Thursday, April 19, 2007

OCV: More from Jim Cooney

There have been a number of questions posted on Liestoppers and over at TL that I thought I would try to address as this winds down (or perhaps rests in anticipation of the AG's report).

First, there were two nonlacrosse players at the party - - this fact was known to both the police and Nifong before the April 4th Powerpoint identification procedure. The police knew the names of one of them and shortly thereafter learned the name of the second one. Neither were ever included in the Powerpoint identification or any photo array shown to Precious. Apparently this would have disrupted Mikey's narrative. This single act alone shows that this was not about finding the "real rapists," but was about pursuing a theme that Mikey had sold to the world media.

Second, a clarification. The picture of Precious on the steps of the porch where she is smiling shows her holding both her purse and Dave Evans' shaving kit. The larger gray square that she is holding is the shaving kit, the smaller thing is the purse and you can see her cell phone in it. This is consistent with the fact that a call was made to her escort service at about 12:26am, shortly around the time that she told Kim Roberts that "there was more money to be made."

Third, much has been made of the "missing" money. Precious left some of her money at the house. Dave Evans told a number of players to leave it alone and made sure that no one took it; when the police came they found the money in a stack of 20s. It had been there for two days; obviously no one had taken Precious' money - - just the opposite, she had left some of it behind because she was stoned and they had kept it out and left it alone.

Next, there has been some question about the DNA collection since Precious plainly handled Dave Evans' shaving kit, but none of his DNA was found on her. It is important to remember that the DNA swabs were taken from her mouth (several men's DNA in there), vagina (same), rectum (same), pubic area (same). Her hands were not swabbed (nor would that be typical).

One thing that is also apparent from the photos is that Precious is wearing two pairs of undergarments - - a red outer undergarment and then a whitish almost macrame underwear. It was this underwear that was tested (and the stains revealed multiple men). This is, of course, another fact that Mikey and Linwood overlooked - - why would gang rapists who were beating Precious take the time to dress her in not one, but two, pairs of underwear. Go figure.

Joe Neff has now revealed the affidavits from the folks at the Platinum Club about Precious' work habits. We were provided with "sign-in" logs from the "Champagne Room" of the Platinum Club. A "dancer" and her customer are required to sign the sheet pledging that they will not engage in any sex or touching in the room. (I swear that I am not making this up). We have sheets from the latter part of March (and just 2 or 3 days after the "attack") showing that someone named "Precious" signed in. This is consistent with what Yolanda Hayes said about Precious in her affidavits (and appears to corroborate the approximate time of the videotape showing her dancing until Yolanda throws her off the stage).

Significantly, we were able to trace Precious' footsteps the weekend before the party. Recall that she told Durham PD that after dancing at the Platinum Club on Friday night, she did her nails, went to a movie, and did her nails some more. Hardly. We found that after dancing at the Platinum Club she had at least 4 private hotel room engagements with various escort customers. She made approximately 20 to 25 calls to at least 8 escort services that weekend for jobs. We were able to track down at least one of those customers. We were comfortable with what his testimony would have been.

In addition, during the course of the SP's investigation, they uncovered additional information that validated our timeline and showed that Precious did not even arrive at the party until about 1135p (which was corroborated by her cell phone records). This was a receipt for her "driver" at a gas station close to the party site where he went after dropping her off - - it is time stamped at 1143pm. Mikey and the DPD never bothered to follow up on this information, the SPs did.

Finally, also unexamined by Mikey and Linwood was a digital camera seized by the police on March 16th. There was one picture of Precious and Nikki in that camera - - the digital data recorded a time that was approximately 13 hours off. We were able to verify that by enlarging one of the photos in which a player's watch was clearly visible. Using the correct time on this camera, this picture was taken of Nikki and Precious dancing at 1202am - - and it was nearly identical to the picture that has been released to the media bearing a time stamp of 1203am. In short, two different pictures, by two different people, of almost the exact same scene - - one of which was in the possession of the DPD since 3/16 - - that proved beyond any dispute that Nikki and Precious were dancing at 1202a. Yet, they still tried to change the timeline on 12/21.

You can't make this stuff up (as Joe, Brad and I said to each other more than once).

Jim Cooney

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dr Manly collected the DNA swabs - assisted by Nurse Tara. Whats the beef with those two? I hope not the non important yeast infection. Those swabs saved these boys.

Mandelbrot's Chaos said...

Since I possess a Y-chromosome, I'm no expert, but can't yeast infections be cleared up in a day? I wish these charges had...

Anonymous said...

Precious was quite busy before she planned out this hoax, where did she find the time? From the inconsistencies in her statements, maybe she should have devoted more time to hoax planning. Either way, sounds like she could've used a vacation.

Outstanding job Jim. Please keep the details coming.

Anonymous said...

My gosh if this had made it to trial Crystal would have been destroyed on the stand.

Anonymous said...

If CGM stole Dave Evans shave kit to get his DNA she should be charged. What was she doing with the shave kit and was it retrieved?

Anonymous said...

Carolyn says:

My first thought on reading that Crystal stole Dave's shaving kit was that she stole it thinking drugs were in it. After all, she knew the occupants of the house were athletes - which meant they had pain medication on hand for their injuries. Since the bathroom is the main place anyone keeps medication, anything in that bathroom (the shaving kit) would logically contain pills.

Or maybe she was just a crook. After all, she once stole an entire car.