And Zoloft is an adult drug I was on that at 8, she said, according to the article. It was blustery, and biting cold. The article also provided the basis of Miller and Armstrong's full-length book A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America (2018). He also realized police departments often did not communicate. Armstrong and Miller reported the story in part by interviewing almost everyone involvedMarie, her one-time foster parents, the Colorado detectives who solved the case and one of the Washington cops who bungled it, and the rapist. The third doubter was an anonymous caller. . So, too, his methods. He said nothing about doubting Maries story, according to Masons written summary. Another former foster mom, Peggy Cunningham, thought that maybe Marie got sexual with someone and they took pictures (Marie said her rapist took photos of her) and this rape story was a way to cover that up, according to This American Life.. [8] Extracts of an external report made of the police department that investigated Marie's case were made public for the first time in the article. On Aug. 18, D.M. She was a little scared, but any trepidation was tempered by a sense of pride. Honeycomb marks. He boasted of the countermeasures hed taken to avoid getting caught. "The focus of the investigation became her credibility. In the five years from 2008 to 2012, the department determined that 10 of 47 rapes reported to Lynnwood police were unfounded 21.3 percent. Best of all, Project Ladder provided subsidized housing, with each member getting a one-bedroom apartment. She called and said, Ive been raped, Shannon says. Working from Colorado, Galbraith not only linked OLeary to the rape in Lynnwood, Washington, but to the rape in nearby Kirkland. Join ProPublica, The Marshall Project, and Joanne Archambault of the nonprofit End Violence Against Women to discuss pitfalls and best practices of sex crimes investigations. But the hunt for the rapist united them. On her way, she crossed a bridge. The attack. But in this case, they worked through the night. It was just nice to be on my own and not have all the rules that I had had being in foster care, Marie said, according toProPublica. The article alternates between two true stories of events occurring between August 2008 and June 2012. He let spill some lessons for law enforcement. She was accompanied by her foster mother, Peggy Cunningham, and by Wayne Nash, her case manager with Project Ladder. After a pause, OLeary opened the door. [11] Keller and other editors recommended cutting down on the ending of the article, yielding a short epilogue. 'Ted Lasso' Season 3 Dropped Its First Trailer, 'Outer Banks' Season 4 Is Already In the Works, 'The Last of Us' Ep. 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. [25][26] The book expands upon details of the case like O'Leary's perspective and subjects such as victim blaming and social media harassment. 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. A low chain-link fence surrounded it. The criminal citation was signed by Sgt. This content is imported from youTube. Then her eyes darted back and forth as if she was thinking of a response.. Carefully, she compared OLearys white Mazda to the surveillance tape. Through friends, Marie met Jordan Schweitzer, a high school student working at a McDonalds. Launched the year before, the program was designed to help young adults who had grown up in foster care transition to living on their own. And then corroborate or refute based on how things go.. Looking for a condom or its wrapper, Rittgarn checked the bathroom, trash cans and a nearby hillside, but came up empty. The dark mark on his leg. The three then went to the police station so Marie could recant her recantation that is, tell detectives that she had been telling the truth the first time. Unexpectedly, a man came to the door. Theyd be out there searching for this person who had done this to me.. Interviewed in the same room where he had confronted Marie seven years before, he said: It wasnt her job to try to convince me. Apartments didnt offer the privacy of a house, but still, there were advantages. Photographs of Marie were found on O'Leary's hard drive. He took out the gag and removed the blindfold, telling her to avert her eyes and to keep her head in the pillow. The rules about life, Marie says. She feared going outdoors. For me it seems like people read me differently than I see myself, Marie said in the written piece about her struggle. But leading law enforcement organizations urge caution in filing such charges. Peggy, searching online, discovered a pilot program called Project Ladder. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. The pictures showed her looking terrified, bound and gagged on a bed. I guess you wont leave your windows open in the future, the man told the woman, who had recently been widowed. No one deserves to be treated like Marie was. I ran home. At home she avoided the bedroom, choosing to sleep on the couch with the lights on. A month after that the 59-year-old widow was raped in Westminster, some 10 miles to the north. Project Ladder staff made Marie return to police when she said she made the report under duress. The four known cases took place in different suburbs of Denver. Masons experience, when someone asked if they were in trouble, almost always, they were. One officer suggested a bathroom break. She was charged with filing a false report, later forced to pay $500, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote a piece about her called, Police: Lynnwood rape report was a hoax., I was mad at God, Marie said. She wanted to remember everything she could. He was military so he was very organized, Galbraith said. She wanted to take a lie detector test. On Aug. 13, Marie met with Mason at the Lynnwood police station and turned in a written statement, describing what happened. Galbraith recounted the days events. Find Marie Day in Lynnwood, WA - phone, address, email. The article was later adapted into the Netflix series Unbelievable (2019), which has received critical acclaim. [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. He used wet wipes to clean up his ejaculate. It adapts "An Unbelievable Story of Rape". [1], After seven months of email and phone communication with Marie's lawyer, Marie agreed to speak to Armstrong. Police found shoe prints in the soft, damp soil outside the womans bedroom. The judge signed it at 10 p.m. on Saturday. Golden and Westminster were middle class bedroom towns wedged between Denvers downtown skyscrapers and the looming Rockies. Marie had a horrific childhood, bouncing around various foster and group homes from around age 6, and was sexually and physically abused throughout. And she is resilient. But when the man looked away, the woman jumped out of her bedroom window. Michaels appearance was confounding. After repeated interrogation by the police, who do not believe her, she says that her report was false. The physical description closely matched the descriptions provided by the victims. But she remembers being kind of shocked to learn that they had charged Marie. Rittgarn asked. It was a collaboration between two American, non-profit news organizations, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. Two heads, three heads, four heads, sometimes are better than one, right? she said. She had no family nearby. Marie has two brothers and a sister on her mothers side. Years later, detectives would find notes on his cellphone from his surveillance of another target (his word) that detailed which room she was in and when, what lights were off or on, which windows and blinds were opened or closed, whether her boyfriend was there or gone. Marie Callender in Lynnwood, WA. Marie got a letter, notifying her that she was wanted in court. If you - or anyone you know - needs help, please contact the following: If you're in the US, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE and you can also visit RAINN. On the bed officers found a shoestring used, apparently, to bind Marie. That was an interesting conversation you were having, he said, letting her know that he had been there, listening, waiting. It fell to Shannon to break the news. He gripped a silver and black gun. Why would you want to have the same sheets and bedspread to look at every day when youd been raped on this bed set? Shannon thought to herself. He was sentenced to 327 and a halfyears in prison. ", Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Kaitlyn Dever as Marie in "Unbelievable. It was just nice to be on my own and not have all the rules that I had had being in foster care, Marie says. She was 18 years old, charged with a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. [8] A brief audio recording of Marie describing her rape is included in the article.[2]. and her ID card. Marie was charged with filing a false report and accepted a plea deal under which she had to pay a $500 fine and undergo counseling to avoid jail time. But on the first day, a support counselor came to the school and told Marie the family had lost its foster care license. But something. Until something more permanent could be found, Marie moved in with Shannon McQuery and her husband in Bellevue, a booming, high-tech suburb east of Seattle. Afterward, she smiled. She was very bubbly and full of energy, but she also had her moments where she could be very intense, Peggy says. This statement appeared to satisfy the detectives. The man wore a condom, she believed. And the Westminster widow had told Hendershot that her attacker wore a white T-shirt during her assault. He tied the woman up with her own shoelaces. A Lakewood patrol car had snapped a picture of OLeary standing by his white Mazda in the driveway of his house only two hours after the August attack on the widow in Westminster. Our personalities didnt match at first either, Marie says. A friend from 10th grade called to ask: How could you lie about something like that? After leaving the police station, Marie learned that she still wasnt through. One Sexual Assault Survivor's Quest To End The Shocking Backlog Of Untested Rape Kits. Hes going to be hard to find, she thought. I didnt want this time to be like that, Marie said of her attack on This American Life, comparing it to her first rape. She would need to go on supervised probation. After Marie approached Mason, he offered an apology. It was published on February 6, 2018 by the Crown Publishing Group. The marks at the two crime scenes were the same. She knew exactly what she was looking for. The attack was so heinous; the attacker so practiced. Lynnwood, Washington, U.S. Mar, 2009 Marie Charges In March 2009, she was charged with a gross misdemeanor: she was fined $500, put on probation and made to attend counseling. Between 2008 and 2011, a series of rapes in the suburbs around Seattle and Denver were perpetrated by Marc Patrick O'Leary, an Army veteran who had been stationed near Tacoma. The hour-long episode features Ira Glass, Ken Armstrong and Robyn Semien and includes interviews with Marie, Mason and two of Marie's foster parents. The true-crime drama tells the real story of Marie Adler, an 18-year-old girl from Lynnwood, Washington, who was wrongfully charged with a gross misdemeanour in 2008 after police believed that she lied to them about being raped. Westminster Detective Edna Hendershot had settled into her morning with her Starbucks usual: a Venti, upside-down, skinny caramel macchiato. Was she telling the truth? He was hired by Lynnwood in 2003, and served on a narcotics task force. Marie couldnt wait for it. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. By the time she exited the bathroom, he had gone. He took pictures and threatened to post them on the Internet. Detectives receive additional training about rape victims. Most had described a white man with green or hazel eyes, about 6 feet tall, weighing about 200 pounds. Marie Theresa Arzer Obituary. Technicians had swabbed window panes, doorknobs, even toilet handles anything that the attacker might have touched. I have no qualms with asking for help, Galbraith said. Peggy, too, apologized. David Galbraith was used to such bleak stories. As the weeks passed, the dead ends continued. Despite all she had been through, Mariesaid she does not regret reporting the rape. They compared investigations. "An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. She remembers being hungry and eating dog food. WARNING: This article could contain triggering descriptions of sexual assault. But Hendershot right away recognized the potential in collaborating and in using every tool possible. It picked up nine months later and 22 miles to the west, when the rapist attacked the artist in Lakewood. I didnt want it to get back to Marie, Peggy says. They also appeared similar to prints from a pair of Under Armour gloves that a Lakewood investigator, on a hunch, had discovered at a Dicks Sporting Goods. 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. [13][14] It was a finalist in the 2016 National Magazine Awards in the Feature Writing category. In Golden, Colorado, during January 2011, Detective Stacy Galbraith interviewed a woman who was raped at gunpoint for four hours. After Marie became a teenager, her years of upheaval appeared at an end. It was a small, single-story home with gray siding half a block from a gas station, an auto body shop and a carniceria in a beat-down neighborhood. However, the police were suspicious of her story and Peggy was too. Because I feel that if I would have shut my mouth, they would have done their job, she says. Open the door, she shouted repeatedly. Hidden inside a piece of stereo equipment in his closet, detectives found a collection of womens underwear. She told police her attacker had broken into her apartment, which had been subsidized. I was mad at God, she says. Marie settled in. He threaded one of the shoelaces through a pair of underwear. Without reading the Miranda warning, they asked her to write that she had made a false report. The original series was inspired by the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica article " An Unbelievable Story of Rape .". awoke in her Lynnwood apartment to find a man holding a kitchen knife. D.M. He documented the assault with a digital camera and threatened to post the pictures online if she contacted the police. It had cost her the newfound independence she was savoring after a life in foster homes. From there, her record was expunged and police returned her $500. Warning: This material may be disturbing to some listeners. Marie's foster parents and police in Lynnwood have since apologized to her. I have a background in mental health and Ive been working with kids for a really long time. Kaitlyn Dever stars as the victim of a serial rapist in Netflix's new series "Unbelievable.". The statement was only one page. Marie had been sexually and physically abused in early life and was in foster care for most of her childhood. After OLeary was linked to Maries rape, Lynnwood Police Chief Steven Jensen requested an outside review of how his department had handled the investigation. He was Marc OLeary. Maybe it was the attacker waiting for the woman to fall asleep? But then her life changed. If you drew a map, it was almost like the rapist was circling the compass points of Denvers suburbs. ", Merritt Wever and Toni Collette in "Unbelievable. They talked about being tied up. This made it the seventh-most viewed television series on the platform from August 2018 to September 2019. Hendershot remembered that while investigating her case, an officer had alerted her to an incident in October 2009 in Aurora, a suburb on the other side of Denver. Golden police obtained a surveillance tape showing the entrance to the apartment complex where Galbraiths victim had been attacked. By 2 p.m. on Saturday, they had a result. Galbraith returned to the crime scene. A search warrant led to the arrest of O'Leary. The first narrative is about a woman in Lynnwood, Washington, known pseudonymously as "Marie", who reports being raped to the police. A Kirkland detective eventually called Shannon back. It was possible that Michael had committed the rapes. Two dogs, a small pit bull and a Shar-Pei, tumbled out ahead of him. I dont know why I couldnt have done something different. For Marie, Shannons home had long provided an escape or respite. D.M. By early March, a forensic computer specialist cracked into files that OLeary had stored on his hard drive. 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. The analysis of the touch DNA produced mixed results. Galbraith listened to the woman with a sense of alarm. Lynnwood, Washington 98037. O'Leary had watched women for hundreds of hours, breaking into their houses multiple times before each rape. She asked that her current location not be disclosed. Marie backed down. In OLearys house, investigators turned up a black Ruger .380-caliber pistol, a pink Sony Cyber-shot camera and a large backpack, along with wet wipes and lubrication. Then she admitted making the story up". Two and a half years after Marie was branded a liar, Lynnwood police found her, south of Seattle, and told her the news: Her rapist had been arrested in Colorado. To Marie, it seemed the questioning had lasted for hours. 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