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
Are we off topic? Want to start a separate thread? This looks like another interesting NC case.
sp
You know that crowd doesn't take baths.
Great article...many thanks for the ping.
In light of this thread, was the request for home addresses an attempt to establish deniability by Nifong - "Hey, how could I know who the wealthy ones were? I tried to get a subpoena to find that information."
Excellent point. She could have bought such access herself for a day or month for a small fee. Not to mention that in a lot of counties, the assessed value of homes is public information.
IIRC, the court did grant his motion as to the addresses. It seemed unnecessary because all the players were represented by local counsel.
LOL!
Oh, yeah.
I'm thinking a woman spurned.
Ping.
I'm thinking Denita was murdered elsewhere.
I heard she was shot on the landing and fell down the stairs into the area like where you would put a bicycle. Am I wrong?
I'm waiting for the 11 WRAL news.
I agree. It would explain why the cops didn't find anything when they came out.
I actually left, and came back on in re the "women scorned" thing. It would have been a classic 'woman scorned' had the murder occurred in Greensboro and with body left on fiance's beat, no?
The murder occurred on a Thursday morning. Was Denita returning to or exiting her apartment, I wonder.
Fiance, a Greensboro Man in the Blue. 911 Dispatcher, Greensboro.
Crime of passion? Premeditated murder?
If she drove down here, isn't that premeditated?
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle&id=4921177
Mug shot of suspect.
Will she be identified as the "distraught" female driving the burgundy Explorer? Or did police get other information...
Looks like everyone went here - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1765083/posts
I don't know how long Denita and her fiance were engaged, but I have a feeling that he was playing Crawley on the side and she only recently learned of the engagement.
Yes, assessed valuations are public record in all jurisdictions that I'm aware of, but that doesn't tell you much about the real property value or how the owner came to own the property. If it was acquired through inheritance or a foreclosure sale, it doesn't tell you much about the wealth of the owner. A county recorder's office has a lot more information than an assessor does. A database repository designed to collect the information has much more yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.