The money was all in $20 bills...typical denomination gotten at an ATM. If everyone at the party chipped in a twenty, then the number of attendees would have been 30....close to the estimates frequently given.
The team player whose room was searched had some "new" twenties. In Nifong's world that's prima facia "evidence". Crazy.
From staff reports :
The Herald-Sun news@heraldsun.com Apr 5, 2006 : 2:39 pm ET
DURHAM -- Less than an hour after a stripper said she was gang-raped by Duke lacrosse players, a lacrosse team member allegedly said in an e-mail that he planned to kill strippers the following night in his dorm building.
Documents released today also show the Durham Police Department as of March 27 had added conspiracy to commit murder to the list of possible crimes it was investigating in the lacrosse case.
The e-mail allegedly sent by player Ryan McFadyen, said (the typographical errors are in the e-mail):
"To whom it may concern
"tommrow night, after tonights show, ive decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome.. however there will be no nudity. I plan on killing the bitches as soon as the walk in and proceding to cut their skin off..."
The e-mail was signed "41," which is McFadyen's jersey number.
The e-mail was allegedly sent at 1:58 a.m. on March 14 from the e-mail address ryan.mcfadyen@duke.edu. The alleged rape victim first contacted police at 1:22 a.m.
The existence of the e-mail was revealed in the Police Department's application for a warrant to search McFadyen's room in Edens Dormitory.
The warrant and the application had been sealed from public view by Superior Court Judge Ron Stephens. On Tuesday, an attorney for The Herald-Sun questioned both Stephens and Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Orlando F. Hudson about the sealed warrant. The Herald-Sun's attorney prepared a motion asking Hudson to unseal the warrant, which are normally public record in North Carolina, and was set to file the motion this morning. But Stephens, who acted on his own to seal the warrant initially, unsealed it this morning.
Asked for comment Wednesday, defense lawyer Bill Thomas -- who represents one of the lacrosse players, but not McFayden -- said that "this is a first-degree rape investigation. It is not about e-mails sent between college students that are in poor taste. This one e-mail, while it is certainly disturbing, is not a reflection that a crime occurred. It is clearly aimed at enflaming the community and has no relevance to the real issues."
Thomas said other e-mails among lacrosse players indicated a rape did not occur, but those communications were not included in police documents.
Police obtained the alleged e-mail from a confidential source, according to the search warrant application.
The inventory from the search, which took place March 27, shows police seized a piece of paper "with Ryan McFadyen email" in addition to memory cards, a laptop computer, an external hard drive, a disposable camera, a backpack, handwritten papers and drawings, and cash, among other items.
McFadyen, 19, is listed on lacrosse team's roster as a 6 foot 6 inch, 225-pound sophomore from Mendham, N.J.
At a press conference March 28 -- the day after the police said they obtained the e-mail -- Duke President Richard Brodhead announced he was suspending the lacrosse team's season.
At the press conference, Athletics Director Joe Alleva called the team as a whole, "really outstanding student athletes" who have a 100 percent graduation rate and are "wonderful young men."
"Unfortunately, sometimes young men have bad judgment," Alleva said.
The following day -- March 29 -- McFadyen was one of about 500 people who attended a Take Back the Night march during Sexual Assault Awareness Week at Duke.
"I completely support this event and this entire week," McFadyen was quoted in The Chronicle, Duke's student newspaper. "It's just sad that the allegations we are accused of happened to fall when they did."
Court records also show that the day after the search of McFadyen's room, Stephens signed an order for Duke University to give police additional details about the e-mail address of ryan.mcfadyen@duke.edu.
The search warrant unsealed today also shows police searched a white GMC Yukon SUV on the Duke campus. It had New Jersey plates and was located near Edens Dormitory.
The warrant lists the crimes being investigated as first degree forcible rape, first degree kidnapping, first degree forcible sexual offense, common law robbery, felonious strangulation and conspiracy to commit murder. Court records from March 23, just four days earlier, did not list conspiracy to commit murder as a crime under investigation.
No charges have been filed in the case. Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong has said he won't decide whether to press charges until next week at the earliest.
Police have said that Duke lacrosse team captains said only team members were at the March 13 party where the alleged rape, beating and robbery occurred. But police also say the players used numbers and fake names to hide their identities.
DNA tests taken from 46 of the 47 lacrosse team members could return from a state crime lab some time this week. The only player not tested is black. The alleged victim has said all the attackers were white.
Nifong has said he won't release the DNA results publicly. But defense attorneys, who say the results will clear their clients, said they'll release the test results.
Thomas, the defense attorney, reiterated previous assertions that no sexual assault took place, and that the Duke students would be vindicated through DNA testing.
"We'll await judgment until we get that DNA," he said.
"It's very important for everyone to remember that this is a rape case," Thomas added. "If a rape occurred as described by this woman, there will certainly be DNA evidence -- without question. Any suggestion that this incident could have occurred without producing DNA evidence is simply not accurate."
"Every one of these young men is looking forward to the test results so they can show that the allegations against them are false and without merit," said Thomas.
In his order today unsealing the warrant, Stephens , a former Durham District Attorney, wrote that he initially sealed it "to protect against the possibility of impeding and compromising an ongoing criminal investigation by the publication of sensitive investigative information at an early stage in the investigative process."
But now, Stephens wrote, "the need for continuing to seal this information no longer exists." He did not elaborate on what circumstances may have changed since March 27.