A podcast/video featuring the late Franco Harris is available on YouTube, where he discusses a conversation he had with Mike McQueary at Joe Paterno’s funeral on January 25, 2012.
Since the YouTube podcast seems to have been posted by Harris about two months before he passed away on December 20, 2022, the Frank Report is also copying the podcast in case it is removed from YouTube for any reason.
Franco Harris played college football at Penn State University, under Coach Paterno, from 1969 to 1971. Jerry Sandusky was defensive coach during the time.
Franco Harris with his coach Joe Paterno.
Harris became an NFL running back and key player in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ success in the 1970s, including winning four Super Bowls. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990.
Franco Harris (#32) played for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Harris Believed Prosecutors Deliberately Lied About Paterno and Sandusky
Up until his death on December 20, 2022, Harris was active in trying to prove that the Penn State scandal was not what it appeared. He called the grand jury indictment of Sandusky a “presentment of lies.”
Central to the scandal was Mike McQueary, an assistant coach at Penn State University, who gained national attention in 2011 when Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina illegally leaked grand jury minutes to local reporter Sara Ganim.
It became a national story. The part that outraged the nation was McQueary saying he saw Sandusky anally raping an unknown boy.
Mike McQueary
The following is transcribed excerpts of a podcast published on YouTube on October 10, 2022, two months and ten days before Franco Harris died at the age of 72.
Harris’s Conversation With McQueary
Franco Harris
By Franco Harris
At Joe Paterno’s funeral, I pulled Mike McQueary aside to talk with him. The presentment of lies that was leaked stated explicitly what Mike McQueary had witnessed about the shower incident at Penn State and that he told Joe Paterno what he saw.
Joe Paterno’s funeral
The 33rd statewide investigating grand jury, victim number two.
This is what they said about Mike McQueary:
“As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the shower. He saw a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant was shocked, but noticed that both victim two and Sandusky saw him.”
Then it went on to say:
“The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno’s home where he reported what he had seen.”
If you put those two sentences together and you connect those sentences — that Mike said he saw a naked boy estimated to be 10 years old with his hands up against a wall being subjected to anal intercourse by Sandusky – that’s what everybody would think that he told Joe Paterno, as the last sentence of that paragraph said, that he went to Paterno’s home where he reported what he had seen.
When you look at all this and try to put this together, it doesn’t make sense. But back then people were not looking for what made sense. They were furious and outraged with what they saw in (the grand jury presentment).
So at Joe’s funeral, I asked Mike McQueary a few direct questions, based upon the presentment.
I asked him, “When you looked into the shower, did you witness anal sex?”
Mike McQueary said, “No.”
I’m saying to myself, “What? This is what it said in the presentment.”
So, I’m a little confused here, but I asked another question.
“Did you witness sodomy?”
Mike said, “No.”
Once again, I’m a little baffled here. I’m trying to go on with this.
So I said, “Okay. When you looked into the shower, did Jerry Sandusky have an erection?”
I asked him that, because the grand jury presentment said he looked into the shower.
Mike said he didn’t look.
I was in disbelief. What was going on here?
So I want to follow up with another piece that came out later, and that’s very confusing. When people were questioning about Mike looking directly into the shower, another version came out that said Mike McQueary walked into the shower room in the Lasch building and heard sounds. Glancing into a mirror, he looked into the shower.
So now they’re saying he’s glancing into a mirror. Before it said, he glanced into the shower itself.
I just want to point out that there were two versions of how Mike McQueary witnessed this: one which was in the actual grand jury presentment – that he looked into the shower, and then another version came out where, glancing into a mirror, he looked into the shower.
Stuff is all over the board when we look into this and what they were doing with this presentment of lies.
And then to top it off, Mike followed up with, “I did not say the things in the presentment. I never used the word ‘anal intercourse.'”
What?!
If Mike didn’t say those things, then who put those words in there?
The phrase ‘anal intercourse’ is what caused all the outrage and anger. And that allowed John Surma to fire Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier.
John Surma led the Penn State Board of Trustees to fire Joe Paterno based on the leaked grand jury, which stated Mike McQueary told Joe Paterno that Sanduskly raped a boy and Paterno did nothing about it. McQueary denied he ever said he saw Sanduky rape a boy.
Who approved the insertion of that lie? What was the Attorney General’s office doing by deliberately putting out lies?
This lie ruined the lies of many good people, and this is our justice system in Pennsylvania?
All of us now know that there was no crime committed that night at Penn State.
The Attorney General’s office was very crafty and devious about how they worded their presentment and how they positioned the sentences, all of this to stir public outcry. It worked, and it is a disgrace to justice everywhere.
So once again, I want everyone to understand this. The evening of the Jerry Sandusky shower incident at Penn State, there was no sexual abuse that night.
Mike McQueary did not see or witness any form of sexual abuse that night at Penn State. And just as important, all the people Mike McQueary met with to tell them about the shower incident, he never told any of them that it was sexual.
Mike McQueary said he told Dr. Jonathon Dranov on the night he said he saw Sandusky in the shower. Dr. Dranov testified that McQueary did not tell him that Sandusky sexually abused the boy.
This includes Mike’s father and family doctor friend. Mike told both of them he saw nothing sexual.
We know Mike met with Joe Paterno, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, and all three said Mike never told them it was sexual. They all remembered the same thing, that Mike never told them it was sexual.
So how about that presentment of lies?
There are so many facets to this story and so many subplots that it’s difficult to give you the facts as we now know them in any straightforward manner. I hope you’ll stay with me as we try to unravel them.
This Ends Harris’s Comments from Podcast
Frank Report Final Comments
Mike McQueary never quite considered how his altered testimony would make him appear the fool forever. He came under fire for not stopping a rape that never happened. McQueary, at 6’5, and 28 years old, a former star quarterback at Penn State, could have prevented the rape of a little ten year old by 57 year old Sandusky by physically intervening or at least calling the police.
According to the grand jury presentment, leaked by Fina, McQueary walked away from a rape in progress and waited until the next morning to tell Paterno.
Sandusky prosecutor Frank Fina committed crimes and got away with them.
The story made everyone call Sandusky a vile pervert, but they also called McQueary a coward.
When he saw the media resulting from Fina’s criminal leak of grand jury minutes and apparently the criminal altering of his testimony, McQueary emailed Deputy Attorney General Jonelle Eschbah.
“I feel my words are slightly twisted and not totally portrayed correctly in the presentment,” McQueary wrote. “I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion.”
In a second email to Eshbach, McQueary complained about “being misrepresented” in the media. To which Eshbach replied, “I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect, and it is hard not to respond. But you can’t.”
The great athlete Franco Harris is gone, but we can, as he asked, stay with him as we attempt to unravel the lies, so many of which we will find emanated from the mastermind of the conviction of Jerry Sandusky: Frank Fina.
To be continued…
