This is the first of a two-part series.

When a shackled Kenneth VanWy shuffled to the front of a courtroom in January, the stage was set. A fellow inmate had just testified that a corrections officer at a Pittsburgh prison's F Block had defecated and urinated on the mattress assigned to Mr. VanWy.

If Mr. VanWy, 58, agreed with another inmate's account, a corrections officer would face trial on oppression charges.

But, asked whether he ever found urine or feces in his bed, he said, "No, I didn't."

The charge against the officer, Brian T. Olinger, was dismissed by a district judge. Coming at a preliminary hearing, where burdens of proof are low, it was a telling blow to a blockbuster prison abuse case.

With seven officers initially charged with 188 counts of abuse, including institutional sexual assault charges against Harry F. Nicoletti, the case launched last year against State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh prison guards has attracted national attention. The Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights investigation.

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So far, though, neither court documents nor testimony at preliminary hearings has revealed any physical, video, audio or documentary evidence to bolster the prisoners' claims.

A three-month examination of the case by the Post-Gazette and PublicSource has found that some of the accusations of Department of Corrections investigators were based on secondhand accounts that were not corroborated by the alleged victims, or tales told by inmates who later said they'd been pressured by investigators. The case's foundations, to be detailed next Sunday, are accusations from a sex offender, a robber and a mentally challenged man.

Starting with credible signs of trouble in the area called F Block, the department's probe jumped the wall. This month the potential costs became clear when an arbitrator ordered that eight suspended officers be returned to work with about $400,000 in back pay.

The Allegheny County District Attorney's Office isn't backing away from the case.

The department "did a thorough job of collecting the evidence," said Assistant District Attorney Jon M. Pittman, following a preliminary hearing in January. The case is difficult because the accusers are criminals, he acknowledged, saying, "We never get to pick the victims."

Corrections Secretary John Wetzel declined to be interviewed, but his department maintains that the case "is of the utmost importance," as a corrections spokeswoman said in a written response to questions. "Inappropriate contact or abuse of inmates will not and should not be tolerated in our department."

SCI Pittsburgh, a 130-year-old fortress along the Ohio River, was shuttered for years prior to its 2007 reopening. It operated quietly until Mr. Nicoletti was walked out and suspended on Jan. 5, 2011.

Among other roles, the prison acts as a transit station for inmates following convictions in southwestern Pennsylvania counties. A typical stay on F Block was around a week. Most inmates were then transferred to SCI Camp Hill for processing and transport to assignments in prisons throughout the state.

The Department of Corrections investigation concluded that officers assigned to F Block from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. systematically singled out sex offenders and subjected them to a variety of abuses. Investigators sought to bolster the accusations of the sex offenders with eyewitness accounts from other inmates.

At Mr. Nicoletti's December preliminary hearing, that tactic backfired.

Eddie Ray Gray, 21, a repeat and violent burglar and robber, told investigators early last year that Mr. Nicoletti and two prisoners instructed him to attack Donald Miller, an inmate convicted of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child.

But when Mr. Gray took the stand, he changed his story.

Yes, he assaulted Mr. Miller, he said. But he acted alone.

"I lied about [the attack on] that man so I wouldn't get in trouble," Mr. Gray said.

The prosecutor tried to clarify: "And you are saying this part is a lie and that you are telling the truth now?"

"Yes," Mr. Gray said.

Why did he lie previously ? "I was told I would be placed in disciplinary custody. ... Because they said they know I was involved and they would [otherwise] press charges on me" for the beating.

The charges stemming from Mr. Gray's allegations against Mr. Nicoletti were dropped.

Another prisoner, who testified that he witnessed and participated in the abuse of inmates who had been convicted of sex crimes and that he was coerced by Mr. Nicoletti into sex acts, recently had his parole board hearing. The prisoner's family became concerned when a Department of Corrections investigator showed up to interview the man just days before the hearing, asking if he could verify other inmates' accusations, in writing.

He refused to verify them, the prisoner's family member told the Post-Gazette and PublicSource. "He said, 'I didn't see it, and I'm not writing about it,' " the family member said.

Regardless of how it turns out, the case against the SCI Pittsburgh corrections officers is "a terrible blot on the good name of what I think is one of the finest correctional systems in the country," said Martin F. Horn, who was the secretary of Department of Corrections during Gov. Tom Ridge's administration, ran New York's prison system and is a distinguished lecturer at John Jay College.

If the prosecutions fail, he said, "then it just reinforces the belief on the part of those officers who have violated their oath that they can do it with impunity, that the state is ineffective." Inmates, he predicted, are "going to take matters into their own hands."

On the other hand, he said, "If the officers believe that inmates can make false allegations and that their career can be ended, and they're not getting due process, then their loyalty to the state is going to be compromised. That could be very damaging to the operations of the prison."

Officers are sore that some inmates' claims were ever taken seriously.

"It's reprehensible to see the word of convicted felons taken over corrections officers who put their lives on the line each and every day in very dangerous conditions," according to a statement this month from the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, which represents prison guards.

The central figure, Mr. Nicoletti, had one prior moment in the spotlight, in 2003, when he encountered Nadine Russo, girlfriend of boxer Paul Spadafora, as she staggered through McKees Rocks with a bullet in her chest. He held her and had passersby call medics. Now he stands accused of raping inmates, demanding sex acts, ordering beatings, tampering with inmate food and frequently exposing himself on F Block.

"He's just completely overwhelmed by this," said Steve Colafella, the attorney representing Mr. Nicoletti in the criminal case. He said that prosecutors for the District Attorney's office are being compelled by Department of Corrections investigators to rely on inmates who are "not remotely credible" and who are "late arrivals and, in my view, copycatters."

Veteran prisoner Casey C. Oliver hasn't backed down from his contention that, as department investigators put it in an affidavit, "Nicoletti made [sex offenders'] crimes known to other staff and inmates and [Mr. Oliver] has seen him perform sex acts with them, beat them, spit on them, flush their heads in the toilet and contaminate their food." But he believes some of the most serious allegations, including anal rape, are false.

Mr. Oliver did custodial work around F Block, giving him an opportunity to see a great deal. He was "a rare breed," as former inmate Richard Cavallero II put it in preliminary hearing testimony. "He didn't participate in [inmate abuse] activities that we were just talking about. But he had more run of the jail than the warden did."

Mr. Oliver is a former drug dealer with convictions for theft by deception, firearms violations, criminal conspiracy, burglary, robbery and more. He said in a phone interview from jail that his decision to testify to the corrections officers' abuse of sex criminals stems from a simple calculus: "My kids have a better chance of going to jail than being raped by some pedophile." So in a dispute between sex offenders who say they were abused and the accused guards, he'll stand against the oppressors.

He said he has been asked to back up some of the most heinous accusations against Mr. Nicoletti, and can't do it.

Investigators, he said, "came to me. They asked me, 'What do you think of this?'

"The anal rape? I don't see it. I don't think it took place," he said he told them. "I'm not going to lie for [department investigators] on them."

At least two inmates have testified that Mr. Nicoletti raped them, fueling charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. The Post-Gazette and PublicSource do not name people who say they were victims of sexual abuse.

"I think he's lying," Mr. Oliver said of one of the inmates, who recently sued the state, alleging abuse.

Of a separate, transgendered inmate's claims that Mr. Nicoletti raped him, Mr. Oliver said, "I was in the cell right next to him. That man never had sex with that man. There's no way two men could have fit in that cell. ... Not the way he described that."

In 2003, the transgendered inmate also accused two Allegheny County Jail corrections officers of sexual assault, according to court documents. Criminal counts against the officers were dismissed, and the inmate's lawsuit against the county was abandoned.

Mr. Oliver said an important case is at risk of being tainted by exaggerations.

"There are some things people are saying that I didn't see here," he said. "They stretched the truth."

Mr. VanWy is an important witness, but a difficult one. He pleaded guilty in 2002 to indecent assault of a person under 13, and is continually identified in court papers and testimony as "slow" or "mentally challenged."

A cemetery worker, Mr. VanWy confessed to a state trooper in 2002 that he touched the penis of a child around five or six times in the past. "This officer asked the defendant if he was lonely," the trooper wrote in his affidavit. "The defendant advised that he was."

Sentenced to 14 to 28 months in prison and then probation, he has been repeatedly jailed for probation violations because he failed to complete sex offender counseling and treatment, and in one instance possessed a knife. Shortly after an August 2010 resentencing, he ended up in F Block.

One affidavit filed in the case said Mr. VanWy was told to strip, and Mr. Nicoletti "attempted to put a broomstick up his 'bum,' but VanWy kept pushing it away." The affidavit, and testimony of several inmates, indicated that Mr. VanWy was punched, smacked, showered with liquids and food, and forced to stand or jump up and down for long periods of time.

At preliminary hearings, he's had a hard time identifying his accused tormentors, and some of his accounts have clashed with those of some other prisoners.

"I don't want to put this person on [the witness stand] unless there's no alternative," said David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and associate dean of research, when told about Mr. VanWy's background. A defense attorney can tear into a witness's ability to differentiate between truth and fiction, memory, storytelling ability and motive for testifying, he said.

But a prosecutor may conclude that there's no way to prove a crime without offering the jury the testimony of a mentally challenged, criminally convicted witness, said Mr. Harris. "And let's face it, sometimes the cards you're dealt are the only cards you're going to get."

Next Sunday: How the F Block inquiry grew into an avalanche of allegations, and the rising cost to the prison system.

First Published: March 18, 2012, 8:00 a.m.