2nd Duke party dancer now questions doubts about accuser

Finally my frustration is with people who, as each exculpatory piece of evidence is rolled out, insist on making up new theories regarding felonious acts by the lacrosse players-as if they were emotionally invested in finding guilt instead of the truth

Okay, I’ll bite. Since my controversial stand in this is taking some shots, I’ll presume on the indulgence of the thread to lay it out again. In future, I can just link to this post until new evidence convinces me that I need to add, modify, or retract.

First of all, my emotional position is that I want the LAX boys to be completely innocent. One of the defining paradigms of modern American history and politics is the Tawana Brawley hoax. What truly happened in that affair is an important paradigm for conservatives just as what was falsely alleged is a paradigm that is huge in the minds of many black people and is constantly stoked and fanned by Sharpton, Jackson, Farrakhan, and their ilk. It represents their belief that the white devil – the one that used to lynch innocent young black men – is still after them, still dangerous, just wilier and more difficult to catch in the act.

I have the most profound contempt for the radical black version, the one that enriches the racial grievance industry by keeping fear of the white bogyman alive. The paradigm that is important in my mind is the one where some black person suffers in some incident and Sharpton and company rush in to show how it fits their paradigm – it is, they always claim, another example of whitey literally or figuratively raping our people.

The thing that makes this event so electric is that, in the hearts of many people, it will be confirming evidence of one of these two contradictory paradigms. It is hugely important that alienated black people get over their old fears that do not relate to anything going on in contemporary America so that they can become cooperative and productive members of our society.

In my heart, I urgently want the LAX boys to be innocent to demonstrate that the paradigm that reflects truth is my paradigm – that race baiters invent and inflame to keep racial hatred alive. I want alienated black people to understand that their paradigm – evil whitey lurks everywhere ready to oppress, exploit, rape, and murder them – has no substantial reality in modern America.

The events that happened at the LAX house are real events, even though they are on their way to becoming part of the mythology about race in America. As best I can, I detach my emotions and my wishes about the symbolic message that will emerge and try to speculate honestly and fairly about what actually happened.

Let me start on the evidence that seems important to me with a comment on the veracity of the various witnesses. I regard everything said by the players and both strippers to be highly suspect. Even liars will often tell the truth when it is in their favor so I am not saying that everything said by these folks is false, just that a lot of what has been said by them must be suspected of being riddled with lies and distortions. We just don’t know which of their statements are the false ones.

Kim has zero credibility left – her version is not even worth repeating.

Clearly this was not a premeditated rape scam but a rather chaotic series of events from Crystal’s arrival at the party to her ultimate arrival at DMC. So at least it seems reasonable to assume that she was not a ~premeditated~ liar but someone who was angry and confused by impairment and improvised a story which seems to me unlikely in many ways and has been specifically shown to be false regarding her positive identification of Seligmann.

The players were a rowdy crowd with a considerable record of loutish behavior. If anything happened to get them in a very bad jam, does anyone believe that they would not lie their way out of it if possible? I don’t say this to condemn them. This is human nature. Faced with a ruined life and a long stretch in jail, who would not lie?

The only factor that gives them any credibility is that there was a bunch of them. I wish I knew how many. I do not believe that, say fifteen, completely innocent guys would jeopardize themselves to lie for three or four who committed a major crime. That is one of several reasons why I do not believe that a thirty-minute episode of multiple rapes happened. I don’t think it could have been kept secret, and I don’t think the whole group would lie in such a scenario, although peer pressure in a bonded group like this is awfully strong.

My net on the players is that the ones who were close to any bad situation would certainly lie. The whole group would probably fudge their testimony on judgment calls like whether Crystal was impaired when she arrived. And they might deny seeing things that they plausibly could deny seeing. They might not want to know about her being slipped a mickie as that might not seem so serious to them. In other words, every word from the team is suspect although certainly some of the information that the players have given is true.

The fully credible witnesses, IMO, are the camera, the neighbor, the cabbie, the Kroger security guard, the police officer who responded at Kroger, and the SANE nurse.

My theory of this event started to come together for me with the description of several players helping Crystal into the car. There is a photo. That seemed awfully solicitous of them given their unhappiness over the money and her non-performance. Some suggested that they were anxious to get rid of her because she was a pain. Someone else suggested that maybe there were some “caretaker” personalities in the crowd. Their sudden helpfulness suggested to me that something had happened that worried the players and they were now making nice and also getting rid of their trouble.

I began to think about her being so impaired that she needed several people to get her into the car. The Kroger security guard said she was wiped out but he did not smell alcohol on her. The cop believed that she was passed out drunk. It seems that everybody agrees that she was wiped out. I think the cop was just wrong about the drunk part. The boys were drinking beer and it takes a lot of beer to put someone in that state. I am not aware of any evidence that she was guzzling beer.

The players, of course, have said that she arrived at the party drunk. An important piece of testimony has come from a neighbor who did a media interview saying that he saw her walk a significant distance up a driveway when she arrived and he was certain that she was not drunk. She danced a little so we know at least that she was nowhere near the catatonic state she would rather suddenly be in a little later. The picture here just looks to me like drugs.

A lot of people have insisted that there was no point in drugging her. Extremely drunk and rowdy, aggressive young guys don’t always require a good, rational reason for their acts. One of them may have had a drug – maybe a “date rape” drug, maybe Ecstasy, maybe something else – maybe just happened to have it with him with no particular intention when he arrived of giving it to one of these women. So the players were angry over the money and the non-dancing. And one kid gets the idea, “Let’s see if this will make her dance” or “maybe this will improve the bitch’s attitude.” Maybe it was just to see what would happen, maybe it was to make her dance, maybe it was to take sexual advantage of her, maybe it was to punish her, maybe it was just for the fun of seeing what the drug would do. Maybe the kid with the pill – if there was such a kid – acted alone. Or maybe he included a couple of others in his scheme. In any case, Crystal rather suddenly became severely impaired.

What happened while she was impaired? Maybe there was some sexual aggression toward her. I really do not believe that these rowdy guys were quite thuggish enough to carry out the crime that she reported. Might one of them have poked his Johnson at her or in her face in the bathroom while a couple of his drunken buds cheered him on. Something like this, more sexual taunting than rape, might have happened. And happened in a couple of minutes rather than over thirty minutes.

All that I have said up to this point was my theory of the case before the testimony of the cab driver, who seems very credible. He vouched for Seligmann’s alibi, but then he told of returning to the house to pick up more guys and hearing one of them say, “She is only a stripper.” I think the obvious reading of that remark is that even though something improper had been done to her, they had nothing to worry about.

The police arrive at the house at about that time and find no one at home. Maybe they were afraid a pimp was coming after them as some have said. But maybe they were leaving the scene of a criminal incident. I don’t think that that possibility can be lightly dismissed.

People will say that this is just a bunch of fanciful speculation. IMO, the evidence that I have cited strongly suggests that she was drugged. Some will insist that she drugged herself or cite the fact that Kim was not drugged as meaningful. I have speculated about how this could have happened only to establish that it is plausible and meshes nicely with what seem to be established facts.

I fervently hope that the LAX boys are completely innocent and that this fact will become apparent to all. The idea that one of the great dangers to NCCU women is being raped by Dukies is pretty absurd, as a general proposition. I hope that there is not even one case to support it.

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Of course, someone on this site once said that all black people automatically get free college educations, and my parents and I was left out of the loop on that, too.
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Not trying to be rude, but most colleges would kill to recruit black students with good high school records. I'm sure there'd be a financial aid component to that, though maybe not a total free ride. None of the black kids I knew in high school that wanted to go to college were unable to go. We all were pretty much the same -- we worked, got loans and some scholarships.

A very thoughtful response so I will treat it with respect.

You created a plausible scenario but it contains very little proof. I can create literally dozens of scenarios that fit the "facts" that you believe to be true. One obvious one, the AV took two or three percocets before she arrived at the party (a sort of Dutch courage) and they kicked in while she was there or she took drugs while changing in the bathroom. I need not create a felony out of very little to explain the facts you describe.

I would concur that if the team was charged with saying mean, inappropriate or nasty things the preponderance of evidence would make them guilty. They might even confess. But based on what we've seen so far drugging, hitting and waving Johnsons have very slim factual support. My personal theory which unfortunately has only as much evidence as yours is that they were fighting with the AV and Kim about the money for the very short dance.

Oh and the remark about being frustrated with people who are emotionally invested in guilt was in the response to you, it was more generally directed at the folks who just got to believe the worst (rape), which you obviously do not believe.

Interesting interpretation on what we know thus far. Of course we don't even know what tests show regarding alcohol or drugs. While we are speculating, consider the following:

Crystal wouldn't take an open drink from a stranger and the boys had no real motive.

Crystal might take drugs from Kim however. Kim's motive: money.

The night was going downhill fast, they probably weren't going to get the full $800, Kim didn't want to share what they did get.

If Crystal claims the boys stole the money I'd bet it was Kim who did it and maybe it was Kim who was behind the drugging - if it happened.

I'd like to see a time line for Kim and I'd like to know what was in her purse at the end of the night.

The problem with the self-medication theory is that it does not address the consciousness of guilt evidence, i.e., the comment to the cabbie that she is just a stripper and the clearing out of the house.

I realize that these two matters are merely consistent with guilt and hardly proof of it. I don't see proof on the horizon. I like my theory because it ~~sweetly~~ meshes with all the facts. Nothing from a credible witness has to be blown off.

If it were only a fight about the money, one would have expected the strippers to have been more together in their response. Of course, some say that if one was drugged they both had to have been. I don't see that.

Well hang in there. If there was any competency (perhaps hard to imagine) by the Durham investigators there will be a drug screen on the AV. I'll bet an adult beverage there's no date rape drug in her system.

That is a rather amusing theory that Kim was the villain. We know, now, that she was a serious criminal who was after financial gain. Maybe she planned it knowing that the LAX boys would have their reputations going against them. Of course, it does not explain their saying "she is just a stripper" or rushing away from the house.

All in all, it is quite fantastic and amusing. I still like my theory which follows the theorem of Ockam's Razor. But yours amuses me, and I can't say that it is impossible.

The only facts I see in the case are no evidence of rape, and photo and eye witness evidence proving the two suspects are innocent, as they weren't there. No crime. Everything else is noise.

Stripper fails to perform her services, steals the boys money, then in order to hasten her exit, threatens to not only kick their ass, but to call her armed pimp, and call the cops. Boys realize they've been had, and say "it's just a stripper", meaning calm down guys, there's won't be any cop trouble. "No one would believe the word of a drunk, hooker who's probably got a serious criminal record over law abiding, clean cut college students...but we better clear the place in case the pimp comes back with a gun." There is no story or case here.

LK, I sure appreciate your very reasoned, ADULT post(s).

I absolutely cannot believe that others have been relentlessly making fun of the the stripper's ex-husband's inability to hear Greta in his interview, (which was most probably due to a problem with his earpiece or in the audio connection,) and of his subsequent repeating of "excuse me?" I thought that "excuse me?" is what we are all taught is the STANDARD as the polite response when having hearing difficulty. The ongoing, ignorant bashing of this man's off-site-interview hearing inabilities makes me ill. I suppose those people would rather the man say "what?" or "huh?" over and over. Perhaps that is what they were taught to say. This man was a gentleman, and didn't waiver in being one, as the audio problem persisted.

Some are also childishly bashing the fact that he previously could not read or write--was taught by his then wife. I want to hurl. That he even offered--to the whole world on television--that as an adult had been an illiterate, shows more class than all of those who are ridiculing him put together. The man pulled himself UP.

Also, regarding his hearing problems--obviously they may be due to physical disabilities, which makes me want to hurl doubly at the all of the ridicule of the man's responses of "excuse me?" to Greta's questions.

Thank you for your kind words, Missy.

I heard the ex interviewed again tonight with no technical problems. He certainly strikes me as sincere and incredibly dignified in his simplicity and candor. A reporter whom I didn't know was saying that the first thing the fellow told him was, "Look, I've had some problems with the law." I don't know what his problems were, but the reporter's take was that his candor about that, like his candor about his illiteracy, only enhanced his credibility. He is one of the reasons that I can't quite dismiss Crystal as just trash.

Yea, people ridiculing this guy is pretty low. Especially, as you say, over a technical problem.

Maybe Mangum did get good grades at some point. I don't think her ex-husband has a clue as to what she's been doing all these years since their divorce, and how he could say she's so honest and so forth when the truth is she cheated on him and got pregnant by someone else. He seems grateful that she taught him to read and write, and that certainly speaks well of their relationship. He said he never knew her to drink, but we know she was three sheets to the wind when she was arrested for ten felonies. Her ex-husband seems like a decent enough soul, except that he, too, is a convicted felon and served state prison time. He seems to still love her, and in that respect he has my sympathy, because she is a faithless whore.

Love is blind.

They have to use different faces reflecting a similar description. They can't tell her if she's even picked a lax player, and the cop admimistering the photo line-up is not even supposed to know. They can'r even show them with their collars showing from their uniform photos because that's recognizable from one array to the next.

If DPD doesn't have enough photos to muster the needed number of arrays, they can get some from the FBI.

Your last point about those who are bound and determined to find their guilt no matter how preposterous it becomes being your final frustration is one that I share.

LKK, that was an impressive, cogent piece of writing and a joy to read.

One question: When was Mangum given the drug? She was impaired when she arrived, yet the Kroger guard didn't smell any alcohol on her, as you pointed out, although the guard said she did smell alcohol on Kim. That suggests that Mangum ingested a drug before she arrived. Further, not even Kim has stated that Mangum took a drink when she arrived and, so far as we know, none of the photos depict her with a drink. Finally, the women danced for about four minutes, then began walking toward the back of the house. Ostensibly they were upset over the conversation coming from the guys. One of the photos depicts one of the players giving a thumbs-down sign. That suggests the guys were less than impressed with the performance, and there is also the broom allegation, which seems realistic within the context of the event. In either case, they danced four minutes, and were angry when they exited. They came back in about four or five minutes later and went into the bathroom. Kim changed clothes in the bathroom. The Kroger guard smelled alcohol on Kim's breath. It seems far more likely to me that Mangum either ingested something just before arriving, much as she did during her audition for Diamond Girls strip club, or Kim had a bottle among her belongings containing a drug cocktail that she offered to Mangum while they were in the bathroom. If the guys were really slipping $20's under the door to them, that would be even more incentive to drug Mangum in order to rob her later.

It would appear from the timeline that we know of, Mangum spent more time with Kim than she did with the guys and would have far less reason to be wary of Kim harming her, such as drugging, than by the guys with whom there was almost immediate conflict. Kim's motive? To rob Mangum. Keep in mind Kim embezzled $25k from her employer. There was $400 in the house, according to the search warrant, and that's the amount that Mangum said she was robbed of (after first saying it was $2,000). I think some of the guys took their money back from Mangum after Kim left the bathroom. We believe from the cabby that Kim went back into the house AFTER Mangum was helped to the car at 12:41, and was characterized as very angry when the cabby saw her (Kim) getting into the car to leave - so much so that the cabby drove further on instead of pulling over in the vicinity of Kim's car. The cabby said she was yelling something about calling the cops. The next thing that happens is Kim's 9-1-1 call, phony crying and all (lousy actress), and some minutes later she pulls into Kroger to try to get rid of Mangum.

When I stand back and look at the entire picture, I see a lot of events initiated by Kim. She is at the center of every movement the women take, and I am beginning to think that she viewed these guys as patsies that she could manipulate through the old M.O. we have seen so many times - intimidation by and argumentation from a black person or group toward whites in order to appear to be victimized and entitled to whatever it is he or she is demanding and will scream about it until they get it. I think Kim expected to be able to bully these guys, whom she probably saw as young white chumps, into paying her to just shut up and leave after she initiated an argument or deliberately performed poorly so that she could get Mangum out of there early and take her money before Mangum's ride arrived I'm making an assumption that Mangum had a ride arranged for after the show). Kim failed to bully the guys into handing over the other $400 so she called the cops for revenge, and then looked for a way to get rid of Mangum.

Back to Kim's threat to call the cops as she was leaving the house, and the guys said "She's just a stripper" after they got into the cab, as though the cops aren't going to help her get the money. The cabby described their demeanor as angry. He didn't describe them as fearful or worried. The neighbor, Bissey, heard a couple of the guys in the side yard talking about getting their money back. One said, "It's only a hundred bucks", as though to suggest to whomever he was speaking they should just let the money slide.

I think the guys took their money back from Mangum, Kim raised hell over it, the guys ran her out, she was angry, threatened to call the cops, and the guys didn't want to be there when the cops arrived because they were underage and had been in trouble for it before, they get in the cab, they're angry according to the cabby, and one guy says, "She's just a stripper", as though the cops aren't going to do anything about the complaint.

"If they find ANY of the boys' DNA ANYWHERE on her skin or clothing, it still doesn't automatically indicate a rape. The boys' DNA was all over that house, from the furniture to the carpet to the bathroom."

I admit that "external" DNA would be less convincing than "internal" DNA, but it would still be pretty good evidence something went on. Most are very hesitant to touch a bathroom fixture that has any traces of potential DNA sources (e.g. semen, hairs, or feces). It would also depend on where on the accuser's body the DNA showed up. Still, if the ID is gone, the DNA results would have to be pretty unequivocal to salvage the case.

"Most are very hesitant to touch a bathroom fixture"

Are we talking about the lacrosse team here??? LOL

These guys would probably eat cold pizza off the floor.

Thank you, Jez, for your generous response to my post and for your own excellent efforts to advance the ball.

I certainly agree that Kim is a thorougly bad actor, a liar, a thief and a manipulator. I think she is definitely worth looking at.

One small, tentative disagreement that I have with what you said is that I believe that ~one~ of Kim's versions ~did~ have Mangum drinking. Also, I think I have heard that one or more of the players claimed that she was drinking. All the witnesses from the party are unreliable so it is not too important to me who said exactly what on that point.

The only thing that I am real confident of is that Mangum was somehow drug (not alcohol) impaired. My ideas of how that could have happened are pure speculation.

I like your handling of the "she's just a stripper" remark. And, like you, I thought about her prvious incident of zoning out with drugs in a stressful "dancing" situation. I should have mentioned that in my post even though it tends to counter the scenario that I was laying out. Cheers.

Thank YOU, LK for your thoughful and intelligent objectiveness and obvious good manners in this volatile mess. I wish FR had more adroit and discerning contributors such as yourself to guide and enlighten people like me. This mess of a serious, capriciously fragile event, I feel, prescribes that if FR is to be the Conservative board of record and ideas on this matter, opinions stated attach credence and credibility only sans back and forth low-classed swipes, cheap shots, and arrogant derisiveness. The continuous and ragging low-value mocking only reflects poorly on those getting their shits and giggles over and over again (think "excuse me?", "fugly white shoes," ugly, fat, ugly hair, fat arms, endless nasty skank and scum and ho and slut and trash, ugly press-on nails, diseased, etc.) It fuels the tinderbox flames and shows as anti-progressed on their and the TEAM'S behalf. It only serves to deepen the chasm.

The only meaning heard of the message is a validation of ugly preconceptions held by the mockers. They become what they are arguing the lacrosse team is not.