Speaker 1: Before we begin, please note this series includes talk of
Speaker 1: suicide and sexual violence. Please take care while listening. Badge, bunny, holster, sniffer,
Speaker 1: road hog. As I've reported the story, a couple of
Speaker 1: new terms were forced into my lexicon. I had to
Speaker 1: google them, but I sensed the be derogatory, and I
Speaker 1: was right in the most crude fashion. They're used to
Speaker 1: describe women who have sex with cops on duty. These
Speaker 1: were terms that were used by various people trying to
Speaker 1: explain Sandy's connections to local cops. People who were trying
Speaker 1: to assure me that these relationships must have been consensual,
Speaker 1: that Sandy just wanted it. She was a self professed
Speaker 1: cop freak, after all the bells. They saw this coming back.
Speaker 1: When I told them what I found out about the
Speaker 1: ten cops ups, their initial reaction was, here comes the mud.
Speaker 1: They knew that some would judge and blame Sandy. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty incredible attempt at totally deflecting responsibility. Jill Filipovic
Speaker 1: is a feminist author and lawyer. I asked her what
Speaker 1: she made of these terms, like if the telling is okay,
Speaker 1: this girl was just a badge bunny, a pistol sniffer.
Speaker 1: That really does remove the bigger picture, which is that
Speaker 1: in this particular case, it was a group of adult
Speaker 1: men who are in charge of this teenage girl. I
Speaker 1: have no hard evidence that Sandy didn't consent to these
Speaker 1: relationships with PG County Police, but even if she did consent,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean these relationships were appropriate. Consent can be coerced.
Speaker 1: Consent can be a product of fear or a desire
Speaker 1: to please or just to avoid a messy scene. Consent
Speaker 1: is an important concept, but it has limitations when it's
Speaker 1: used as the soul factor for determining whether or not
Speaker 1: sex is ethical. I think if we're just thinking of
Speaker 1: it through this frame of did she consent or not,
Speaker 1: then we missed the reality that the police officers in
Speaker 1: this situation, they're the adults in the room. They have
Speaker 1: responsibility to cultivate young entrance into their field. What instead
Speaker 1: she's learning from these men on the force is that
Speaker 1: she's a sexual object that she's expected or perhaps wanted
Speaker 1: to have sex with them. Of course, it's possible that
Speaker 1: a teenage girl is going to want to have sex
Speaker 1: with ten different men in the same department, but that
Speaker 1: strikes me as unlikely. What strikes me is more likely
Speaker 1: is that this is a teenage girl who is just
Speaker 1: sort of figuring out who she is as an adult,
Speaker 1: who is just figuring out what it means to have
Speaker 1: a job, what it means to enter a male dominated workforce.
Speaker 1: All of her understanding of that is going to be
Speaker 1: shaped by the expectations that are set by the men
Speaker 1: who are already doing that job. Before Sandy died, she
Speaker 1: wrote something that gets to the heart of how these
Speaker 1: relationships made her feel. Quote but as always, they have
Speaker 1: their fun and the hell with you? Why me? Why
Speaker 1: do I get sucked over so bad? From my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: I'm Melissa Jolson and this is what happened to Sandy
Speaker 1: Beale and I Heart original podcast, Chapter four, The Stink.
Speaker 1: My belief that a number of PG County police officers
Speaker 1: who are having inappropriate relationships with Sandy is largely based
Speaker 1: on Detective Schelski's recollection that he was inundated with phone
Speaker 1: calls after her death. Were cops all but admitted to it?
Speaker 1: What did you make of her spending all this time
Speaker 1: and having sexual relationships with police officers? I knew it was,
Speaker 1: I didn't imagine the best. Years later that a steak
Speaker 1: is going to come back fro. When Detective Selski initially
Speaker 1: told me about the phone calls, it was an offhand
Speaker 1: remark that he didn't seem to attribute much meaning to.
Speaker 1: That's how I interpreted his tone, anyway. But I've spoken
Speaker 1: to him a number of times since, and he told
Speaker 1: me that he too believes that Sandy was horribly used
Speaker 1: mistreated by his fellow cops. They were all right, often
Speaker 1: considerably older, and she was just a kid, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And uh, I feel though that they
Speaker 1: should have never done what they did. You know. It
Speaker 1: was just it's a relief to hear Detective Selski acknowledged
Speaker 1: this outright, as I've spent much of the last year
Speaker 1: exploring the extent of this ethical behavior, and I want
Speaker 1: to recap what I've uncovered so far. Sandy started going
Speaker 1: on ride alongs in her senior year of high school
Speaker 1: at just eighteen years old. At the time of her death,
Speaker 1: she was in a relationship with one cop, a married
Speaker 1: state trooper named Doug. Her body was found a mile
Speaker 1: away from his place of work in a pollard that
Speaker 1: was known to be frequented by cops. There was sperm
Speaker 1: in her body, her family recalled that she would socialize
Speaker 1: with police officers at night. Her address books were filled
Speaker 1: with the names and numbers of local cops, including some
Speaker 1: that I've been able to confirm participated in the Explorer
Speaker 1: program at that time. But honestly, there's a limit to
Speaker 1: the knowledge I can gather about Sandy's relationships with local cops,
Speaker 1: and at this point, I feel like I've hit it.
Speaker 1: Unless I get some new information. That doesn't mean I'm
Speaker 1: going to stop probing the question of what all this means.
Speaker 1: I think we owe it to Sandy to contemplate the
Speaker 1: scenario in which the team was victimized by a group
Speaker 1: of police officers, because I think it's very possible that
Speaker 1: that's what happened. Being deliberately and different to the suffering
Speaker 1: of women is historic and society, and it certainly reflects
Speaker 1: it in law enforcements. So that's what you saw. Mark
Speaker 1: Wynn is an expert in police violence. He's a retired
Speaker 1: police officer who now works to train other police officers
Speaker 1: how to better handle crimes against women. I've interviewed him
Speaker 1: in the past, and I trust his instincts, and if
Speaker 1: anybody wants to debate me on this, I'm more than
Speaker 1: happy to do it. I mean, I'm not somebody just
Speaker 1: read this somewhere. I spent my entire adult life working
Speaker 1: in law enforcement, so I know my family well. Mark
Speaker 1: started policing in nineteen seventy seven, the same year Sandy died.
Speaker 1: He looks like what you might envision when you think
Speaker 1: of a cop. He's tall and broad shouldered and has
Speaker 1: a thick mustache. He's also one of the most courteous
Speaker 1: and patient individuals I've ever met. If you ever have
Speaker 1: to call the cops, you'd want someone like Mark to
Speaker 1: show up. Well, all you have to do is look
Speaker 1: at the history of policing in our country. You know
Speaker 1: the country. It's been a job for men, managed by men,
Speaker 1: run by men, and that's true for the most part
Speaker 1: in the entire criminal justice system. I think when you
Speaker 1: exclude women from any you know, function, social or government, uh,
Speaker 1: and put a bunch of men together in the room, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have problems. I told him what I had
Speaker 1: learned so far about Sandy, my life as a cop freak, Doug,
Speaker 1: the phone calls, the ten cops, all of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there there's a potential there for someone to take advantage
Speaker 1: of that relationship, no question about it. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're not talking about an emotionally mature person, Um, you're
Speaker 1: talking about somebody's you know, very easily. The influence with
Speaker 1: an offender is the perfect setting. You have authority, you're
Speaker 1: telling these folks what to do. So can you imagine
Speaker 1: what this what this young woman must have been thinking
Speaker 1: right along this police car. You know, teenager with a
Speaker 1: with an adult with a gun and a badge, with
Speaker 1: full authority, So it must have been pretty intimidating. Mark
Speaker 1: was pretty blunt and forthcoming with his theory about Sandy's case,
Speaker 1: and he told me he'd seen things like it before.
Speaker 1: I suspect and from what I've seen in other situations,
Speaker 1: they were passing around from one alstar to the next.
Speaker 1: You know, she young, impressionable woman and they knew it.
Speaker 1: That's what made her vulnerable. And nobody with any moral
Speaker 1: fiber obviously stepped in and said, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: It happened at my academy, Um. You know, instructors extorting
Speaker 1: young women for a scores on their tests, singling out
Speaker 1: women who they wanted to secually abuse. Well, and this
Speaker 1: is the thing about predation, um, it works better for
Speaker 1: the predator if your victim is vulnerable, and what more
Speaker 1: vulnerable place than, you know, a desperate young person trying
Speaker 1: to start a Korean law enforcement For Mark, the sheer
Speaker 1: number of officers involved with Sandy made them suspicious. It's
Speaker 1: highly likely that they weren't as close knit as police
Speaker 1: departments are, weren't talking about all this and sharing information.
Speaker 1: It almost sounded like she was being trafficked from one
Speaker 1: officer to the next. Tractors obviously make money off of it,
Speaker 1: but they weren't making money. If this is the case,
Speaker 1: they were passion around for sexual gratification. Mark's theory is
Speaker 1: that these police officers they use their power and authority
Speaker 1: for sexually motivated reasons. There's actually a term for that
Speaker 1: police sexual misconduct, and for victims who experience it, it
Speaker 1: can be an extremely isolating kind of abuse. Well, this
Speaker 1: is the thing with any kind of misconduct. I mean
Speaker 1: the fact that you have a uniform and you represent authority,
Speaker 1: and you know this is somebody using that authority for
Speaker 1: another reason. This is somebody you when they tell you to
Speaker 1: to do something, you obey it, and most people do
Speaker 1: they follow them all there. You know, they don't want
Speaker 1: to get in trouble with the police. I want to
Speaker 1: take you down a short tangent now, because I don't
Speaker 1: think you can understand Sandy's story without knowing more about
Speaker 1: the culture that allows this kind of abuse to flourish.
Speaker 1: And it does flourish because despite very few victims wanting
Speaker 1: to come forward. Sexual misconduct is the second most frequently
Speaker 1: reported form of police misconduct, according to research by the
Speaker 1: Cato Institute. Police sexual misconduct is a dry term, but
Speaker 1: it encompasses a wide range of troubling behavior, everything from
Speaker 1: stopping a car without cause to flirt with the driver
Speaker 1: to a sexual shakedown, which is when an officer extorts
Speaker 1: sexual favors in exchange for not ticketing or arresting the person.
Speaker 1: And a lot of police sexual misconduct isn't actually criminal.
Speaker 1: It is, however, totally unethical. Take, for instance, an officer
Speaker 1: who responds to a domestic violence call and uses it
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to have sex with a distraught victim.
Speaker 1: In a number of states, it's even legal to have
Speaker 1: sex with someone in your custody. To learn more, I
Speaker 1: tracked down one of the few experts that actually studies
Speaker 1: this stuff. My name is Timothy Maher and I am
Speaker 1: a professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at
Speaker 1: the University of Missouri St. Louis. Timothy also used to
Speaker 1: be a cop. He spent thirteen years as a police
Speaker 1: officer in La dou Missouri. I was watching a news
Speaker 1: magazine television show back in the early two thousands, and
Speaker 1: they did a story on a case in New York
Speaker 1: State where a police officer was pulling women over under
Speaker 1: the pretense of a d w I stop. He told
Speaker 1: the young woman that he was going to cut her
Speaker 1: a break, but he still had to punish her in
Speaker 1: some way. So he said, as your punishment, I'm going
Speaker 1: to make you walk home, and you also have to
Speaker 1: take all your clothes off. So she was afraid. It
Speaker 1: was dark and all alone, it was kind of a
Speaker 1: remote area, and so she reluctantly agreed, and he graciously
Speaker 1: let her keep her shoes on because she said it
Speaker 1: hurt to walk into her bare feet. Timothy quickly discovered
Speaker 1: that there was very little research on police sexual misconduct.
Speaker 1: We don't even have answers to basic questions like how
Speaker 1: prevalent it is. We have no way of knowing how
Speaker 1: much of this behavior goes on. Many people are reluctant
Speaker 1: to report on the police when these incidents occur. They
Speaker 1: might report to someone else sexually assaulted them, but when
Speaker 1: a police officer sexually assaults them, they often think twice
Speaker 1: about it, and many of them frankly don't report it.
Speaker 1: And when victims do report, it's generally their word against
Speaker 1: a sworn police officer. The cover of darkness plays a role.
Speaker 1: It's it seems funny, but a lot of this behavior
Speaker 1: goes on after hours when there's very few other people
Speaker 1: around to witness it, and everybody else goes to bed,
Speaker 1: but there's a few people out there still roaming around,
Speaker 1: and then there's the police, because the police work at night.
Speaker 1: You know, you can stop a car, if you want
Speaker 1: to stop a car, you can get out and walk
Speaker 1: around and confront people and ask them to come over
Speaker 1: and even voluntarily talk to me or involuntarily, but there's
Speaker 1: no one there to stop you. Really, the truth is
Speaker 1: police typically in our society and our culture are are
Speaker 1: you know, have the authority and power and this opportunity
Speaker 1: to engage. I learned something interesting about the role of
Speaker 1: group dynamics. Bad behavior can be concentrated to a single
Speaker 1: shift or a particular group of officers. The day shift
Speaker 1: could be fine, for example, but certain night shifts may
Speaker 1: tolerate deviant behavior. One study looking at the Chicago p
Speaker 1: D found that officers who worked with colleagues who used
Speaker 1: excessive force were more likely to engage in the same
Speaker 1: kind of conduct. The behavior was contagious, as the studies
Speaker 1: senior author wrote, quote, officers peers may serve as social
Speaker 1: conduits through which misconduct is learned and transmitted, but there
Speaker 1: is that culture of not reporting on fellow officers generally
Speaker 1: in law enforcement, not just for sexual misconduct, but for
Speaker 1: lots of behaviors. Timothy has interviewed numerous police officers about
Speaker 1: their perceptions of police sexual misconduct. In one two thousand
Speaker 1: and three study, he found that while police officers believed
Speaker 1: that sexual misconduct was common quote, criminal justice officials have
Speaker 1: done little to help control the problem, suggesting that this
Speaker 1: problem may in part be fostered by the police subculture.
Speaker 1: The officers I spoke with said they drew the line
Speaker 1: though at very serious criminal behavior, inappropriate comments the sex
Speaker 1: on duty, minor violations of rules and regulations, where you
Speaker 1: know what, they don't report on each other it's the
Speaker 1: blue wall of silence. It's that you just don't deal
Speaker 1: with that. Most of them would say, I'm not their supervisor.
Speaker 1: I don't have to deal with them. That's the boss's
Speaker 1: job now. I interviewed sergeants and lieutenants to what I
Speaker 1: learned was that, you know, it wasn't unique just to
Speaker 1: the patrol officers. Are the non ranking officers that you know,
Speaker 1: ranking and supervising officers were engaging in this behavior as well.
Speaker 1: I want to take you back to fo P Lodge
Speaker 1: number eighty nine, the cop club in Prince George's County,
Speaker 1: the place where Sandy's family said she would get drinks
Speaker 1: with police after hours, except instead of ninety seven, it's
Speaker 1: exactly forty years later. It's two am, and a group
Speaker 1: of cops are grabbing drinks. Some of them are still
Speaker 1: in uniform, including a young woman and who I'll call Marie.
Speaker 1: She's just a few years out of the academy and
Speaker 1: she's hanging out with her coworkers and her lieutenant, who
Speaker 1: all called David. The lounge closes and the group migrates
Speaker 1: outside to the parking lot. After a while, Marie really
Speaker 1: needs to pee, so she walks into the woods for
Speaker 1: some privacy. On her way back, in the darkness, she's
Speaker 1: pulled to the ground. Her lieutenant David has grabbed her.
Speaker 1: He thrust his hands down her trousers, sexually assaulting her.
Speaker 1: Marie doesn't officially report the incident, fearing retribution. Even as
Speaker 1: a new cop, she understands the consequences of squealing on
Speaker 1: a fellow officer, But news of what happened gets around
Speaker 1: the department, and two years later she's called into internal
Speaker 1: affairs and asked about the incident. She speaks her truth.
Speaker 1: After David is charged with sexual assault, Marie's working environment
Speaker 1: becomes one of intimidation and fear. She's shunned by her
Speaker 1: colleagues and blamed for the prosecution of her abuser, even
Speaker 1: receiving a threat via text. In a brazen show of
Speaker 1: solidarity with her lieutenant, high ranking police officers packed the
Speaker 1: courtroom to support him at trial. Ultimately, he's found guilty
Speaker 1: and sentenced to seven years in prison. Marie is reassigned
Speaker 1: to the evidence department, in effect a desk job. She
Speaker 1: later leaves PG County Police due to what she describes
Speaker 1: as a hostile working environment. Marie might have thought she
Speaker 1: was one of the boys, but she wasn't part of
Speaker 1: the brotherhood. Marie, she didn't just lose her job. Trauma
Speaker 1: has a cost. It costs time, money, energy, and it
Speaker 1: costs Marie her peace of mind. After the assault, she
Speaker 1: reported having nightmares, crying spells, heightened anxiety. This attack and
Speaker 1: the culture that tolerated it had ousted her from a
Speaker 1: community she worked so hard to join, and then she
Speaker 1: was blamed for her own downfall. All of this made
Speaker 1: me think of Sandy. If Sandy was a victim of
Speaker 1: some kind of police sexual abuse, I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to assume it would have weighed heavily on her mental
Speaker 1: health too. One more secret the teen had to carry.
Speaker 1: Police sexual misconduct has been a problem in our profession
Speaker 1: for decades. That's Tom Tremblay. He's a former police chief
Speaker 1: with a thirty year career in law enforcement. These days,
Speaker 1: he works to advise police departments on how to respond
Speaker 1: to domestic violence and sexual misconduct, including within its own ranks.
Speaker 1: You can't talk about policing without a really courageous conversation
Speaker 1: about male dominated culture, about hyper masculinity, and this is
Speaker 1: something that our profession hasn't done. And I when I
Speaker 1: taught when I address hyper masculinity and male privilege and
Speaker 1: trainings around the country, I'm oftentimes met, you know, in
Speaker 1: this male dominated culture with what do you mean male privilege?
Speaker 1: What do you mean hyper masculinity? In Tom helped to
Speaker 1: author a model policy for how police departments should handle
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct within the ranks. It prohibits using a law
Speaker 1: enforcement position, badge or identification card to solicit initiate a
Speaker 1: coerced sexual contact with anyone, and it explicitly banns sexual
Speaker 1: contact with anyone in a police explorer program. You might
Speaker 1: think that police departments would already have specific policies on
Speaker 1: this issue, but Tom told me that many don't, and
Speaker 1: so one of the major challenges that I see when
Speaker 1: I talk to police leaders around the country is the
Speaker 1: first thought process is, we don't need a policy to
Speaker 1: tell officers they can't sexually harass or sexually assault colleagues
Speaker 1: or citizens. We just don't need that. It's not necessary.
Speaker 1: These police chiefs might not feel like it's necessary to
Speaker 1: explain to their officers that they shouldn't break the law.
Speaker 1: But a lot of police sexual misconduct isn't illegal, and
Speaker 1: without it being clearly defined, it lives in this murky
Speaker 1: space of being wrong but silently tolerated. One of the
Speaker 1: policy components that I recommend that law enforcement consider is
Speaker 1: that consent shall not be an affirmative defense for any
Speaker 1: behavior that's addressed by prohibited conduct of sexual harassment or
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct. Meaning a cop can't just justify breaking the
Speaker 1: rules by saying that the victim consented simply because the
Speaker 1: police the badge and the gun, and the authority to
Speaker 1: you know, stop and detain someone, search someone, arrest someone,
Speaker 1: take their freedom away. All of those things are interconnected.
Speaker 1: Of course, a policy on police sexual misconduct is only
Speaker 1: as good as its enforcement, but in a culture where
Speaker 1: secrecy rains, mandating that such behavior must be reported can
Speaker 1: help to break apart the blue wall of silence. If
Speaker 1: someone sees something or suspects something, they're obligated to come forward,
Speaker 1: not to turn away. The PG County Police Department does
Speaker 1: not have a police sexual misconduct policy, though when I
Speaker 1: asked a spokesperson about this, they sent me a few
Speaker 1: pages on discrimination and sexual harassment. That policy only protects
Speaker 1: employees from abuse by other employees and says nothing about
Speaker 1: the general public. However, Maryland did pass a law in
Speaker 1: that prohibits cops from having sex with the people they
Speaker 1: interact with in the course of their duties, victims, witnesses,
Speaker 1: and suspects. When Sandy started training to be a cop,
Speaker 1: only two percent of law enforcement officers in the US
Speaker 1: were women. That number grew to around by the end
Speaker 1: of the nineties, and then it just stagnated. It has
Speaker 1: remained virtually the same for over two decades. Compare that
Speaker 1: to New Zealand, where I was born. They're about of
Speaker 1: cops or women, and they have a goal of recruiting
Speaker 1: women in order to better reflect the diverse communities that
Speaker 1: they police. Like Mark Wind said, the consequences of leaving
Speaker 1: women out of the room are severe. Not only can
Speaker 1: it breed hyper masculinity, but it doesn't reflect the true
Speaker 1: makeup of society. And there's evidence that women police differently
Speaker 1: than men do. They're generally less authoritarian and less likely
Speaker 1: to employ both excessive and deadly force, and they may
Speaker 1: be uniquely positioned to help female victims of crime. Studies
Speaker 1: show that domestic violence victims, for example, are more likely
Speaker 1: to report to female cops, who tend to show more
Speaker 1: patients and concern than their male counterparts. But if you're
Speaker 1: a female victim in the US, it's statistically likely that
Speaker 1: a male police officer will respond to your call for help.
Speaker 1: He likely will have been trained by a man, his
Speaker 1: boss is probably a man, and he will have spent
Speaker 1: his entire career working in an environment where women's voices
Speaker 1: are rarely heard. I keep thinking about Murray, the female
Speaker 1: cop who was sexually assaulted at the FOP lodge. She's
Speaker 1: not out in the world working as a police officer
Speaker 1: right now. Like Sandy, she didn't get to fulfill her potential.
Speaker 1: How many other women have similar stories. Here's Kim and
Speaker 1: Stephen talking about Sandy's dream. I think she would have
Speaker 1: been a trailblazer. She had a strong sense of justice.
Speaker 1: She was um, someone that knew the streets well and
Speaker 1: understood urban life, and she would have just been really great.
Speaker 1: She had a heart for people, heart for women, heart
Speaker 1: humankind in general. And so we lost somebody that probably
Speaker 1: could have been a really good police officer looking back now,
Speaker 1: and she probably would have made a good cop, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, she could have handled being a cop. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying that, You know, if that kind
Speaker 1: of gives you an insight, she had a bet at
Speaker 1: an advocate, she would have been a really strong personality.
Speaker 1: I would love to have been able to spend more time.
Speaker 1: I have to. I have to really think about that,
Speaker 1: because I feeling tears as I think about it. Because
Speaker 1: we do, we lose out our dreams and our desires
Speaker 1: got thwarted. They got it, got dashed, taken away from us.
Speaker 1: The way Sandy was treated by PG County cops, who,
Speaker 1: according to Detective Shachelski, expressed no remorse after her death,
Speaker 1: it was like she was less than in their eyes, disposable.
Speaker 1: It made me wonder how their attitudes towards women might
Speaker 1: have carried over into their work, influencing the way they
Speaker 1: interacted with female victims. It's worth noting that domestic violence
Speaker 1: calls are the largest categories of calls the police officers
Speaker 1: respond to. Here's Jill. I think that does call into
Speaker 1: question how they behave in other aspects of their work, right,
Speaker 1: how they investigate crimes against women, how they treat acts
Speaker 1: of sexual violence. I just don't see a universe in
Speaker 1: which you can have those really misogynists, really toxic group norms,
Speaker 1: and still, for example, investigate a rape case in a
Speaker 1: completely full and fair way, or investigate a suicide of
Speaker 1: a young woman in a completely full and fair way,
Speaker 1: A woman who may have been landered as a quote
Speaker 1: badge bunny, one who may have been at the center
Speaker 1: of a stink. I took you down this road, this
Speaker 1: tangent on police sexual misconduct to help explain why I
Speaker 1: think these relationships Sandy had with local police, and I
Speaker 1: hesitated to call them relationships, were unethical and wrong. PG
Speaker 1: County knew about these relationships while they investigated her death,
Speaker 1: and they didn't say anything to her family. There was
Speaker 1: no acknowledgement of wrongdoing. But learning all of this, it
Speaker 1: doesn't exactly illuminate what happened in the Pollard that night
Speaker 1: and whether it was Sandy who used the gun that
Speaker 1: ended her life. So in our next episode, I want
Speaker 1: to return to the physical evidence, reviewing it with top
Speaker 1: experts in the field. And right when I was assembling
Speaker 1: this episode, I got an email from PG County. After
Speaker 1: months of asking, they finally sent me Sandy Bill's file.
Speaker 1: To my surprise, it was pages long, and it revealed
Speaker 1: something new that upended my assumptions about how and when
Speaker 1: Sandy became so close to PG County police. Because As
Speaker 1: it turns out, she had reached out to them for help.
Speaker 1: Sandy had a stalker. That's on our next episode. How
Speaker 1: many times in your career if you remember, have you
Speaker 1: seen a teenage girl shoot herself? Canceled? Ever in the
Speaker 1: at No. If you're a victim of police sexual violence,
Speaker 1: I'd love to speak with you. Please send me an
Speaker 1: email at what Happened to Sandy Beale at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: What Happened to Sandy Beale is hosted by me Melissa Jolson.
Speaker 1: It written and produced by me and Katrina Norvell. The
Speaker 1: podcast is edited by Abusa far Sound, designed by Aaron Kauffman.
Speaker 1: Jason English is our executive producer. Research and production assistants
Speaker 1: by Marissa Brown. To find out more about my investigation,
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at quasimato. That's qu a s
Speaker 1: I am a d O. Thanks so much for listening.