Giving 'Em Fitz: Sandusky hearing puts picturesque Bellefonte on the map

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Curious townspeople lingered outside the Brockerhoff House early Tuesday morning, sipping coffee, eating breakfast pizza, and trying to digest the incongruity of it all.

"This will soon be gone," said one woman in a red school crossing guard's vest as she aimed her cellphone camera at the Centre County Courthouse, "and I want to make sure I get a picture. Otherwise no one will believe me."

Her lens was focused across Allegheny Street, where the shop windows were elaborately decorated for the holidays, at the media army occupying the courthouse square.

TV reporters navigated carefully but hurriedly through the man-made jungle of klieg lights, wires, cameras, and tripods. State troopers guarded the column-flanked entrances. Little packs of briefcase-toting lawyers buzzed.

An enormous convoy of white satellite trucks surrounded the gold-domed courthouse while high above, adjacent to a faded white moon that loomed over this little county seat town like the eye of God, a lone news helicopter filmed it all.

Santa Claus will be coming to town soon enough. On Tuesday, it was evil's turn.

Perhaps it's stark contrasts like the one on display here Tuesday that make the Jerry Sandusky scandal so peculiarly compelling and disturbing.

Malevolence and innocence, reputation and reality, the sunny image of Happy Valley and the horrors alleged in basements and shower stalls, all have been juxtaposed in the five-plus weeks since news of this child sexual-abuse case broke.

And nowhere were those contradictions more evident than in Bellefonte - "Pennsylvania's Victorian Secret" - where the bizarre atmosphere on a crisp and lovely December morning brought to mind both Norman Rockwell and Norman Bates.

It's difficult to imagine a more unlikely setting for so sordid a criminal case than this picturesque community of 6,100 residents, just 12 miles northeast of State College.

Situated in a picturesque Allegheny Mountain valley, Bellefonte's 19th Century charm radiates in every direction from its courthouse square.

From a vantage point on Reservoir Hill, as smoke rose from chimneys below and the blue skies and green hills provided a natural frame, Bellefonte seemed to be auditioning for a Christmas card.

Shopkeepers peered out at the otherworldly scene, and some invited chilled reporters inside on this 23-degree morning. Parked cars lined every street.