In the case of A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America, the answer, for crime aficionados, is yes. RELATED:Toni Collette: 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes. T Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, the investigators who broke the story for Pro Publica, also interviewed Steve Rider, the commander of Lynnwoods Criminal Investigations Division. According to the report, Cunningham called Sgt. He also directed and controlled the administration of credit card fraud investigations and related responsibilities, to include overseeing the case management of investigations involving Workers Compensation claims. Rittgarn, who has left the Lynnwood Police Department and works as a private investigator in San Diego, said he was unaware of the lawsuit. Our experience speaks for itself. It broke me, she said of the doubt she was raped and its repercussions. According to the ProPublica report, Marie spent most of the night on the phone with her friend Jordan before finally dozing off. Peggy relayed her misgivings to the police, setting in motion a chain of disastrous decisions by the Lynnwood investigators that unraveled the life Marie was just beginning to make for herself, and gave T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong the title for their new book, A False Report.. Mr. Vander Vliet was selected to receive highly specialized training in Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM), more commonly referred to as sweeps, and he has done TSCM examinations of FBI facilities throughout Michigan, the United States, and at US Embassies around the world. Mr. Crumb investigated or oversaw numerous investigations concerning complex financial crimes and fraudulent activities. He is a graduate of Indiana State University with a Masters of Science in Personnel Administration and Educational Psychology. Join to connect As previously noted, Detective Rittgarn left the department prior to Marie's rapist being caught. In the report, Rider says, "We learned a great deal from this. In Netflix's Unbelievable, the two male detectives that Marie primarily deals with after reporting the rape are Detective Parker (Eric Lange), and Detective Pruitt (Bill Fagerbakk). These contested stories divide our sympathies and spur angry debates. Ph: 269-208-5217 (Marie, meanwhile, received a $150,000 settlement from the city of Lynnwood and $500 to reimburse her court costs.). Coloma, MI He is also a veteran of the United States Army, having served as a military police officer. After all, a review of research from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) finds that the prevalence of false reporting is very low between 2 and 10%. She jumped from her bedroom window before she was raped in her home in Lakewood. This eight-part limited series is based on true and horrific events that happened to real people and the creators of this show kept that at the forefront of their minds throughout the entire process. Based on those doubts, the detectives coerced her into recanting and then charged her with a crime: false reporting. Go here to subscribe. With all of this damning evidence to contend with, you'd imagine that Mason and Rittgarn would have suffered some kind of consequences for how they treated Marie. Shortly after Marie is raped, she calls the police. In addition to extra training for the detectives, investigators must now have "definitive proof" of lying before doubting a rape report, and any accusations of false reporting are now reviewed at a higher level before acted upon. He's declined to speak with any outlets and told Miller and Armstrong he'd only discuss the case if they paid him towhile maintaining his non-factual beliefs about "victims who lie" and a "biased story." Find Jerry Rittgarn's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading online directory for contact information. The real cop is named Jerry Rittgarn, who at the time of Maries attack had been a detective for eleven years, but with a background in helicopters and the aerospace industry. Most of it didnt take them by surprise, except for one photo of an unidentified, bound teenage girl. Rape was a compulsion, OLeary explains, tracing its genesis to a childhood viewing of the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi, in which Carrie Fisher, nearly naked, is chained by the neck to intergalactic gangster Jabba the Hutt. Maries case forced him, for the first time, to question his fitness for the job. Mr. Blynn began his career as a Crime Scene Investigator/Latent Fingerprint Examiner with the Miami Dade Public Safety Department in Florida. 12 Likes, 0 Comments - Jule Saynes (@resident_of_collinwood82) on Instagram: "Happy Birthday Actor Jerry Lacy, he played Private Investigator Tony Peterson, Reverned Trask," Marie spent time with two former foster moms in the days following her rapePeggy Cunningham and Shannon McQuery. It was only when two female detectives working on another case discovered new evidence that Marie's original claims were vindicated. The 65-year-old victim he interviewed was matter-of-fact rather than emotional, much like Marie, but he didnt discount her credibility, and that withholding of judgment helped catch the serial attacker. He is a member of the state and federal bars of Wisconsin, and he is a licensed professional investigator in the State of Michigan. '", Like in the ProPublica piece, the Netflix series compares Marie's police experience with another woman, Amber. A serial rapist first attacks a teenage girl at home in Lynnwood, and then an older woman in Kirkland, before leaving Washington to continue his horrific exploits in Colorado. The most straightforward and specific you can be regarding your needs, the better you can nail down the actual cost. On the rapists computer, they found the photos he took of Marie. One of the many reasons this show was so well-received was that it took great care to protect the victims whose stories they were telling. Armstrong said that this is the third different way the story has been told, first as the piece online that won the Pulitzer, then as told on This American Life. A fourth telling will be when its adapted into a Netflix series from Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant and married authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. NEXT: Top 10 BBC Drama Shows Available On Netflix Spring 2020 (According To IMDb), Netflix's Unbelievable: 5 Things They Based On The True Story (& 5 Things They Changed), 10 Things In Netflix's Unbelievable That Were Shockingly Real, Toni Collette: 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes, 10 Weird True Crime Stories Netflix Should Cover In A Documentary Next, 10 Best Netflix Original Scary Movies (According To IMDb), Top 10 BBC Drama Shows Available On Netflix Spring 2020 (According To IMDb). "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. They informed her that multiple other women were assaulted in the same exact fashion, and evidence was found to prove her innocence. Does Unforgotten work without Nicola Walker? You can read the full award-winning article An Unbelievable Story of Rape here. Another woman close to Marie, a second foster mother, was also uncertain. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. A dive into either version serves as a testament to how sexual assault survivors are often dismissed by the people theyre supposed to trust the most. As a Special Agent, Mr. Aubermann founded and coordinated the Dallas Metroplex Health Care Fraud Task Force and he also led two FBI Major Cases that were directed at national white-collar crime targets. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. He was also chosen for a third rotation to assist in the creation of the FBIs overseas personnel recovery plan due to his extensive knowledge of the Afghanistan theater of operations. He was also playing guitar with his friends and planning to have a baby with his wife. A learners permit was placed on her chest. 616-481-0751 Dahmer What happened to real Glenda Cleveland? Two years ago, This American Life ran an episode (narrated by Armstrong and the producer Robyn Semien) that can serve as a nice companion to the book by giving us Maries voice on tape. Jerry Rittgarn, who threatened Marie with jail if she failed a lie-detector test, left Lynnwood to work as a private investigator. He also said that he had to correct an error in the piece about fifteen minutes before it was to air for the first time on WBEZ in Chicago. Ph: 269-271-0440 Ph: 269-217-6668 While Kaitlyn Dever (who plays Marie Adler in the Netflix series) tells GoodHousekeeping.com that she hoped Unbelievable would "start a conversation," she doesn't think the series necessarily "vilifies" the two male cops. RELATED: 10 Things In Netflix's Unbelievable That Were Shockingly Real. Thats not me saying that they bullied this woman into confessing to a crime she didnt commit when one was actually committed on her. Today, Rittgarn is retired from the force and working as a private investigator. Upon his retirement from the Ottawa County Sheriffs Office, Mr. Crumb was selected to be the Manager of Investigations and Risk Services for Amway Corporation, a position he held for over 11 years. He is a licensed professional investigator in the State of Michigan. Johnson was also the Field Coordinator for the FBI in Michigan for more than 20 years, working with the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia, that addressed significant violent crimes throughout the United States. It was a collaboration between two American, non-profit news organizations, The Marshall Project and ProPublica.The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. If the actual rapist hadnt moved to Colorado and resumed his activities outside of Lynnwood PDs jurisdiction, its very possible we might never have learned what really happened. Rittgarn was more experienced in that he had worked as a detective for 11 years already, but this experience was mostly limited to cases involving helicopters and the aerospace industry. We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article. In real life, the detectives' names are Stacy Galbraith and Edna Hendershot, but again, thats pretty much the only thing that was changed in this story. The eight episode series, tells us about a girl named Marie, who is horrifically raped, but after police coercion and neglect, she recants her story. Mason and Det. View the profiles of people named Jerry Rittgarn. "Bullying" and "hounding" are two words his report used to describe the male detectives who questioned Marie and it goes on to label them further as "coercive, cruel, and unbelievably unprofessional". East Grand Rapids, MI Again, no experience with sexual assault victims. Facebook gives people the power. According to the Pro Publica article titled 'An Unbelievable Story of Rape', Lynnwood Police Chief Steven Jensen requested an outside review of his department. At first he could not recall the case, except that. $28. A black-masked man jolted awake a 59-year-old woman, tied her up, and took pictures of her. Mr. Blynn is an FBI-certified Police Instructor, Firearms Instructor, and SWAT Agent. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/books/review/a-false-report-t-christian-miller-ken-armstrong.html. Amber, who is an anonymous rape survivor in the original account, had Detective Stacy Galbraith (Karen Duvall in the series) on her case after reporting that she had been assaulted repeatedly in Golden, Colorado. Jeffrey Mason, a detective on the case, the day after the assault occurred to report that Marie had a past history of trying to get attention and she was unsure whether or not the attack actually took place. Dont miss a thing by downloading Apple News here and liking Prevention. But not one single officer in the entire Lynnwood Police Department was disciplined for their actions. For investigative matters outside of your state or the United States of America, The Bureau Groups vast network of retired FBI Agents and our connections with foreign law enforcement graduates of the FBI National Academy make The Bureau Group the logical choice for your needs. These investigators have conducted and led complex investigations throughout the State of Michigan, across the United States, and around the globe. Marie (Kaitlyn Dever) is questioned by Detective Parker (Eric Lange) and Detective Pruitt (Bill Fagerbakke). Anyone who read the original, Pulitzer Prize-winning piece An Unbelievable Story of Rape written in 2015 by former Seattle Times reporter Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller, of Pro Publica, will remember the tale. Armstrong said that it was a coincidence that he (for the Marshall Project) and T. 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