Looking for Charges in an Interconnected Town

Of the 60 individuals identified by the attorney general's office as persons of interest, DeWine said 16 people who may have had information refused to talk with investigators. Many of those people are underage. DeWine said, without being asked, that "indictments could be returned and additional charges could be filed." And here's the tricky part: Under Ohio law, if you fail to report a crime, you may be breaking the law.

Ohio Law decrees that 'no person, knowing that a felony has been or is being committed, shall knowingly fail to report such information to law enforcement authorities... Whoever violates division (A) or (B) of this section is guilty of failure to report a crime.

While the juvenile court lessens rape charges to a Category 2 crime, rape is a felony. (This may be news to CNN, where an actual chiron headline today read: "Realizing rape is a crime.") DeWine said at his press conference that, beyond the failure-to-report charge, possible additional charges could investigated include failure to report child abuse, tampering with evidence, and "others."

So who are investigators looking at for this grand jury hearing? Well, Steubenville is a town of 18,000 people, but a lot of those people are connected by way of the football team, the legal system, and especially local law enforcement. The power players in this town know each other. To get a sense of the inner workings, we've expanded on a comprehensive chart from investigative journalist Joey Ortega, with new connections based on news reports and testimony in last week's trial. This map is not proof of any funny business or wrongdoing — not at all — but it does help re-introduce the bigger picture, and you can click the image below to expand:

What Did Coach Reno Take Care of, Exactly?

The connections raising the most eyebrows on the day after the verdict point to one man who's going to have a lot of explaining to do: Steubenville football head coach Reno Saccoccia. The coach did not testify in the rape trial, but he told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer on Friday that he was "expecting" to take the stand, perhaps signaling that he's agreed to cooperate with investigators. He certainly couldn't cooperate any less with reporters. Saccoccia has claimed in other brief interviews that he doesn't "do the Internet" and had not seen the many pictures and videos which circulated online in town before they went national; he physically confronted a New York Times reporter in an expletive-laden tirade that served as his response to why he had not disciplined Mays, Richmond, or any other players following the night of August 11.

But according to testimony from last week's trial, Mays had sent a text message to one his friends, in which he confirmed that he had told Saccoccia about the incident. Mays, the 17-year-old Big Red quarterback, sent this text:

"I got Reno. He took care of it and sh-- ain't gonna happen, even if they did take it to court."

High-school coaches and school officials are expected under Ohio law to report child abuse. If what Mays claimed in his text message is true, that would implicate Saccocia. "The coach and the school district have repeatedly declined to comment," according to USA Today, which adds that parents may also face more charges.