This was never meant to happen. In 2008, 18-year-old Lynnwood, Washington woman Marie is attacked in her apartment by a man who ties her up and rapes her, taking photographs all the while. In 2008, Maries case was one of four labeled unfounded by the Lynnwood police, according to statistics reported to the FBI. [9], Armstrong's editor Joe Sexton and Miller's editor Bill Keller had worked together at The New York Times. Marie Callender in Lynnwood, WA. 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. Nor should police get lost in stereotypes believing, for example, that an adult victim will be more believable than an adolescent. on the phone that night, before the alleged attack. When Galbraith talked to her husband, also a police officer, he observed similarity with an incident reported to his police department in Westminster. 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.. They didnt need to worry, she told the group. Before that, he had served in the Marine Corps, specializing in helicopter avionics. . One reason is that women fear police wont believe them. Alerted to the site, Marie went into a frenzy, trashing her apartment. He would rifle a targets personal documents. But when the man looked away, the woman jumped out of her bedroom window. Her voice was like this little tiny voice, and I couldnt really tell. On August 11, 2008, Marc Patrick O'Leary raped an eighteen year old at knife point in Lynnwood, Washington. We all got into this job to help people, not to hurt them. Lynnwood Sgt. On the bed officers found a shoestring used, apparently, to bind Marie. Monday 7:00am - 9:00pm. After hours of further questioning, Marie wrote that she had been lying. Wanting independence,she moved into a program in Lynnwood, Washington entitled Project Ladder designed to help young people transition from foster care to living by themselves. He suggested she put a dowel into the bottom track to keep out future intruders. She was always nice to talk to, Jordan says. He was just being neat and orderly, the way he was with everything. As female cops, both women were members of a sorority within a fraternity. Denver-area publicationWestword reported. Sometimes she got to be with her siblings, but most often not, according to the ProPublica report. Mariegot her GED at age 17 in 2008. 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. FBI figures show that police annually declare around 5 percent of rape cases unfounded, or baseless. Winning $150,000 in a lawsuit against Lynnwood WA, Marie gets the fuel she needs to leave Washington and start anew. 1. In her lawsuit, the woman claimed Lynnwood detectives disregarded evidence of the assault, bullied her into saying it didnt happen and then threatened to have her thrown out of her apartment when she insisted it did. I n the summer of 2008, a teenager woke up to find a man in her Lynnwood, Washington, apartment, standing over her with a . [3] The Marshall Project and ProPublica are American non-profit online news organizations. She asked that her current location not be disclosed. [6][8] Miller called the woman's lawyer and discovered she was in contact with Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project, who had been working on an article about the case for several months. Thats five times the national average of 4.3 percent for agencies covering similar-sized populations during that same period. D.M. She enjoyed chatting with people, free from pressure to sell. This is actually shown to be the case in the Netflix series too,. While the agents were following the man believed to be Marc OLeary, another FBI agent knocked on the door of the home. A collaboration between The Marshall Project and ProPublica, it was published on both websites on December 16, 2015. And the reporters who made her story national news are still in touch with Marie, who, in 2014, settled a lawsuit against the city of Lynnwood for $150,000. 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.. We were really sad that we werent able to have her with us, Shannon says. Two and a half years after Maries attack, Lynnwood police contacted her to refund her the $500 and other court costs and informed her thather record would be expunged. Nobody collects such data. He tied her hands loosely behind her. Cops must work as hard to prove a falsehood as they do to prove a truth. Gregg Rinta, a sex crimes supervisor with the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office, wrote that what happened was nothing short of the victim being coerced into admitting that she lied about the rape., That Marie recanted wasnt surprising, Rinta wrote, given the bullying and hounding she was subjected to. In early October, less than two months after Marie was charged with false reporting, a 63-year-old woman reported being raped inside her condominium in Kirkland, east of Seattle. HOURS. Mason is now back in narcotics, in charge of a task force. I was just too scared, Marie says. The detectives, Sgt. She is subsequently charged with a gross misdemeanor for false reporting. 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. "I didnt want it to ruin the rest of my life. Project Ladder staff made Marie return to police when she said she made the report under duress. This statement appeared to satisfy the detectives. "This is not the kind of story where you anticipate competition," Armstrong told Longform in 2016. And for him to know that we figured you out.. It was a picture of the womans learners permit, placed on her chest. Marie was born in Heidelberg . He stuffed cloth into her mouth to muffle any sound. On Aug. 18, D.M. He worked in Westminster, some 15 miles to the northeast. Galbraith ruled out the brothers father he was too old and lived in a different state. She was just moved. She started smoking, drinking, gaining weight. Galbraith returned to the crime scene. [1][2], The article won the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting, presented by Long Island University, and the 2016 Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting, awarded by the University of Colorado Boulder and Denver Press Club. It fell to Shannon to break the news. 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. She went into the bathroom and cleaned up. Marie left the state, got a commercial drivers license and took a job as a long-haul trucker. He had previously worked as a technician in the aerospace industry. They began to collaborate, with Armstrong writing about Marie's story in Washington and Miller writing about the police investigation in Colorado. [10] The structure was proposed by Sexton. Before he left, he showed the student how he broke in through a sliding glass door. After 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. Peggy, too, apologized. The medical report noted abrasions to Maries wrists and to her vagina. I think its listen to your victim. The Lynnwood Police Department had 79 sworn officers, serving a city of about 34,000 people. ", Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Kaitlyn Dever as Marie in "Unbelievable. The treads matched the footprints in the snow in Golden and outside the window in Lakewood. 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. But to Mason, there was one critical passage. [39], series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado, Washington and Colorado serial rape cases, "The Backstory of How the Pulitzer-Winning "Unbelievable Story of Rape" Came to Be", "Marshall Project Kicks Off With Look at Legal Delays", "The FBI Built a Database That Can Catch Rapists Almost Nobody Uses It", "How We Reported 'An Unbelievable Story of Rape', "Notable Narrative: Ken Armstrong, T. Christian Miller and "An Unbelievable Story of Rape", "Coaches' Corner: The story behind 'An Unbelievable Story of Rape', "New York Times Journalists Among Winners of 2015 Polk Awards", "Team wins Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting", "T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project", "A Haunting Story That Shows the Consequencesand the Ubiquityof Doubting Rape Victims", "National rape story has Madison parallels", "Covering failures in the justice system with patience for facts and sensitivity to victims", "A Brutal Crime, Often Terribly Investigated", "How Almost Getting Scooped Brought Two Competing Reporters Together", "Constructing the narrative: An unbelievable story of rape", "Revisiting Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Ken Armstrong On Tuesday's Access Utah", "Listen to Our First Collaboration with "This American Life", "A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America By T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong", "A False Report review: a powerful story about a serial rapist that falls flat", "Review: 'A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America,' by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong", "The Lesson Here Is Listen to the Victim", "The true story behind 'Unbelievable,' Netflix's gripping new drama about the women who solved a serial rape case", "How a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Investigation Became Netflix's 'Unbelievable', "Netflix has revealed its most-watched content. Or fabricating a ruse to cover a sexual encounter gone wrong? You might be surprised", "Golden Globes: Full List of Nominations", "Critics' Choice Awards 2020: Fleabag, Watchmen, When They See Us, Unbelievable Among TV Nominees", "Critics' Choice Awards: 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' Wins Best Picture, Netflix And HBO Among Top Honorees Full Winners List", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=An_Unbelievable_Story_of_Rape&oldid=1113526009, This page was last edited on 1 October 2022, at 22:55. PeopleFinders is the best people search for contact info and public records. He had been punctilious. The 18 year old woman reported the rape to her local police department but they accused her of lying and she was charged with false reporting. Shannon called Marie and suggested she also contact the Kirkland police. Each ring of the phone seemed to announce another friendship, lost. Seattle still the nations saddest large metro area, survey shows, Plan to reduce homelessness in downtown Seattle picks up after slow start, Former Seattle deputy mayor heads to Biden administration, Microsoft employee charged with attempted murder in unprovoked stabbing, Seattle's lowland snow was hit and miss expect more of the same this week, claimed Lynnwood detectives disregarded evidence. (A later edition has been retitled, Unbelievable: The Story of Two Detectives Relentless Search for the Truth.). In October 2008, one of Marie's foster parents saw a report of a woman in Kirkland, Washington, raped in the same way as Marie. She claims the officers interrogated her and put words in her mouth.. 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. By late January, the detectives decided they needed to broaden their scope. In August 2008, 18-year-old Marie (her middle name) called the police in Lynnwood, Washington, to report . Frustration grew. But in this case, they worked through the night. Mason returned to the evidence. But leading law enforcement organizations urge caution in filing such charges. By early March, a forensic computer specialist cracked into files that OLeary had stored on his hard drive. Investigators, one guide advised, should not assume that a true victim will be hysterical rather than calm; able to show clear signs of physical injury; and certain of every detail. Shut down. Find Marie Day in Lynnwood, WA - phone, address, email. The next morning, Mason went to Jordans home to interview him. They talked about being tied up. Im encouraged, Im excited, she said. I felt like she was telling me the script of a Law and Order story. She was there to investigate a report of rape. said Miller during the Longform interview. Rittgarn told Marie that if she took the test and failed, she would be booked into jail. The odds of that happening are pretty long.". They said her record would be expunged. It was like Id just eaten Thanksgiving dinner, he said. It was possible that Michael had committed the rapes. "But we jointly decided that this story wasnt about [OLeary], it was about the police and their investigation and Marie. On Aug. 18, one week after she reported being raped, she met with the two Project Ladder managers and insisted she had signed the recantation under duress. She lost interest in photography. [9] The other officer, Rittgarn, declined to be interviewed. The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. Carefully, she compared OLearys white Mazda to the surveillance tape. BF in PJs, game over, he wrote in one nights entry. 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. Sign up for ProPublicas Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. For the next half hour or so, while she slept, he got ready while talking himself into following through. The actual Maries first name is not Marie that'sher middle name, which was used in the articleabout her case. .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;}}Celebrities Who Voice Cartoon Characters, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3 is About to Commence, The Underworld Crossover of the Century Is Coming. Later, she was charged with making a false police reporta crime punishable by up to a year in jail. It turned out the woman, identified in court documents by the initials D.M., was one of several victims of serial rapist Marc O'Leary, a former Washington man who admitted the 2008 crime and is. But now, Marie wouldnt give. On the form she filled in her name, address and Social Security number, and then she wrote, in part: I was talking to Jordan on the phone that night about his day and just about anything. She began crying and said she kept seeing visions of him on top of her, the lawsuit says. I was mad at God, she says. However, when the lawsuit was filed in June, the programs CEO, Cassie Franklin, issued a statement saying Our hearts go out to D.M. One detective later wrote in a report, The shoes were lying next to each other near the end of the couch and the bedroom door, on the soles as if placed there (not disturbed).. Galbraith and Hendershot turned to DNA to identify the serial rapist. 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