I finally met Andrea Constand, 13 years after reporting on Bill Cosby's crimes
Note: This column first appeared on Philly.com (now Inquirer.com] and in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Philadelphia Daily News in April 2018.
I will never forget the day the Bill Cosby story broke. It was Jan. 20, 2005. I was working for the Philadelphia Daily News as an investigative crime reporter so the story was assigned to me. "Not 'the Cos,' " I thought to myself as I raced out the door. I was a huge fan of The Cosby Show and I truly thought he was Dr. Huxtable. But I covered crime and this was a story so I set out to report it.
In many ways, I couldn’t have been more prepared. Not only did I have a master’s in criminal justice, I’d spent much of the past year and a half digging into sexual misconduct scandals within the Pennsylvania State Police, an investigation launched after trooper Michael Evans was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting six women (he pled guilty in October 2000). By the time the civil case was about to come to trial in September 2004, there were more than 30 accusers, none of whom had ever gone to police.
