Good questions. I suspect the investigation will take some time. Probably more than Joe Pa has, given that he has cancer. There has already been a coverup and the person investigating things years ago disappeared never to be seen again. Stains on a reputation that Penn State will have to wear for many years to come.
I wouldn't put much emphasis on that. As Centre County District of Attorney, Ray Gricar was involved in the 1998 investigation. That investigation only involved two boys: Victim #6 and another boy known to us only as 'B.K'
It's clear from the Grand Jury presentment that Sandusky slowly groomed boys. He went from touching their thighs, to showering, to manual molestation, and then to oral sodomy and sometimes anal sodomy.
The mother of Victim #6 noticed that her son came home with wet hair after an outing with Sandusky. She questioned her son, found out that Sandusky had showered with him and hugged him, and she called the University Police.
This was in May 1998. The University Police and the State College police eavesdropped on two phone calls between the mother of Victim #6 and Sandusky in which admitted to showering with the boy (and other boys), and hugging him. Sandusky said he didn't know if his private parts touched the boy but said he didn't think so.
The second boy, B.K., had experienced the same thing.
A grown man showering with an 'at-risk' boy he is supposed to be mentoring is wrong. It's simply wrong. So is hugging the boy. So is picking the boy up to wash his hair. But it's not molestation.
Gricar never prosecuted Sandusky. The investigation apparently only turned up B.K., who also had not been molested. The Grand Jury presentment makes it clear that Gricar was never given information on the 2000 oral sodomy or 2002 anal rape incidents involving Sandusky.
Gricar may simply have had no legal grounds to charge child molestation.
Gricar didn't go missing until 2005, shortly after he announced the largest drug bust in Centre County history. His car was near a river; his brother had committed suicide by jumping in a river. His county laptop was found in the river, missing the hard drive. The hard drive was found in the river, too, but it had been physically damaged and damaged by water. No data was retrieved from it.
Gricar's home computer showed internet searches on "ways to destroy a hard drive" and "ways to destroy a hard drive with water."
Gricar's nephew said that Gricar had a 'bad taste in his mouth' about Penn State football and Joe Paterno. Apparently, Gricar felt that he had been stonewalled on the Sandusky investigation. At least, that's my conclusion.
However, I think at this point it's a stretch to tie Gricar's disappearance in 2005 to a 1998-99 investigation of Sandusky.