This made it the seventh-most viewed television series on the platform from August 2018 to September 2019. She picked out a feminine white coat with a fur collar because she thought thats what girls were supposed to wear, but then kept the coat in the closet when she realized it wasnt. and her family. The technicians recovered three samples of so-called touch DNA, as few as seven or eight cells of skin that can be analyzed with modern laboratory techniques. Youre under arrest for burglary and sexual assault which occurred in the City of Golden on January 5, 2011, she told him. When Marie called her on that first day, before the police arrived, she was crying and I could barely hear her, Peggy says. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! On Feb. 9, 2011, more than a dozen cops and agents from the FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation gathered in a briefing room at the Westminster police station to discuss the state of the investigation. Afterward, she could. Galbraith and Hendershot turned to DNA to identify the serial rapist. A newNetflix series, which takes on the real-life tale of how a serial rapist was tracked down and captured, dedicates a lot of its screen time to one of his victims in particular:a teenage girl who wasnt believed when she came forward with her story to the extentinvestigators actually charged her with filing a false report. I walked in, and she was super happy to see me, and I told her. Three weeks before the attempted rape in Lakewood, a woman had called police late in the evening to report a suspicious pickup truck parked on the street with a man inside. But he did say Marie had told him: When she tried calling him that morning, she had used her toes, because she was tied up. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Warning: This material may be disturbing to some listeners. Hidden inside a piece of stereo equipment in his closet, detectives found a collection of womens underwear. On her way, she crossed a bridge. commented on the changing definition of rape used by the FBI. Denver-area publicationWestword reported. She is strong. In 2008, Marie, from Lynnwood, Washington, reported to police an intruder had broken into her home, bound and gagged her, and raped her at knifepoint. After repeated interrogation by the police, who do not believe her, she says that her report was false. The woman had lost her husband to cancer the previous year. It is graphic, but she told us people should hear it. After OLeary was linked to Maries rape, Lynnwood Police Chief Steven Jensen requested an outside review of how his department had handled the investigation. The marks at the two crime scenes were the same. A K-9 officer was outside, his dog trying to pick up a scent. Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com. He told them the evidence didnt support Maries story, and that she had taken her story back. News coverage, criminal justice guidelines and court transcripts were also consulted. Sign up for ProPublicas Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. Hendershot seized on them. In practice, many police departments will pursue charges against women only in extreme circumstances say, in a highly public case where a suspects reputation has suffered, or where the police have expended considerable investigative resources. I guess you wont leave your windows open in the future, the man told the woman, who had recently been widowed. An external report by Sergeant Gregg Rinta, who worked for the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office as a sex crimes supervisor, condemned the handling of Marie's case. The entire series is harrowingly candid portrayal of Marie's story and the horrific injustice she experienced. OBITUARY Marie Theresa Arzer October 2, 1945 - February 11, 2023. She had no family nearby. The trail started in Aurora, east of Denver, on Oct. 4, 2009, with the 65-year-old woman. Marie left Shannons home after a couple of weeks to move in with Peggy Cunningham, who worked as a childrens advocate at a homeless shelter and lived in Lynnwood, a smaller suburb about 15 miles north of Seattle. Galbraith recognized them by sight. But I havent made my decision yet, that yay, weve got the guy.. The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. He was just being neat and orderly, the way he was with everything. Mason told Marie she needed to go to the hospital for a sexual assault examination. She is subsequently charged with a gross misdemeanor for false reporting. Jennifer Gentile Long, CEO of AEquitas: The Prosecutors' Resource on Violence Against Women, commented that the article presented an "extraordinary learning opportunity for both criminal justice professionals and ordinary citizens alike". In 2011, her rapistMarc OLeary pleaded guilty to raping three women, including Marie, and trying to rape a fourth in Colorado. He then raped her. They received thousands of pages of documents, including investigative reports, case reviews, crime scene photographs and footage of surveillance and O'Leary after his arrest. on the phone that night, before the alleged attack. Police should not interrogate victims or threaten to use a polygraph device. said Miller during the Longform interview. She wanted to help the police. Dont call or Ill shoot you, he told her. Marie said that after the rapist left she had managed, with her feet, to retrieve some scissors from a cabinets bottom drawer; she cut herself free, then tried calling Jordan. She called the judge who was on duty for the weekend. [7], By August 2015, Miller was working on a report about the Washington and Colorado serial rape cases, with focus on the woman who recanted a report of rape after intense police interrogation, proven true years later by the rapist's convictionknown in the article by her middle name "Marie". Marie couldnt wait for it. Marie, crying, said she believed the rape really happened. She moved into the Alderbrooke Apartments, a woodsy complex that advertises proximity to a mall and views of the Cascades. By August 2008, when Marie reported her rape, she was living on her own in Lynnwood, a Seattle suburb. This is actually shown to be the case in the Netflix series too,. The Project Ladder managers told Marie that if she wanted to stay in the program if she wanted to keep her subsidized apartment she would have to confess to someone else. A friend from 10th grade called to ask: How could you lie about something like that? The detectives elevated minor inconsistencies common among victims into discrepancies, while ignoring strong evidence the crime had occurred. Golden and Westminster were middle class bedroom towns wedged between Denvers downtown skyscrapers and the looming Rockies. Why would a rapist use shoelaces to tie her up? OLeary was put in a patrol car and transported to the Jefferson County Jail. When they finished, the agents raced in. Unbelievable | Official Trailer | Netflix, Netflix's 'Unbelievable' is Based on a True Story, The Best Movies Based on True Stories in 2019, Toni Collettes 'Unbelievable' Role, Explained, charge her with with making a false report to police, Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 joint investigation, trauma can sometimes cause victims to give differing accounts of their attacks, Armstrong told National Public Radio last year, reported the story in part by interviewing. Within days of reporting being raped, Marie had quit her job at Costco, unable to stand there, looking at people, lost in her head. When the detectives returned, they saw that Maries new statement described the rape as a dream, not a lie. So, too, did OLearys truck. Sometimes going a hundred miles an hour, you miss some breadcrumbs, the same colleague noted. Mason filed a false reporting charge; such charges in similar circumstances were rare. She asked that her current location not be disclosed. The real-life Marie also opened up about her traumatic experiences on a 2016 episode of This American Life, entitled "Anatomy of Doubt. She had a social circle. "Unbelievable" recounts the true story of how the teenager reported to Lynnwood police in 2008 that she was raped at knifepoint by a masked intruder in her apartment and how she later. In the snow, they found a trail of footprints leading to and from the back of the apartment through an empty field. She had gotten all the classes she wanted. In August 2008, a stranger broke into the apartment of an 18-year-old Lynnwood woman, gagged her, bound her hands with a shoelace and raped her. They were both cops, after all. OLeary, in addition to assaulting D.M., also admitted he raped a 63-year-old Kirkland woman. He worked in Westminster, some 15 miles to the northeast. She had responded to a report of a rape at a blue-collar apartment complex in the northwest corner of her city. She was just moved. The photo showed a 6-foot-1 man with hazel eyes. About Search Results. Investigators must have definitive proof of lying before doubting a rape report, and a charge of false reporting must now be reviewed with higher-ups. In February 2011, a report was unearthed of a suspicious vehicle registered to army veteran Marc Patrick O'Leary, who lived in Lakewood, Colorado, and whose description matched the attacker. Shannon said she did, too. Open the door, she shouted repeatedly. What had attracted the analysts attention was the location of the pickup. From a religious point of view, she follows Christianity. She was always nice to talk to, Jordan says. The next morning, Mason went to Jordans home to interview him. [20] At the Investigative Reporters and Editors' 2016 conference, the pair gave a talk about their experience writing the article. She enjoyed chatting with people, free from pressure to sell. Miller had discovered that a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database to identify serial murderers and rapists was mostly unused in the cases of rape, as most police departments fail to upload sexual assault reports. She wasnt his type, not really. The detectives second interview with Marie was designed to elicit a confession of false reporting. The false reporting charge arose from a self-imposed rush.. The piece states: "[Marie] does not know if she attended kindergarten. OLeary had purchased a pornography website in September 2008. PeopleFinders is the best people search for contact info and public records. He spent the previous 11 years reporting for the Los Angeles Times. Westminster Detective Edna Hendershot had settled into her morning with her Starbucks usual: a Venti, upside-down, skinny caramel macchiato. For me it seems like people read me differently than I see myself.. She explained: "She's incredibly strong and she's been through so much, so everyone on the team wanted to respect her privacy.". The article was later adapted into the Netflix series Unbelievable (2019), which has received critical acclaim. For Marie, this was a familiar drill, one she could trace to her years of being abused as a kid, and to her years in foster care, bouncing from home to home and school to school. The dark mark on his leg. In the 1600s, Englands chief justice, Matthew Hale, warned that rape is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused. Judges in the U.S. read the so-called Hale warning to juries until the 1980s. He was the rapist. Tall, winter-bare trees towered above the roof. He asked if the rapist was real and she said "no." The article alternates between two true stories of events occurring between August 2008 and June 2012. [34] The program was nominated for numerous awards, including four nominations each at the Golden Globe Awards and the Critics' Choice Television Awards, with one win at the latter. And for him to know that we figured you out.. So who was the real-life Marie? 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. The license plate was unreadable. He had a term for what he was about to do: rape theater. Deviant fantasies had gripped him since he was a kid, way back to when he had seen Jabba the Hutt enslave and chain Princess Leia. Likewise, She is a long-haul trucker by profession. She went into the bathroom and cleaned up. 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.. [9], Nora Caplan-Bricker of Slate reflected that "Marie's story helps remind us that false reports of rape are the exception, not the rule", believing that the article shows the "ruinous consequences" and "ubiquity" of rape victims being disbelieved. [1][2] Colorado publication Westword reprinted the article as their cover story on May 19, 2016. Marie stopped going to church. "I just got thisreally weird feeling. and her ID card. No one deserves to be treated like Marie was. The woman alleges that police bullied her into recanting her story despite physical evidence supporting her report that she was tied up, threatened with a knife and attacked inside her Lynnwood. Act like nothing bad had happened, like nothing ever affected her. Someone else is going to get hurt, Galbraith worried to herself. He knew to avoid leaving his DNA at the scene. Marie had been sexually and physically abused in early life and was in foster care for most of her childhood. The next day, when Shannon saw Marie at her apartment, her doubts intensified. Those investigations often boiled down to an issue of consent. Who is this guy? she asked herself. On August 11, 2008, Marc Patrick O'Leary raped an eighteen year old at knife point in Lynnwood, Washington. Shannon, a real estate agent and longtime foster mom, had met Marie through meetings for kids with troubled pasts and had sensed a kindred spirit. He picked up a kitchen timer and set it to let her know when she could get out. If you're in the UK, you can visit Rape Crisis or call 0808 802 9999. She could have stayed with Peggy, provided she abided by certain rules. Hendershot asked one of her departments crime analysts to scour nearby agencies for similar crimes. He left the room, and walked to the front door, and he was gone. Galbraith hastily typed up a search warrant to enter the brothers home. It was like, I felt like she was telling me the script of a Law & Order story. Part of it was what Marie was saying. "The focus of the investigation became her credibility. Her foster family was going to adopt her. Marie liked dogs. And the Westminster widow had told Hendershot that her attacker wore a white T-shirt during her assault. Marie, as directed, told her fellow participants in Project Ladder that she had lied about being raped. It was dark outside when she finished. She was still emerging from the mental and physical suffering she endured during the attack. He was not a registered sex offender. Instead of finishing high school, Marie went for her GED. Both vehicles had ball hitches on the back. She was just a nice person to have around. The city of Lynnwood will pay a woman $150,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed after police charged her with filing a false report because they didnt believe she had been raped. Receiving it crushed Marie. "These days she's a long haul truck driver. It freaked me out. I would spend hours at the beach watching the sunset go down and that was one of my favorite things. Shed gone through so much already. Through friends, Marie met Jordan Schweitzer, a high school student working at a McDonalds. There was something about how she said it just made me question whether or not shed actually been raped, Shannon said on Anatomy of Doubt.. Mason. And at the hunts end, before he committed, he would take a final pass through the home, or what he called precombat inspection, to make sure there werent any weapons within the targets reach. YEARS IN BUSINESS (425) 672-1137. How am I going to find him? Galbraith often volunteered to take rape cases. Marie Callender in Lynnwood, WA. Thundershowers had soaked the area before the attack. In 2008, Maries case was one of 10 rape reports the department fielded; with so few, the Criminal Investigations Division didnt have a separate sex crimes unit. These guidelines, available to all police departments, detailed common missteps. If Washington had just paid attention a little bit more, I probably would have been a person of interest earlier on, OLeary said. Whats more, he would recommend that Project Ladder pull her housing assistance. And it seems like every time I talk to her she's in a different state. Outside, Marie was on the grass, rolling around and giggling and laughing, Shannon says. She also landed her first job, offering food samples to customers at Costco. . The report on Maries life written by a mental health expert who interviewed her for five hours is written with clinical detachment, describing her life before she entered foster care She reports not knowing much about her biological mother, who she said would often leave her in the care of boyfriends. The prosecutions offer was this: If she met certain conditions for the next year, the charge would be dropped. He wore a black mask. Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. Their article, "An Unbelievable Story of Rape," tells the story of Marie (the middle name of the real victim) and Colorado detectives hunt for a serial predator. He would rifle a targets personal documents. The original series was inspired by the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica article " An Unbelievable Story of Rape .". 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