Posted on 01/09/2007 7:40:35 AM PST by freespirited
Until relatively recently, it was possible to view the accuser as a secondary victim of Mike Nifong—someone who, as she had done in the past, filed a transparently incredible claim of rape without any expectation of seeing it through, only to see the “minister of justice” exploit the case for his own political purposes.
On the early morning of the 14th, with the accuser about to be involuntarily committed, a Durham Access Center nurse asked her if she had been raped. (It’s my understanding that prompting a patient in this fashion is not standard procedure in such circumstances—yet another example of the peculiar conduct associated with this case.) The accuser responded yes, fully realizing that this answer meant that she wouldn’t be committed.
Since the accuser was developing the tale on the fly, she couldn’t come close to creating a consistent story. But she would have every reason to assume, as in Creedmoor a decade before, that the matter would not be pursued in any significant degree. How could she (or anyone else) have realized that the “minister of justice,” desperately needing black votes and with nearly $30,000 of his own money riding on the outcome of the case, would adopt the pretense of acting upon one or more of her myriad, mutually contradictory, stories?
In some respects, this view of events always required suspending belief, since the accuser, apparently without anyone forcing her to do so, publicly offered her tale to the N&O for its March 25 article. In light of reports over the past month, it’s no longer possible to see the accuser, in any way, as an innocent “victim” of Nifong’s procedural fraud.
Let’s begin with what is known:
* At the time she was telling UNC doctors she was experiencing crippling pain, she was videotaped at a strip club performing a pole dance in a most limber fashion. As Kathleen Eckelt has pointed out, this behavior is consistent with prescription drug fraud.
* Four days after she made her allegation, the accuser reportedly told the security manager of the strip club, “I’m going to get paid by the white boys.” In recent days, some Nifong enablers who post on case-related forums have dismissed the comment’s significance. They have contended that the accuser was referring to her claim of being robbed, not implying that she planned to use the claim as part of a civil suit. The enablers’ theory seems extraordinarily far-fetched, in part because the accuser never claimed that “the white boys” robbed her. About the only aspect of her tale to remain consistent was a charge that Kim Roberts, the second dancer, took her money, which varied between $400 and $2000, depending on the version of events.
* The accuser’s mother met with civil litigator Willie Gary and told Essence that she was “very much interested” in “getting Gary involved.”
* Mark Simeon, the lawyer for Kim Roberts and an unsuccessful candidate for district attorney in 2002, expressed his interest in filing a civil suit.
* The day after Nifong began his procedurally improper publicity barrage against the lacrosse team, Simeon endorsed Nifong’s primary campaign, stating that while he always had known Nifong was a “good prosecutor,” he had only recently learned Nifong was a “good man.” Obviously, any adverse publicity Nifong could generate in the lacrosse players would help in any civil suit.
For reasons that remain unexplained, police ignored the results of two early lineups in which the accuser couldn’t identify any of her alleged assailants, and then waited 19 days until after first interviewing her to show her the final lineup.
In the March 16 lineup, the accuser remarked, “This is harder than I thought,” according to the notes of Inv. Michele Soucie.
On March 21, Inv. Benjamin Himan recorded, “I asked her questions trying to follow up on a better description of the suspects. She was unable to remember anything further about the suspects.”
In the April 4 lineup, the accuser’s memory dramatically improved, with her sudden ability to recognize many members of the team and to identify her alleged assailants. Yet, as Iowa State professor Gary Wells, a national expert on photo lineup identifications, commented, “Memory doesn’t get better with time. That’s one of the things we know. How does she get more positive with time?” ---------
Changing any one of the nine items above—i.e., had the police done their job and taken the accuser’s statement, including a lineup session, immediately; or had the accuser and her family not expressed an interest in getting money out of the incident; or had a dubious partnership between Nifong and Simeon coalesced around Nifong’s decision to abandon legal ethics in handling the lacrosse case; or had police either accepted the results of the early lineups or recognized what Wells termed the “red flag[s]” associated with the April 4 lineup—would make it irresponsible even to speculate about the relationship between a possible civil suit and the identifications the accuser made.
But, of course, all of the above factors did occur.
Given the accuser’s stated desire to “get paid by the white boys,” it’s worth taking a look at the “white boys” that she ultimately picked. In a normal case, the police would have taken a statement from her immediately after the incident, and also asked her to identify the alleged assailants. In this case, however, the police waited three weeks to take the accuser’s official statement, and gave her 19 days to research the backgrounds of the people she would ultimately choose.
This inexplicable delay gave an accuser out for money the opportunity to research her prey. But her stated desire to “get paid by the white boys” would be frustrated if she happened to select three players from financially modest families.
It seems difficult to believe that the accuser could have conducted a detailed background check on the players. But she quite easily could have located the players’ hometowns (from the Duke lacrosse webpage), and from there obtained from the Census Bureau’s website the median income of the cities in which they lived. Of course, wealthy people live in poor towns, and vice versa. But this approach would have given a figure who wanted to “get paid by the white boys” a better chance of selecting someone who fulfilled her needs, especially since she had many days before the photo ID session to study the photographs.
Below is the relevant data*:
Accused Players
Essex Fells, NJ......175,000
Bethesda, MD...... 130,160
Garden City, NY...120,305
Other Players
Great Falls, VA......170,618
Potomac, MD........142,472
Darnestown, MD....136,507
Mendham, NJ.........129,812
Chevy Chase, MD..127,254
Summit, NJ.............117,053
Swarthmore, PA.....105,874
Manhasset, NY.......104,601
Setauket, NY..........102,472
Sea Cliff, NY..........100,506
Syosset, NY..............99,704
Glenview, IL..............96,552
Massapequa, NY...... 88,571
Ridgewood, NJ..........85,108
East Northport, NY....80,291
Baldwin, NY...............78,400
East Rockaway, NY...78,363
Orchard Park, NY......70,483
Farmingdale, NY........68,235
Norwalk, CT..............68,219
Gaithersburg, MD.......66,669
Cazenovia, NY...........61,750
Freeport, NY..............61,673
Durham, NC...............51,162
Webster, NY..............49,471
Dover, DE..................48,338
Charlottesville, VA......45,110
Dallas, TX..................40,921
Richmond, VA............38,348
Philadelphia, PA..........37,036
Baltimore, MD............35,438
The accuser thus selected the player (Reade Seligmann) whose hometown reported the highest median income of any player on the team. Her choice of Dave Evans (or at least his mustachioed alter ego) gave her someone whose hometown was in the top five. Collin Finnerty’s hometown ranked as the eighth wealthiest on the team, but other reasons existed for selecting him: reports of his D.C. arrest had appeared in the media around 10 days before the April 4 lineup.
The income table reveals one other interesting item: the only player that the accuser twice said she was absolutely certain to have seen at the party (Brad Ross, who wasn’t even in Durham on the night in question) comes from the fourth wealthiest town on the team (Darnestown).
The accuser, meanwhile, claimed to recognize a much smaller percentage of the lacrosse players who were from towns and cities with lower median incomes. Of the nine players who came from the cities and towns with the lowest median incomes, the accuser recognized only three. And, of course, she claimed that none were her assailants.
---------
I concede that this post, unlike others on this blog, is speculative. It’s entirely possible that the accuser randomly picked the three she wound up choosing under the watchful, if procedurally improper, eye of Sgt. Mark Gottlieb.
But Wells’ comment is worth pondering. “Memory doesn’t get better with time. That’s one of the things we know. How”—and why—“does she get more positive with time?”
*--The hometowns of two players (New Vernon, NJ, and Cos Cob, CT) did not come up
Btw, it would not be necessary to be aware of the Census Bureau website as a source of demographic data. All anyone would have to do is put the name of the towns in a search engine to bring up info about them, or use a source like Wikipedia (it has entries for the home towns of all three indicted players.)
dukelax ping
This is pretty interesting!
This supports the original theory I posted, saying that she delayed identifying the lacrosse players because she was waiting for their credit reports to come back.
But it would still require a very informed knowledge of researching. Even most college students struggle with such assignments. She most probably had to have had help. But who?
Amazing number of "coincidences" certainly lends credence to this speculation.
Which Willie Gary? This Willie Gary, mentioned in an article about the super-rich buying new custom jets.
But it does not seem difficult to believe that an unethical trial lawyer could have done so. And there were apparently two trial lawyers who were interested in civil suits against the team.
That is not to say that the trial lawyers were involved in the false allegations -- that's probably not true. But when you have the alleged victim involved with the civil lawyers, and at the same time feeling pressured by the cops in the criminal matters ... it simply makes sense that the targets of her civil suit would become targets of a criminal investigation.
Civil litigators Willie Gary and Mark Simeon spring immediately to mind. As a practical matter you can't file a civil suit against an entire team; you can file a civil suit against a selected few ... and of course, the "deep pockets" strategy is tried and true.
Her attorneys.
What I find most intriguing is that two of the three accused have fathers who have big bucks jobs on Wall Street. Imagine the odds of randomly picking them from a pool of 40-odd players.
"How could she (or anyone else) have realized that the “minister of justice,” desperately needing black votes and with nearly $30,000 of his own money riding on the outcome of the case, would adopt the pretense of acting upon one or more of her myriad, mutually contradictory, stories?"
Maybe she thought he was good enough to find one that would eventually stick.
Well, we have proof that Kim was contacting an agency to take advantage of all this, don't we? It's not too far imo from speculating that Precious, given her remark to her boss, also thought of this as her main chance to collect big money from the white boys.
Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!
While it wasn't the reason for the initial lie, she absolutely thought there was going to be a huge check with her name on it.
I don't doubt for a minute that Precious THOUGHT she'd be rolling in dough after she got through setting these 'white boys' up.
I think Gottlieb's descriptions might have been written for Crystal.
He could show them to her with a claim of showing her the "original descriptions" she gave to refresh her memory.
OT: Naked Parties in the Ivy League.
I guess the Dukies are behind the times.
Why pay for an eyefull when you can get it for free.
http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=4565
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_party
Is this the active thread?
Just want to add a couple of points:
1. Crystal identified four players who "assaulted" her. Gottlieb ignored her fourth (actually her first) choice. Just slid right over it. And as we know, that player was from Durham -- a city with one of the lowest median incomes.
2. How can any of us forget the interview with Cousin It when his/her face visibly lit up when s/he was asked about a civil suit?
There do seem to be a lot of coincidences. And although I don't think this was Crystal's initial motivation to cry rape, I understand why many wonder whether she continued with her lies after someone planted the idea of a lucrative civil suit. I don't think she came up with this idea on her own.
This latest analysis from KC does make you go hmmm.
But how can we heal if we ponder issues such as these?
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