An Unbelievable Story of Rape

An 18-year-old she was attacked at knifepoint. Then she said, she made it up. That's where our story begins.

In Lynnwood, Washington, an 18-year-old woman, referred to as "Marie," reported being bound, gagged, and raped at knifepoint to police. Following police confrontation about inconsistencies in her story, she said that she made the incident up.

In March 2009, she was charged with a gross misdemeanor, fined $500 and put on probation. Marie had been sexually and physically abused in early life and was in foster care for most of her childhood. She joined Project Ladder at age 18, a program designed for people transitioning from foster care to living alone.

In Golden, Colorado during January 2011, Detective Stacy Galbraith interviewed a woman who was raped at gunpoint for four hours. When Galbraith talked to her husband, he observed familiarity with an incident reported to his police department in Westminster. Galbraith began a collaboration with Westminster Detective Edna Hendershot, who had investigated two cases in which women aged 59 and 65 were raped in similar ways.

They also discovered a burglary where a masked man had attempted to tie up a 46-year-old woman, who jumped out of her window and was badly injured. The four known cases took place in different suburbs of Denver. The man had gone to extreme lengths to avoid leaving DNA evidence, but touch DNA from the same paternal family line was found at three scenes.

Marie had made her report in August 2008 to Sergeant Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn. Police guidelines advised that rape victims should not be interrogated, as they may be uncertain of details or report conflicting information. Investigating Marie's report, police found evidence of an assailant and abrasions to Marie's vagina and wrist. However, two of Marie's former foster parents began to disbelieve her due to her seemingly calm demeanor, one reporting doubts to the police.

 Following this, and Marie's conflicting account of when she phoned a friend, Mason and Rittgarn made Marie repeat her story, Rittgarn saying that he disbelieved her. He asked if the rapist was real and she said "no." Without reading the Miranda warning, they asked her to write that she had made a false report. She wrote instead that she had dreamed of the incident, now unsure of what happened. After hours of further questioning, Marie wrote that she had been lying.

Project Ladder staff made Marie return to police when she said she made the report under duress. She asked to take a polygraph test though such tests do not provide reliable evidence but declined when Rittgarn threatened to jail and loss of housing if she failed it. Mason filed a false reporting charge; such charges in similar circumstances were rare.

Marie became the subject of media reports and an attack website. She quit her Costco job and considered suicide. In October 2008, one of Marie's foster parents saw a report of a woman in Kirkland, Washington raped in the same way as Marie. Kirkland police abandoned this lead after Lynnwood police told them at least twice that Marie's account was a lie.

In February 2011, a report was unearthed of a suspicious vehicle registered to army veteran Marc Patrick O'Leary, whose description matched the attacker. FBI agents collected DNA evidence from his brother which showed one of them was the rapist. A search warrant led to the arrest of O'Leary. He possessed a mask, gun, women's underwear, and other identifying evidence. Photographs of Marie were found on O'Leary's hard drive.

 O'Leary had watched women for hundreds of hours, breaking into their houses multiple times before each rape. In December 2011, O'Leary was sentenced to 327.5 years in prison for four incidents in Colorado. In June 2012, he was sentenced to an additional 38.5 years for two incidents in Washington.

An external report condemned the handling of Marie's case. It described the officers' behavior as "bullying" and highlighted threats of jail and housing assistance removal as "coercive, cruel, and unbelievably unprofessional." An internal review also concluded that Mason and Rittgarn's behavior was "designed to elicit a confession of false reporting."

In 2015, the commander of Lynnwood's Criminal Investigations Division said that practices had since changed. Neither Mason nor Rittgarn was disciplined. After Marie approached Mason, he offered an apology. Marie sued the city, winning $150,000. By the time of the article, Marie was married with two children.