Covering Crime.

Maureen Dowd of NYTimes and Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports are in Bellefonte, Pa. covering Jerry Sandusky's mass molestation trial.

Dowd:

The lead witness in Sandusky’s trial — the former defensive coach at Penn State is charged with molesting 10 boys over 15 years — was a nice-looking, short-haired 28-year-old in white shirt and tie, a narrow parenthesis of a man.

He seemed confident enough when he started, but, as he talked, he grew more and more agitated, running his hand and fist over his face, sliding glances at the 68-year-old, no-neck monster Sandusky at the defense table, staring at the pictures of himself as a young boy with a big grin and bowl cut, relishing the thrilling new world of football heroes that Sandusky had opened up to him. In the photos the prosecution put up on a screen, Sandusky’s hand was usually gripped, mano morta, on the boy’s shoulder.

By the end of his testimony, he looked haunted and acted jittery. His pain seemed fresh.

...

A string-bean who graduated from high school last week repeatedly broke down in sobs on Tuesday, recalling a similar pattern with Sandusky that would begin with blowing on his stomach. “I kind of thought he sees me as family, and this is just what his family does,” he said.

When he distanced himself, he said, Sandusky stalked him to his house and argued with his mother and grandfather about spending more time with him as he hid behind a bush. When he and his mother tried to tell authorities at his school, where Sandusky was a revered volunteer football coach who was routinely able to pull the boy out of classes and assemblies, they were met with skepticism. Sandusky, they were told, had a heart of gold.

Wetzel:

Tuesday, on the second floor of Centre County Courthouse, he [Mike McQueary] finally spoke publicly, under oath and in front of Sandusky, the man he stumbled upon showering and, McQueary alleges, sexually assaulting a boy in the Penn State locker room late one February night over a decade ago.

It came just as stories continue to break that the state attorney general is in possession of emails between some of the men McQueary told about the incident: Penn State's president, vice president and athletic director.

According to NBC, those emails not only show McQueary was clear in his reporting of the incident (the Penn State officials originally insinuated he wasn't) but that the officials made the potentially criminal decision to not turn the information over to social services or law enforcement in an effort to be "humane" to Sandusky.

That's what McQueary was unknowingly dealing with: a bankrupt culture he should've never trusted.
...
McQueary arrived at the court in a minivan driven by someone from the prosecutor's office. He was dressed sharply in a dark suit with a blue shirt and white collar and silver tie. He was accompanied by his wife and approached the witness stand with the intensity that made him a Penn State starting quarterback and high-level college assistant.

At one point, in the middle of McQueary's testimony, Judge John Cleland declared a 20-minute recess. The courtroom mostly cleared, but McQueary stayed in the witness box, holding the same posture, staring straight ahead, waiting intensely for his long-awaited chance to again speak.

McQueary is a key witness for the prosecution because it's almost impossible to believe he could have completely made up his allegation in 2001 only to have similar behavior later alleged against Sandusky by eight boys who are now grown men.