The more I investigate the claims of Jerry Sandusky’s accusers, the more I believe he is innocent, and that his accusers are liars who realized Penn State was giving away millions without vetting claims.
Anthony J. Spinelli first claimed Sandusky abused him when he was 16 years old in the Penn State locker room showers – 27 years after the alleged abuse.
Like every other “victim” of Sandusky, he never said anything about molestation at the time it allegedly occurred.
No doubt the media helped perpetuate this “don’t question victims of Sandusky” attitude, which in turn prompted more false claims.
It is evident to me that Spinelli made up the story of Sandusky molesting him to try to get money from Penn State. He and his lawyers were ultimately unsuccessful. In 2016, Spinelli’s claims were dismissed because they were time-barred.
But in this 2015 interview, the syndicated TV show, Crime Watch Daily (CW) sets up its story with a total, unquestioning belief in Spinelli’s veracity. Moreover, CW regards it as self-evident that if Spinelli turned out to be a louse, it was all Sandusky’s fault.
I am providing the transcript from the Crime Watch video and commenting as we go.
CW: Jerry Sandusky is one of the most hated men in America. People call the former Penn State coach a pervert, a predator, a pedophile, convicted of sexually abusing ten boys. But as you are about to learn, the disgusting allegations from the Sandusky case are far from over. In an emotional and powerful interview, a new accuser comes forward with explosive claims and tells Crime Watch Daily how Jerry Sandusky took his innocence, ruined his life forever, and set him on a path that would lead him to prison…
The memories of [his first abuse] are still raw for 43-year-old Anthony Spinelli. He claims when he was just 16 years old, Sandusky molested him in the showers on the Penn State campus.
Spinelli: I remember him sensing that I was uncomfortable, and I was completely…like, I wasn’t the same. Like, something was wrong. I was stuck or struck by just what had happened. I was dumbfounded.
CW: It was 1988. Anthony, [jersey] number 12, was one of the nation’s top high school quarterbacks in his hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts, outside Boston. Anthony had it all: a good home, good grades. He was on the honor roll and class president. Anthony was recruited by such prestigious universities as Michigan, Syracuse, and Penn State, but his dream was to play for the Nittany Lions and the legendary Joe Paterno.
Anthony Spinelli was a star high school quarterback.Penn State invited Anthony to attend a tryout at their summer football camp. The man who took him under his twisted wing? Defensive coach Jerry Sandusky.
Spinelli: I had met Jerry, who had come over to me when we had got there as far as giving me a little heads up that he’ll be following my progress through camp.
CW: And in that short period of this camp, it forever changed your life. …
And I know this is going to be hard, but can you tell me what happened? How you became a victim of Jerry Sandusky?
Spinelli: I had a slight groin injury. He had asked me if I would drop my shorts. I had a pair of spandex underneath so he could exactly see where the pressure points were, and he had felt up into my groin area. It was like an icy hot balm, an atomic bomb. He had asked me if I minded if he had applied some to me. I didn’t know what to think; my whole body just shut down.
CW: But Anthony says Sandusky wasn’t done with him yet. The next day at practice, the balm was burning him.
Spinelli: As I was showering, he had come in to shower, and this is how the second incident had happened.
CW: So he just took his clothes off and joined you in the shower, basically?
Spinelli: And so, here I was now, naked in a shower. He basically started to massage my groin area. He performed oral sex.
CW: Anthony says he was so freaked out by one of his idols abusing him, he got wasted on bourbon.
FR: Let’s pause to review. Spinelli is a 16-year-old athlete able to run away from linebackers in high school football games and strong enough, as the picture below shows, to thwart tacklers with a stiff-arm fend.
Anthony Spinelli, at age 16, was a formidable athlete. CW asks us to believe that the star quarterback, a senior in high school, could not resist oral sex from a then 44-year-old naked Sandusky in the public showers during a busy football camp where anyone could have come in at any time. CW then reports something highly implausible:
CW: He was afraid Sandusky would tell his devout Catholic parents, and they would blame him.
Spinelli: “It kept playing back in my head, ‘my parents, my parents.’ What they would have thought or how they would have felt, and the embarrassment I would have brought to them, the shame.”
FR: Spinelli’s story that he feared Sandusky, the alleged pedophile, would tell his parents that he molested their son is so dubious that CW should have asked, “Why did you think Sandusky would tell on himself?”
Instead, CW now works to convince its audience that every bad thing that happened to Spinelli was Sandusky’s fault. They interviewed his old high school coach, John Debinski.
CW: When he returned home after camp, Anthony was a different person, struggling with anguish and doubt. Did you notice a difference in him?
High School Coach: I noticed a tremendous difference in him….
Spinelli’s high school coach
Coach: Before he went to the camp, he was very into school. He was very popular. I called him in a couple of times, I said, ‘Anthony, what’s going on? You’re not quite the same, something’s bothering you.’ ‘No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine.’ His mother and father called me, wanted to sit down and have a meeting.
CW: Did it just break your heart?
Coach: It did, it did.
CW: But Anthony was a broken young man. His dream of playing for Penn State vanished with the steam from that hot shower. He says he turned to drugs to numb his pain. What kind of drugs were you on at the beginning?
Spinelli: It was the alcohol, the marijuana, the cocaine, the acid, Percocet, to heroin. I’ve done pretty much all of it. I still, to this day, you know, have struggled with my addiction.
FR: CW goes next to Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape Vice President of Public Relations Kristen Houser to further excuse his conduct.
CW: What are some of the ways that people act out? With him, it was violence, it was drugs. It was years and years of addiction.
Hauser: Anytime that you see radical behavioral changes, an increase in destructive behavior, vandalism, fire setting, getting involved with crime, self-injury, drug and alcohol use – those can all be indicators that there’s something significantly wrong that has happened.
CW: In short order, Anthony went from altar boy to armed robber. Then came the fateful night that would send him to prison for much of his adult life.
He and a friend were drinking heavily and got into a fight.
Spinelli: He had put his left hand on my girlfriend’s arm, and he had said, ‘She’s spending the night with me.’ And I, not taking it very well, hit him hard.”
CW: That hard hit tragically killed his friend. Anthony pled guilty to manslaughter and received a sentence of 10 years in prison.
FR: Spinelli was not being forthright, and CW did not fact-check what happened on the night 28-year-old Anthony Spinelli beat and killed Virachack Arounthong, 48, some 15 years before his interview.
According to police records, on Aug. 6, 2000, Spinelli, his girlfriend, Lisa F. Finneran, and Otha L. Farris drove to Arounthong’s apartment so that Finneran could engage in prostitution with Arounthong.
The fight was not over whether Spinelli’s girlfriend would provide sex to Arounthong. It was over the amount she and Spinelli would get for payment.
Finnerman provided the services, but Spinelli wanted more cash. He beat him, took the victim’s stereo equipment, money, and other items from the apartment, and left him to die.
Arounthong’s decomposing body was discovered on Aug. 11, 2000, in his apartment, five days after the killing. The autopsy report said that Arounthong died from a severe brain injury resulting from blunt trauma.
At the time, Spinelli did not blame Sandusky. He told investigators he had been drinking alcohol and using crack cocaine before going to the victim’s apartment.
At his sentencing, Spinelli again did not blame Sandusky, and spoke of “the innocent people I hurt because of my addiction.”
CW: Fast forward to 2011; Anthony is in the prison TV room watching news reports of Sandusky’s arrest.
All of a sudden, you see Jerry Sandusky on the TV. What goes through your mind?
Spinelli: Disgust. I mean, I was sick to my stomach. But the fact of what had taken place with myself and Jerry…that the disgust and the hatred, so to speak, is what I had felt. Meanwhile, I now had to process this in a whole different way.
CW: That’s when Anthony decided he had to tell his story to prosecutors. But it wasn’t so easy. Anthony’s alleged molestation occurred in 1988, and the statute of limitations had run out. Anthony went to court to challenge the statute….
If the case goes to trial, Anthony will have to come face to face with the man he’s tried to block out of his life. But what do you want to say to him?”
Spinelli: What would I like to say to him? “What you did was wrong. You know it was wrong. And even though things happened the way they happened, what you did has put such damage and effects in my life, in my family’s life.”
CW: Anthony Spinelli is still locked in the prison of his mind.
Memories of what he says happened in that locker room so long ago can never fade.
Spinelli: I wish I could take back to that day that I was 16. If I could turn back the hands of time, that’s what I would want. That’s what would make it right. It’s not happening.
FR: In December 2016, Spinelli went from being locked in the prison of his mind to being locked in jail after a knife fight in which Spinelli stabbed Robert Pirelli in his neck, arm, and torso and got stabbed himself in the hand.
Police rushed Pirelli to the hospital, and found Spinelli hiding behind a shed and arrested him.
Anthony Spinelli appears in court after his knife fight, which almost killed Robert Pirelli.
Spinelli was charged with armed assault with intent to murder and held on a one-million-dollar bond. His Sandusky defense helped Spinelli win an acquittal.
Steven Passarello, one of Spinelli’s Pennsylvania attorneys, excused his conduct by telling the media that Sandusky had caused Spinelli’s life “to spiral out of control.”
“After he went to that camp is when he started to go downhill,” said Passarello.
After being released from custody, Spinelli was reportedly convicted of larceny in Connecticut in 2019 and sentenced to one year in prison and two years probation.
It should be noted Penn State did not pay Spinelli any money. But that was because he came too late for the handouts.
That Spinelli has been lying about Sandusky for monetary gain is fairly obvious. In that respect, he belongs squarely in the company of the trial accusers. But even those of them with criminal records didn’t go so far as to claim that their very criminality was Sandusky’s doing. Outrageous as it sounds, Spinelli’s alibi worked to excuse this minor league con artist from imprisonment for larceny. The contrast with the innocent Sandusky’s own fate could hardly be more striking.
The greater the fraud, the simpler the means.
