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By Jeremy Finley, WSMV

I have a complicated relationship with tips. When I’m juggling a data project, a documentary, anchoring a nightly newscast and weekly reporting, they seem to spill into my hands like quarters from an old slot machine. And I complain, I can’t keep up with all this.

But when everything falls apart—as it does when we have a sudden promotable hole in the calendar, every source gets cold feet, open records requests are delayed and promotions sends that dreaded email: “Where can I find your interviews and b-roll?”—I look at my spreadsheet for quick-turn tips and all I see is the Sahara Desert.

The tip that arrived in the summer of 2020 came during a content-drowning season, when investigative reporters were scrambling to keep up with the daily developments of a global pandemic and hold institutions accountable for failing so many people. We TV types were voicing stories in our linen closets (which provided the best audio), going live in basements while our children—my youngest was 11 at the time—lay on the floor, kicking the bathroom door, groaning, “I’m so boreddddddddddd.”

The tip had nothing to do with the pandemic—and everything to do with a predator. A woman told me she’d been sexually assaulted during a job interview with a massage therapist. She knew of a few other women it happened to as well. Most importantly, she said they had all filed police reports and alerted the state massage licensure board. Yet the massage therapist was still practicing.

In regular times, I would’ve immediately jumped on the story and shoved everything else aside. I’m a crime reporter by nature, preferring to investigate the justice system more than anything else. But when you’re investigating dying patients in nursing homes and honkey tonks downtown are reopening while hospitals overflow, it was hard to pivot to something unrelated to COVID. Still, after telling my then-assistant news director, we concluded this posed a real, urgent threat to women.

I knew from the start that the real investigation was into why police and the state failed to intervene. My friend Chris Vanderveen, the revered investigative reporter at KUSA, said at this year’s IRE convention: In stories like this, it’s the institutions that need to be investigated—not just the perpetrator.

Armed with three interviews, police reports, and confirmation that ten 911 calls had been made about this massage therapist, I went to air. Predictably, Metro Nashville Police declined to comment due to a pending investigation. The state health department, which oversees the licensure board, received my request for all complaints filed about the massage therapist, glanced at their overwhelmed inbox full of COVID-related questions and put me at the bottom of the to-do list.

Still, I dug in my heels and thought, I’ll get the answers to this. 

It would just take four years.

We all know this: government institutions, politicians, PIOs—pretty much anyone in power—count on journalists to either (a) lose interest, (b) move on to a better-paying job, or (c) forget before the FOIA comes back. Stubbornness, my colleagues, goes a long way. 

And it wasn’t like I had to stop my reporting while I waited for the records. Did I mention the massage therapist claimed he had a twin brother committing the crimes? Or that he faked his death with an online obituary? That he kept violating women—repeatedly—even after we aired stories about him? That he appeared on Dr. Phil for a two-part episode? That it took years for him to be arrested?

Oh—and he impersonated our news director, leaving voicemails and sending emails to try to get our company to take down his image from our website.

We reported on all of it. We aggressively sought comments from the massage therapist, Metro police, and the state. I showed up a COVID news conference just to ask the health department, which oversaw the massage licensure board, why they hadn’t acted on all the complaints. You can imagine how well that went over—reporters were asking life-and-death pandemic questions, and I’m asking about a massage therapist. The commissioner feigned ignorance and steered everything back to COVID.

Eventually, the therapist lost his license and was arrested. He pleaded guilty to specific sex crimes and went to prison.

But I still didn’t have the answer to the question I first asked in 2020: why did police fail to act quickly over all the years? My hopes that I would receive the answer was dashed when I learned that in Tennessee, the full criminal case file can’t be released until a year after the defendant’s final appeal.

So I waited. When those detective’s case files finally were released, we learned that more than two dozen women had filed police reports. Emails from the lead detective revealed she was so overwhelmed by her duties that she couldn’t keep up. That a recording of the detective speaking with a victim showed she also believed he should’ve been arrested immediately. And that the District Attorney’s office was outraged the case files hadn’t been sent to them in a timely fashion.

Metro police denied an interview with the detective, but the new head of the sex crimes division acknowledged that police should’ve acted faster. The department has since revamped its sex crimes unit and hired more detectives.

But it still wasn’t the full story.

The massage therapist himself hadn’t been held accountable by us. I contacted him for weeks in prison. He made unethical ultimatums that we denied. Eventually, he agreed to an on-camera interview. And, to my astonishment, admitted he was surprised by how long it took police to arrest him.

Four years, folks.

And I know this war story isn’t unique. You probably have your version. But I share mine to encourage you to stay at it. Because when you finally get the answers—even the ugly, complicated, messy ones—they’re worth the wait.

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