The Stink — Sandy Beal E4
The exact nature of Sandy's relationships with local police officers comes under new scrutiny.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen and follow along
Transcript
This is an iHeart podcast.
On Fox One, you can stream your favorite news, sports, and entertainment live, all in one app.
It's fing roll and unfiltered.
This is the best thing ever.
Watch breaking news as it breaks.
Breaking tonight, we're following two major stories.
And catch history in the making.
Gibby, meet Freddy.
Debates,
drama, touchdowns.
It's all here, baby.
Fox One.
We live for live.
Streaming now.
This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.
Are there two sides to every story?
Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in The Girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything.
Laura has the perfect life and a son she'd die for.
But when he brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.
Also starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems.
Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.
Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.
Lily is a proud partner of the iHeartRadio Music Festival for Lily's duets for type 2 diabetes campaign that celebrates patient stories of support.
Share your story at mountjaro.com slash duets.
Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Maljaro is not for use in children.
Don't take Maljaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.
Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.
Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.
Taking Maljaro with a sulfinyl norrhea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.
Tell your doctor if you're nursing pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.
Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.
Once weekly Manjaro is available by prescription only in 2.55, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.
Call 1-800-LILLIRX-800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lily.com for the Mount Jaro indication and safety summary with warnings.
Talk to your doctor for more information about Mount Jaro.
Mount Jaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.
I'm not going back to college to be your friend.
I'm going so I can get Uber One for students.
It saves you on Uber and Uber Eats.
I'm there for $0 delivery fee on cheeseburgers, up to 10% off smoothies, and 6% Uber credits back on rides.
Just to be clear, I'm there for savings, not whatever you think college is for.
Get Uber One One for students, a membership to save on Uber and Uber Eats.
With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student.
Join for just $4.99 a month.
Savings may vary.
Eligibility and member terms apply.
We all deserve some yay in our day.
So say hello to Hello.
Hello makes oral and personal care products that add wonder to your routine, like a toothpaste that makes brushing fun for kids.
It's called Unicorn Sparkle Toothpaste.
It tastes like rainbows and sunshine, works brilliantly, and it's fun.
So it's pretty much magic.
And for the adults, Hello Anti-Plaquen Whitening Toothpaste, which is just as good without the unicorns.
Visit helloproducts.com and let Hello add some everyday yay into your life.
Before we begin, please note, this series includes talk of suicide and sexual violence.
Please take care while listening.
Badge bunny.
Holster sniffer.
Roadhog.
As I've reported this story, a couple of new terms were forced into my lexicon.
I had to Google them, but I sensed they'd be derogatory and I was right.
In the most crude fashion, they're used to describe women who have sex with cops on duty.
These were terms that were used by various people trying to explain Sandy's connections to local cops.
People who were trying to assure me that these relationships must have been consensual, that Sandy just wanted it.
She was a self-professed cop freak after all.
The Beals, they saw this coming.
Back in 2021, when I told them what I'd found out about the 10 cops, their initial reaction was, here comes the mud.
They knew that some would judge and blame Sandy.
It's a pretty incredible attempt at totally deflecting responsibility.
Jill Filipovich is a feminist author and lawyer.
I asked her what she made of these terms.
Like if the telling is, okay, this girl was just a badge bunny, a pistol sniffer, that really does remove the bigger picture, which is that in this particular case, it was a group of adult men who were in charge of this teenage girl.
I have no hard evidence that Sandy didn't consent to these relationships with PG County police.
But even if she did consent, it doesn't mean these relationships were appropriate.
Consent can be coerced.
Consent can be a product of fear or a desire to please or just to avoid a messy scene.
Consent is an important concept, but it has limitations when it's used as the sole factor for determining whether or not sex is ethical.
I think if we're just thinking of it through this frame of did she consent or not, then we miss the reality that the police officers in this situation, they're the adults in the room.
They have a responsibility to cultivate young entrants into their field.
What instead she's learning from these men on the force is that she's a sexual object, that she's expected or perhaps wanted to have sex with them.
Of course, it's possible that a teenage girl is going to want to have sex with 10 different men in the same department, but that strikes me as unlikely.
What strikes me as more likely is that this is a teenage girl who is just sort of figuring out who she is as an adult, who is just figuring out what it means to have a job, what it means to enter a male-dominated workforce.
All of her understanding of that is going to be shaped by the expectations that are set by the men who are already doing that job.
Before Sandy died, she wrote something that gets to the heart of how these relationships made her feel.
Quote:
But as always, they have their fun and the hell with you.
Why me?
Why do I get fucked over so bad?
From iHeartRadio, I'm Melissa Jeltson, and this is What Happened to Sandy Beale, an iHeart original podcast.
Chapter 4, The Stink
My belief that a number of PG County police officers were having inappropriate relationships with Sandy is largely based on Detective Shyselski's recollection.
that he was inundated with phone calls after her death, where cops all but admitted to it.
What did you make of her spending all this time and having sexual relationships with police officers?
I knew it was going to be a stink.
I didn't imagine it being 30, 40 years later,
but I knew some stink was going to come off of it.
When Detective Shyzelski initially told me about the phone calls, It was an offhand remark that he didn't seem to attribute much meaning to.
That's how I interpreted his tone anyway.
But I've spoken to him a number number of times since, and he told me that he too believes that Sandy was horribly used, mistreated by his fellow cops.
They were all adults and
considerably older, and she was just a kid.
You know what I mean?
And
I feel as though
that they should have never done what they did.
You know, it was just unethical.
It's a relief to hear Detective Shashelski acknowledge this outright, as I've spent much of the last year exploring the extent of this unethical behavior.
And I want to recap what I've uncovered so far.
Sandy started going on ride-alongs in her senior year of high school at just 18 years old.
At the time of her death, she was in a relationship with one cop, a married state trooper named Doug.
Her body was found a mile away from his place of work in a poll yard that was known to be frequented by cops.
There was sperm in her body.
Her family recalled that she would socialize with police officers at night.
Her address books were filled with the names and numbers of local cops, including some that I've been able to confirm participated in the Explorer program at that time.
But honestly, there's a limit to the knowledge I can gather about Sandy's relationships with local cops.
And at this point, I feel like I've hit it unless I get some new information.
That doesn't mean I'm going to stop probing the question of what all this means.
I think we owe it to Sandy to contemplate this scenario in which the teen was victimized by a group of police officers.
Because I think it's very possible that that's what happened.
Being deliberately indifferent to the suffering of women is historic in society and it's certainly reflected in law enforcement.
So that's what you saw.
Mark Wynn is an expert in police violence.
He's a retired police officer who now works to train other police officers how to better handle crimes against women.
I've interviewed him in the past and I trust his instincts.
And if anybody wants to debate me on this, I'm more than happy to do it.
I mean, I'm not somebody who just read this somewhere.
I spent my entire adult life.
working in law enforcement, so I know my family well.
Mark started policing in 1977, the same year Sandy died.
He looks like what you might envision when you think of a cop.
He's tall and broad-shouldered and has a thick mustache.
He's also one of the most courteous and patient individuals I've ever met.
If you ever have to call the cops, you'd want someone like Mark to show up.
Well, all you have to do is look at the history of policing in our country or any other country.
It's been a job for men,
managed by men, run by men.
And that's true
for the most part in the entire criminal justice system.
I think when you exclude women from any
function, social or government, and put a bunch of men together in the room, you're going to have problems.
I told him what I'd learned so far about Sandy, my life as a cop freak, Doug, the phone calls, the 10 cops, all of it.
I mean, there's a potential there for someone to take advantage of that relationship.
No question about it.
First of all, you're not talking about an emotionally mature person.
You're talking about somebody who's
very easily to influence.
With an offender, it's the perfect setting.
You have authority.
You're telling these folks what to do.
So
you can imagine what this young woman must have been thinking riding along in this police car,
a teenager with an adult with a gun and a badge with full authority.
So it must have been pretty intimidating.
Mark was pretty blunt and forthcoming with his theory about Sandy's case, and he told me he'd seen things like it before.
I suspect, and from what I've seen in other situations, they were passing around from one officer to the next.
You know, she's a young, impressionable woman, and...
They knew it.
That's what made her vulnerable.
And nobody with any moral fiber, obviously, stepped in and said what is going on here it happened at my academy you know instructors extorting young women for better scores on their tests singling out women who they you know wanted to sexually abuse
well and this is the thing about predation
it works better for the predator if your victim is vulnerable
and what more vulnerable place than you know a desperate young young person trying to start a career in law enforcement.
For Mark, the sheer number of officers involved with Sandy made him suspicious.
It's highly unlikely that they weren't, as close-knit as police departments are, weren't talking about all this and sharing information.
It almost sounded like she was being trafficked.
from one officer to the next.
Traffickers obviously make money off of it, but they weren't making money.
If this was the case, they were passing around for sexual gratification.
Mark's theory is that these police officers, they use their power and authority for sexually motivated reasons.
There's actually a term for that, police sexual misconduct.
And for victims who experience it, it can be an extremely isolating kind of abuse.
Well, this is the thing with any kind of misconduct.
I mean, the fact that you have a uniform and you represent authority and, you know, this is somebody using that authority for another reason.
This is somebody you, when they tell you to do something, you obey it.
And most people do.
They follow the law.
They don't want to get in trouble with the police.
There's nothing like sinking into luxury.
At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.
And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.
The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.
Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.
With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.
Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered.
Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home.
Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Shop now at washablesofas.com.
Add a little
to your life.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
I'm Bretzki and you're in California and I'm here to tell you about SpinQuest.com, my favorite social casino.
With over a thousand slots and table games, absolutely free with the ability to win real cash prizes instantly to your bank account.
There's no better time to hop on our $30 coin package for only $10 deal.
Head over today.
I love you.
I'll see you there.
SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino.
Voidwear Prohibited.
Visit SpinQuest.com for more details.
Lily is a proud partner of the iHeartRadio Music Festival for Lily's duets for Type 2 Diabetes Campaign that celebrates patient stories of support.
Share your story at mountjaro.com slash duets.
Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Mount Jaro is not for use in children.
Don't take Mount Jaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.
Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.
Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.
Taking Manjaro with a sulfinyl norrhea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.
Tell your doctor if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.
Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.
Once-weekly Manjaro is available by prescription only in 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.
Call 1-800-LILLIERX-800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mountjaro indication and safety summary with warnings.
Talk to your doctor for more information about Mountjaro.
Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.
This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.
Are there two sides to every story?
Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in The Girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything you think you know.
Laura has the dream job, the perfect husband, and a son she'd die for.
But when her beloved Daniel brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.
Is Cherry the sweet, innocent girl she appears to be?
Or is there something more manipulative beneath the surface?
And how far will a mother go to protect protect her son?
Also starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems and everyone has something to hide.
Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.
Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.
There's a lot going on in Hollywood.
How are you supposed to stay on top of it all?
Variety has the solution.
Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new Daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.
Where do you see the business actually heading?
Featuring the iconic journalists of variety and hosted by co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton.
The only constant in Hollywood is change.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Daily Variety, and listen now.
I want to take you down a short tangent now because I don't think you can understand Sandy's story without knowing more about the culture that allows this kind of abuse to flourish.
And it does flourish because despite very few victims wanting to come forward, sexual misconduct is the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct, according to research by the Cato Institute.
Police sexual misconduct is a dry term, but it encompasses a wide range of troubling behavior.
Everything from stopping a car without cause to flirt with the driver to a sexual shakedown, which is when an officer extorts sexual favors in exchange for not ticketing or arresting the person.
And a lot of police sexual misconduct isn't actually criminal.
It is, however, totally unethical.
Take, for instance, an officer who responds to a domestic violence call and uses it as an opportunity to have sex with a distraught victim.
In a number of states, it's even legal to have sex with someone in your custody.
To learn more, I track down one of the few experts that actually studies this stuff.
My name is Timothy Maher, and I am a professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of Missouri-St.
Louis.
Timothy also used to be a cop.
He spent 13 years as a police officer in Ledue, Missouri.
I was watching a news magazine television show back in the early 2000s.
And they did a story on a case in New York State where a police officer was pulling women over under the pretense of a DWI stop.
He told the young woman that he was going to cut her a break, but he still had to punish her in some way.
So he said, as your punishment, I'm going to make you walk home and you also have to take all your clothes off.
So she was afraid and it was dark and all alone.
It was kind of a remote area and so she reluctantly agreed and he graciously let her keep her shoes on because she said it hurt to walk in her bare feet.
Timothy quickly discovered that there was very little research on police sexual misconduct.
We don't even have answers to basic questions, like how prevalent it is.
We have no way of knowing how much of this behavior goes on.
Many people are reluctant to report on the police when these incidents occur.
They might report if someone else sexually assaulted them, but when a police officer sexually assaults them, they often think twice about it.
And many of them, frankly, don't report it.
And when victims do report, it's generally their word against a sworn police officer.
The cover of darkness.
plays a role.
It seems funny, but a lot of this behavior goes on after hours when there's very few other people around to witness it, and everybody else goes to bed.
But there's a few people out there still roaming around, and then there's the police because the police work at night.
You know, you can stop a car if you want to stop a car.
You can get out and walk around and confront people and ask them to come over and even voluntarily talk to me or involuntarily.
But there's no one there to stop you, really.
The truth is, police typically in our society and our culture are, you know, have the authority and power and this opportunity to engage.
I learned something interesting about the role of group dynamics.
Bad behavior can be concentrated to a single shift or a particular group of officers.
The day shift could be fine, for example, but certain night shifts may tolerate deviant behavior.
One study, looking at the Chicago PD, found that officers who worked with colleagues who used excessive force were more likely to engage in the same kind of conduct.
The behavior was contagious.
As the study's senior author wrote, quote, officers' peers may serve as social conduits through which misconduct is learned and transmitted.
But there is that culture of not reporting on fellow officers generally in law enforcement, not just for sexual misconduct, but for lots of behaviors.
Timothy has interviewed numerous police officers about their perceptions of police sexual misconduct.
In one 2003 study, he found that while police officers believed that sexual misconduct was common, quote, criminal justice officials have done little to help control the problem, suggesting that this problem may in part be fostered by the police subculture.
The officers I spoke with said they drew the line, though, at very serious criminal behavior.
Inappropriate comments, the sex on duty,
minor violations of rules and regulations where, you know what, they don't report on each other.
It's the blue wall of silence.
It's that you just don't deal with that.
Most of them would say, I'm not their supervisor.
I don't have to deal with that.
That's the boss's job.
Now, I interviewed sergeants and lieutenants, too.
What I learned was that it wasn't unique just to the patrol officers or the non-ranking officers that
ranking and supervising officers were engaging in this behavior as well.
I want to take you back to FOP Lodge number 89, the cop club in Prince George's County, the place where Sandy's family said she would get drinks with police after hours.
Except, instead of 1977, it's 2017, exactly 40 years later.
It's 2 a.m.
and a group of cops are grabbing drinks.
Some of them are still in uniform, including a young woman who I'll call Marie.
She's just a few years out of the academy and she's hanging out with her co-workers and her lieutenant who I'll call David.
The lounge closes and the group migrates outside to the parking lot.
After a while, Marie really needs to pee, so she walks into the woods for some privacy.
On her way back, in the darkness, she's pulled to the ground.
Her lieutenant David has grabbed her.
He thrusts his hands down her trousers, sexually assaulting her.
Marie doesn't officially report the incident, fearing retribution.
Even as a new cop, she understands the consequences of squealing on a fellow officer.
But news of what happened gets around the department.
And two years later, she's called into internal affairs and asked about the incident.
She speaks her truth.
After David is charged with sexual assault, Marie's working environment becomes one of intimidation and fear.
She's shunned by her colleagues and blamed for the prosecution of her abuser, even receiving a threat via text.
In a brazen show of solidarity with her lieutenant, High-ranking police officers pack the courtroom to support him at trial.
Ultimately, he's found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison.
Marie is reassigned to the evidence department, in effect, a desk job.
She later leaves PG County Police due to what she describes as a hostile working environment.
Marie might have thought she was one of the boys, but she wasn't part of the brotherhood.
Marie, she didn't just lose her job.
Trauma has a cost.
It costs time, money, energy, and it cost Marie her peace of mind.
After the assault, she reported having nightmares, crying spells, heightened anxiety.
This attack and the culture that tolerated it had ousted her from a community she worked so hard to join.
And then she was blamed for her own downfall.
All of this made me think of Sandy.
If If Sandy was a victim of some kind of police sexual abuse, I think it's fair to assume it would have weighed heavily on her mental health too.
One more secret the teen had to carry.
Police sexual misconduct has been a problem in our profession for decades.
That's Tom Tremblay.
He's a former police chief with a 30-year career in law enforcement.
These days, he works to advise police departments on how to respond to domestic violence and sexual misconduct, including within its own ranks.
You can't talk about policing without a really courageous conversation about male-dominated culture, about hypermasculinity.
And this is something that our profession hasn't done.
And
when I address hypermasculinity and male privilege in trainings around the country, I'm oftentimes met, you know, in this male-dominated culture with, what do you mean, male privilege?
What do you hypermasculinity?
In 2020, Tom helped to author a model policy for how police departments should handle sexual misconduct within the ranks.
It prohibits using a law enforcement position, badge, or identification card to solicit, initiate, or coerce sexual contact with anyone.
And it explicitly bans sexual contact with anyone in a police explorer program.
You might think that police departments would already have specific policies on this issue, but Tom told me that many don't.
And so one of the major challenges that I see when I talk to police leaders around the country is the first thought process is we don't need a policy to tell officers they can't sexually harass or sexually assault colleagues or citizens.
We just don't need that.
It's not necessary.
These police chiefs might not feel like it's necessary to explain to their officers that they shouldn't break the law, but a lot of police sexual misconduct isn't illegal.
And without it being clearly defined, it lives in this murky space of being wrong but silently tolerated.
One of the policy components that I recommend that law enforcement consider is that consent shall not be an affirmative defense for any behavior that's addressed by prohibited conduct of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct.
Meaning, a cop can't just justify breaking the rules by saying that the victim consented.
Simply because the police, the badge and the gun, and the authority to, you know, stop and detain someone, search someone, arrest someone, take their freedom away, all of those things are interconnected.
Of course, a policy on police sexual misconduct is only as good as its enforcement.
But in a culture where secrecy reigns, mandating that such behavior must be reported can help to break apart the blue blue wall of silence.
If someone sees something or suspects something, they're obligated to come forward, not to turn away.
The PG County Police Department does not have a police sexual misconduct policy, though.
When I asked a spokesperson about this, they sent me a few pages on discrimination and sexual harassment.
That policy only protects employees from abuse by other employees and says nothing about the general public.
However, Maryland did pass a law in 2021 that prohibits cops from having sex with the people they interact with in the course of their duties, victims, witnesses, and suspects.
There's nothing like sinking into luxury.
At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.
And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.
The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.
Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.
With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.
Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered.
Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.
Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Shop now at washablesofas.com.
Add a little
to your life.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
I'm Bluff, and you're in California, which means you can play on my favorite social casino, SpinQuest.com.
They have over a thousand slots and table games available to play from the comfort of your own phone with instant cash prize redemptions.
And new users that sign up today get a $30 coin package for only 10 bucks.
That's S-P-I-N-Q-U-E-S-T.com.
I'll see you there.
SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino.
Voidwear Prohibited.
Visit spinquest.com for more details.
Lily is a proud partner of the iHeartRadio Music Festival for Lily's duets for type 2 diabetes campaign that celebrates patient stories of support.
Share your story at mountjaro.com slash duets.
Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Maljaro is not for use in children.
Don't take Maljaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.
Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.
Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.
Taking Maljaro with a sulfinal norrrea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.
Tell your doctor if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.
Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.
Once-weekly Manjaro is available by prescription only in 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.
Call 1-800-LILLIERX-800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mountjaro Indication and Safety Summary with warnings.
Talk to your doctor for more information about Mountjaro.
Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.
This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.
Are there two sides to every story?
Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in the girlfriend on Prime.
a psychological thriller that will make you question everything you think you know.
Laura has the dream job, job, the perfect husband, and a son she'd die for.
But when her beloved Daniel brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.
Is Cherry the sweet, innocent girl she appears to be?
Or is there something more manipulative beneath the surface?
And how far will a mother go to protect her son?
Also starring Lori Davidson, the girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems, and everyone has something to hide.
Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.
Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.
There's a lot going on in Hollywood.
How are you supposed to stay on top of it all?
Variety has the solution.
Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new Daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.
Where do you see the business actually heading?
Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosted by co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton.
The only constant in Hollywood is change.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Daily Variety, and listen now.
When Sandy started training to be a cop, only 2% of law enforcement officers in the U.S.
were women.
That number grew to around 13% by the end of the 90s, and then it just stagnated.
It has remained virtually the same for over two decades.
Compare that to New Zealand where I was born.
There, about 32% of cops are women, and they have a goal of recruiting 50% women in order to better reflect the diverse communities that they police.
Like Mark Wynne said, the consequences of leaving women out of the room are severe.
Not only can it breed hypermasculinity, but it doesn't reflect the true makeup of society.
And there's evidence that women police differently than men do.
They're generally less authoritarian and less likely to employ both excessive and deadly force.
And they may be uniquely positioned to help female victims of crime.
Studies show that domestic violence victims, for example, are more likely to report to female cops, who tend to show more patience and concern than their male counterparts.
But if you're a female victim in the U.S., it's statistically likely that a male police officer will respond to your call for help.
He likely will have been trained by a man.
His boss is probably a man.
And he will have spent his entire career working in an environment where women's voices are rarely heard.
I keep thinking about Marie, the female cop who was sexually assaulted at the FOP lodge.
She's not out in the world working as a police officer right now.
Like Sandy, she didn't get to fulfill her potential.
How many other women have similar stories?
Here's Kim and Stephen talking about Sandy's dreams.
I think she would have been a trailblazer.
She had a strong sense of justice.
She was someone that knew the streets well and understood urban life.
And she would have just done really great.
She had a heart for people, a heart for women, a heart for humankind in general.
And so we lost somebody that probably could have been a really good police officer.
Looking back now, she probably would have made a good cop, man.
You know, I mean, she could have handled being a cop.
You know what I'm saying?
That, you know, if that kind of gives you an insight.
She'd have been an advocate.
She would have been a really strong personality.
I would love to have been able to spend more time.
I'd have to really think about that because I'm feeling tears as I think about it.
Because we do, we lose out.
Our dreams and our desires got thwarted.
It got dashed, taken away from us.
The way Sandy was treated by PG County cops, who, according to Detective Sheshelsky, expressed no remorse after her death, it was like she was less than, in their eyes, disposable.
It made me wonder how their attitudes towards women might have carried over into their work.
influencing the way they interacted with female victims.
It's worth noting that domestic violence calls are the the largest categories of calls that police officers respond to.
Here's Jill.
I think that does call into question how they behave in other aspects of their work, right?
How they investigate crimes against women, how they treat acts of sexual violence.
I just don't see a universe in which you can have those really misogynist, really toxic group norms and still, for example, investigate a rape case in a completely full and fair way.
Or investigate a suicide of a young woman in a completely full and fair way?
A woman who may have been slandered as a, quote, badge bunny?
One who may have been at the center of a stink?
I took you down this road, this tangent on police sexual misconduct, to help explain why I think these relationships Sandy had with local police, and I hesitate to call them relationships, were unethical and wrong.
PG County knew about these relationships while they investigated her death, and they didn't say anything to her family.
There was no acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
But learning all of this, it doesn't exactly illuminate what happened in the poll yard that night and whether it was Sandy who used the gun that ended her life.
So in our next episode, I want to return to the physical evidence, reviewing it with top experts in the field.
And right when I was assembling this episode, I got an email from PG County.
After months of asking, they finally sent me Sandy Beale's file.
To my surprise, it was 95 pages long, and it revealed something new that upended my assumptions about how and when Sandy became so close to PG County police.
Because as it turns out, She had reached out to them for help.
Sandy had a stalker.
That's on our next episode.
How many times in your career, if you remember, have you seen a teenage girl shoot herself?
Handful.
Handful.
Probably less than five.
Ever in the abdomen?
No.
If you're a victim of police sexual violence, I'd love to speak with you.
Please send me an email at what happened to Sandy Beale at gmail.com.
What Happened to Sandy Beale is hosted by me, Melissa Jeltson.
It's written and produced by me and Katrina Norvell.
The podcast is edited by Abu Safar.
Sound design by Erin Kaufman.
Jason English is our executive producer.
Research and production assistants by Marissa Brown.
To find out more about my investigation, follow me on Twitter at Quasimato.
That's Q-U-A-S-I-M-A-D-O.
Thanks so much for listening.
Life's messy.
We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.
But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.
At washable sofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.
Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics.
That means fewer stains and more peace of mind.
Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.
Neat flexibility?
Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.
Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.
Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.
That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.
Upgrade your space today.
Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.
That's washable sofas.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
What's going on, California?
It's Bluff here.
You know what's better than a relaxing day at the beach?
A relaxing day at the beach with SpinQuest.com, America's number one social casino with over a thousand slots and table games available to the comfort of your own phone, with instant cash prize redemptions, and new users get a $30 coin package for only 10 bucks.
That's S-P-I-N-Q-U-E-S-C.com.
I'll see you there.
SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino.
Voidwear prohibited.
Visit spinquest.com for more details.
There's a lot going on in Hollywood.
How are you supposed to stay on top of it all?
Variety has the solution.
Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new Daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.
Where do you see the business actually heading?
Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosted by co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton.
The only constant in Hollywood is change.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Daily Daily Variety, and listen now.
Top Reasons Technology Pros want to move to Ohio, a thriving tech industry with high-paying jobs for programmers, developers, database architects, and more.
Ohio is the silicon heartland with the top tech brands and thousands of startups too.
Shorter commute times mean more time for you.
And since your dollar goes further in Ohio, it's like a cheat code for success.
The tech career you want and a life you'll love.
Have it all in the heart of it all.
Learn more at callohiohome.com.
Dell AI PCs are newly designed to help you do more faster.
That's the power of Dell AI powered by Intel Core ultra-processors.
Upgrade today by visiting dell.com/slash AI-PC.
This is an iHeart podcast.