation firm in San Diego. In a testament to her resilience, Marie's carved out a life for herself far from Lynnwood. Get our investigations delivered to your inbox with the Big Story newsletter. Jeffrey Mason, Sgt. Rarely do. But nope. Jerry Rittgarn Detective at Lynnwood PD Lynnwood, WA. Hendershot is now a sergeant in the Westminster Police Department. Unbelievable is based, almost word for words at times, off of The Marshall Projects An Unbelievable Story of Rape, published in 2015. 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. 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. The woman, identified only as D.M. Seattleite, (mostly) retired arts/culture blogger. Rittgarn asked Marie. Virtually every real-life detail of the rape and the Lynnwood police investigation plays out onscreen in Unbelievable. O'Leary, however, had taken a picture of her with a learner's permit on the woman's chest. 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. 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. You do a full investigation. 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. We just want to dive into a pool without having to hold onto our bottoms. She requested and received a personal apology from lead detective Jeffrey Mason. filed a federal civil rights suit against the city of Lynnwood, Rittgarn, Mason and Lynnwood Police Chief Steven Jensen. The whole show is in a silly, goofy mood. Come for the Seinfeld references, stay for the Producers references. At first, the detectives are attempting to catch the man who broke into her apartment and raped her. Netflix The detectives who disbelieved Marie and coerced her into recanting her story also faced fairly minimal repercussions in real life. "I would spend hours at the beach watching the sunset go down and that was one of my favorite things," she said. Even with the strong language used in the Lynnwood Police Department investigation cited in the ProPublica article, no one at the department lost their job. Join Facebook to connect with Jerry Rittgarn and others you may know. 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. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. 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. If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. The other, Detective Jerry Rittgarn, left the department of his own accord. In hindsight, it was my job to get to the bottom of itand I didnt." The Lynnwood police told her the news, giving her an envelope on counseling for rape victims. You cant republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. View Jerry Rittgarn's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. Last week, D.M. 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, 20082012. 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. Mason moved to his post working on narcotics cases. Some of his computer files remain encrypted. And for him to know that we figured you out. Galbraith is now a Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent. Like her fictional counterpart, played with heartbreaking vulnerability by Kaitlyn Dever, Adler was a product of the foster-care system and had been abused. When the woman reported the attack to Lynnwood police, she says detectives Jerry Rittgarn and Sgt. Rapes by strangers were uncommon maybe about 13 percent of cases. From the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 2011, Only about one-fifth to one-third of rapes get reported to police, national surveys show. From National Crime and Victimization Survey, 2014 and National Violence Against Women Survey, 2006. We ran this calculation for all departments that met our criteria on a national level. One was her former foster mother, with whom D.M. 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. Adler was 16 when she became Cunninghams first foster kid. Galbraith came across a victim she didn't recognize while looking through the images. When Mason, accompanied by Detective (Jerry) Rittgarn, went to pick up Marie at about 3:30 p.m., they found her outside her apartment, sitting on the grass. 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. This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. When the woman reported the attack to Lynnwood police, she says detectives Jerry Rittgarn and Sgt. It wasnt until 2 years later, when former Washington state resident Marc OLeary was arrested for several rapes in Colorado, that Lynnwood police reopened their investigation. In 2011, Galbraith worked on a Denver case where a young woman living alone was sexually assaulted by a man in a black mask who documented the rape with a digital camera. I wrote about it last year here. Jeffrey Mason, the Lynnwood officer heading up Marie's rape investigation (and subsequently charged her for a false report) was transferred to his department from a narcotics task force just six weeks before the call came from Marie. Wesshe Montegumry Los Angeles County said all litigation over the crash has now been resolved. Jun 1985 - Jun 19894 years 1 month. three days after the assault, officers picked up D.M. When she wouldn't, they pressured her further until she ultimately reneged on her confession. According to an outside review of the investigation after Marie was cleared of her false report misdemeanor, "the manner in which she was treated by Sergeant Mason and Detective Rittgarn can only be labeled as bullying and coercive." FBI figures show that police annually declare around 5 percent of rape cases unfounded, or baseless. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. The article earned a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, and eventually became a book called A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. Neither one of them received any sort of formal punishment, even after an internal investigation was launched. Michael was tailed by members of Grusings team to get his DNA. 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. Helen Pow From the crime scene, they identified muddy track marks that came from Adidas ZX 700 mesh shoes. You don't just go with some family member who was not even a witness. Their suspicions were based on comments from three people who said that they doubted her story, according to the suit. However, based on those statements, The facility and two of its employees are also named in the lawsuit. Also named in the suit are Rittgarn . The reporting by ProPublica and The Marshall Project spanned several months and involved numerous interviews, a review of previously undisclosed law enforcement records and exchanges with experts on investigating rape. But most recent research suggests that false reporting is relatively rare. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following: Copy and paste the following into your page to republish: International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, Policing and Prosecuting Sexual Assault in Los Angeles City and County, How the Wealthy Save Billions in Taxes by Skirting a Century-Old Law. called a neighbor, who called police. Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you. The two detectives played by Merritt Wever and Toni Collette are measured and thoughtful with victims, yet dogged and stern in their pursuit of justice. 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. Jerry Rittgarn declined to be interviewed. Like the real college student whose rape brought Galbraith to Hendershots door, Danielle Macdonalds Amber Stevenson remembers important details: the rapist using a pink Sony camera that had been stolen from Hendershots 59-year-old victim (Vanessa Bell Calloways Sarah) and an egg-shaped birthmark on the attackers calf. She took a plea deal where she received supervised probation, paid $500 for court costs, and attended mental health counseling. Also named in the suit are Rittgarn, Mason and Lynnwood Police Chief Steven J. Jensen. In January 2011, rapist Marc OLeary was apprehended, and the head of the criminal-investigations division showed up at Adlers door to tell her that her photo had been found among his things. A Full Recap of the Infuriating True Story Behind Netflix's New Miniseries, Unbelievable. Sgt. 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. Jerry Rittgarn declined to be interviewed. She was eventually awarded $150,000 from the state after settling a suit out of court. In his home, they found the pink Sony camera in addition to the women's underwear, wet wipes, lube, and a pistol. 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. Former Lynnwood police Det. T. Christian Miller is a senior editor for ProPublica. 17-Down, Three Letters: Party for One artist Carly ___ Jepsen. Kristen Bell to Befriend an Unorthodox Rabbi. Other reporting included pulling transcripts of television news coverage from when Marie was raped and later charged; having court transcripts prepared from when OLeary was sentenced in Colorado; reviewing grant documents for Project Ladder; and mining the criminal-justice literature for expert views on how rape investigations should be conducted. He had only investigated one rape before working with Marie. Former Lynnwood police Det. Jayne Tainis Doris Laird is based on the 65-year-old fraternity housemother whose teddy bear, like her fictional counterparts, yielded some DNA. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. ; t allow us before working with Marie from three people who said that doubted... 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