Four years before former Penn State Head Football Coach Joe Paterno was told that Jay Sandusky had raped a 10-year-old boy in a shower, the police had already learned that the one-time assistant coach was preying on children. Yet then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar didn’t press charges. Gricar disappeared on April 15, 2005 under impenetrably mysterious circumstances and has been declared legally dead.

The June 1998 investigation focused on an ll-year-old boy who was part of Sandusky’s “Second Mile” program. Identified as “Victim 6″ or “BK,” the child was allegedly fondled by Sandusky while the two of them were showering in the locker room at Penn State’s Holuba Hall. When the child was dropped off at his home, his mother noticed that his hair was wet. After learning about the showering incident, the understandably upset mother called the police. She also confronted Sandusky, who admitted that he had showered with other boys and that his “private parts” had “maybe” come into contact with the child’s intimate anatomy.

“I understand. I was wrong,” Sandusky told the mother in a conversation overheard by police investigators. “I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”

Page 20 of the grand jury’s “presentment” against Sandusky reports:

“Jerry Lauro, an investigator with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, testified that during the 1998 investigation, Sandusky was interviewed on June 1, 1998 by Lauro and Detective Shreffler. Sandusky admitted to showering naked with Victim 6 [aka "B.K."], admitted to hugging Victim 6 while in the shower and admitted that it was wrong. Detective Schreffler advised Sandusky not to shower with any child again and Sandusky said that he would not.

The Grand Jury was unable to subpoena B.K. because he is in the military and is stationed outside the United States.”

As NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate points out, “It is strange that Centre County District Atorney Ray Gricar never prosecuted Jerry Sandusky on child-rape charges 13 years ago, some speculate, because Gricar was known for being fiercely independent and hard on crime. But it is even stranger that we cannot ask Gricar why Sandusky was not put behind bars, because the tough-as-nails district attorney disappeared in 2005. And though he was declared dead [in] July of this year, his body has never been found.”

According to his nephew, Gricar had a “bitter taste in his mouth for the [Penn State] program, and its coach.” On the day of his disappearance, Gricar told his girlfriend that he was going on a drive. His abandoned car was later found near an antique mall in Lewisburg; on the following day, his laptop computer — with its hard drive removed — was found in the Susquehanna River.

Pittsburgh radio host Mark Madden, who has followed the Sandusky case carefully, claims that others who have investigated the matter suspect that the former Penn State assistant football coach was “pimping” children from his Second Mile Foundation to wealthy university donors:

“I hear there’s a rumor that there will be a more shocking development from the Second Mile Foundation — and hold on to your stomachs, boys, this is gross, I will use the only language I can — that Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors. That was being investigated by two prominent columnists even as I speak.”

The guilty connivance of Paterno and university officials in covering up Sandusky’s criminal predation has received a great deal of coverage — yet officials were aware of Sandusky’s actions no later than 1998, and no action was taken. The only individual who knows why that decision was made is, or was, Ray Gricar, who was apparently aware of at least some of the recently uncovered nastiness at least six years ago. Solving the mystery of Gricar’s disappearance would probably reveal the extent of the corruption, the depth of the official cover-up — and, perhaps, the truth about the rumors Mark Madden referred to.

Read the grand jury report about the Sandusky case here.