Between 2008 and 2011, a series of rapes in the suburbs around Seattle and Denver were perpetrated by Marc Patrick O'Leary,[1] a United States Army veteran who had been stationed near Tacoma.
[2] The first victim, an 18-year-old woman known as Marie, reported to Sergeant Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn that she had been raped at her home in Lynnwood, Washington.
[1] An outside review of Marie's case by the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office found that she had been "coerced into admitting that she lied" and that the police had ignored strong evidence of the crime to focus on "minor inconsistencies" in her account.
[1] Lynnwood police have since adopted new training methods for sexual assault investigations,[10] and must have "definitive proof" of lying before questioning a rape report.
[1][4] T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Ken Armstrong of The Marshall Project were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for their "examination and exposé of law enforcement's enduring failures" in the rape investigations.