The Credible Accuser Hoax Within A Hoax

Culminating with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s Declaration of Innocence on April 11, 2007, the illusions that instigated and propelled the Nifong/Mangum Hoax were gradually exposed and debunked over the course of thirteen months. We have referred to many of these enabling illusions as Hoaxes within the Hoax. Among the Hoaxes within the Hoax that fueled the endurance of the larger lie, LieStoppers previously described the 911 Hoax, the Wall of Silence Hoax, the Fake Name Hoax, and similar fallacies created and promoted in concert by the Durham County District Attorney's Office and the Durham Police Department. In a futile effort to rationalize his department's questionable performance throughout the Hoax saga, and his investigators' misleading grand jury testimony in particular, Steve Chalmers, Durham's suddenly visible Chief of Police, now seems strangely intent on resurrecting the most ridiculous, and transparently false, Hoax within a Hoax to date: the Credible Accuser Hoax.

In an interview with the Herald-Sun's Ray Gronberg, the truth-challenged Chalmers asked the public to join him in the Twilight Zone by incredibly claiming:

“The only information we had was the information that we had gotten from [Crystal Magnum]… and at the point we did go into the grand jury, [Mangum’s] accounts were consistent up to that point.”

In reality, the false accuser's credibility and consistency were so lacking that Attorney General Cooper took the unprecedented step of publicly declaring the three Duke defendants "innocent" victims of a "rogue prosecutor". It defies logic and sanity for Chalmers to now attempt to resurrect the Hoax in the immediate aftermath of Cooper's unambiguous statements debunking the Credible Accuser Hoax. In the question and answer session that followed Cooper's April 11 announcement and in his Summary of Conclusions, the AG spoke of why the false accuser was never credible, nor were her stories ever consistent.

In his Declaration of Innocence, Cooper stated:

Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.

We approached this case with the understanding that rape and sexual assault victims often have some inconsistencies in their accounts of a traumatic event. However, in this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night.

...the contradictions in her many versions of what occurred and the conflicts between what she said occurred and other evidence, like photographs and phone records, could not be rectified.

... No DNA confirms the accuser's story. No other witness confirms her story. Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself.

During the Question and Answer session that followed, Cooper revealed:

...she's told many stories. Some things are consistent within those stories, but there were many stories that were told.

...Our investigators who talked with her and the attorneys who talked with her over a period of time think that she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.

...I think that they believed the belief occurred as she was telling these things. And they don't know, but they've worked real hard with her, but it just doesn't make sense. You can't piece it together.

In his Summary of Conclusions, Cooper states:

The State’s cases rested primarily on a witness whose recollection of the facts of the allegations was imprecise and contradictory.

The accusing witness’s testimony regarding the alleged assault would have been contradicted by other evidence in the case from numerous sources

The accusing witness’s testimony regarding the alleged assault and the events leading up to and following the allegations would have been contradicted by significantly different versions of events she told over the past year

No testimony or physical evidence would have corroborated her testimony

Credible and verifiable evidence demonstrated that the accused individuals could not have participated in an attack during the time it was alleged to have occurred

The accusing witness’s credibility would have been suspect based on previous encounters with law enforcement, her medical history and inconsistencies within her statements

While some of Cooper's statements are based on continued contradictions and inconsistencies from the false accuser that followed the Durham Police Department's misleading grand jury testimony in April and May, the Attorney General showed that many of the obvious misrepresentations predate the grand jury deception and were in police reports, or uncovered through means available to Chalmers' investigators.

Cooper's statements were not nearly the first indication that the false accuser was not credible or that her statements were inconsistent and untrue. Likewise, Chalmers' ridiculous effort to pretend otherwise is not the initial attempt by the Hoax conspirators to perpetuate the Credible Accuser Hoax.

On May 4, 2006, Duke University released the Bowen-Chambers report on the administration's response to the false allegations. The report revealed that the false accuser's claims were inconsistent from the start and were initially deemed not credible by Chalmers' department.

From the Bowen-Chambers report, which appeared prior to the third Hoax indictment, we learned:

…the victim of the alleged assaults was taken to the Emergency Room of the Duke Hospital in the early morning hours of March 14, having earlier told Durham police that she was raped and sexuall assaulted by approximately 20 white members of a Duke team (a charge later modified to allege an attack by three individuals in a bathroom)…There are reports from several sources that members of the Durham police force initially (March 14) made comments to Duke police officers and others to the effect that the complainant “kept changing her story and was not credible.”

In response to the revelations contained within the Bowen-Chambers report, City Manager Patrick Baker enabled the Credible Accuser Hoax by allegedly first ensuring that all police officers who had dealt with the false accuser had their stories straight and then falsely stating publicly that the pseudo-victim had never changed her story.

In one motion, defense attorney Kirk Osborn, who represents lacrosse player Reade Seligamann, asks that the Durham Police Department turn over all notes, tapes and information relating to the case to the Durham County District Attorney's office.

The court document says attorneys are concerned because Durham City Manager Patrick Baker has been interviewing police officers and may have pressured them to "get their stories straight."

Osborn, told WRAL on Monday that he was very concerned by Baker's actions, that they were unusual, and that he wanted to make sure the evidence is preserved.

Baker, during Durham's City Council meeting on Monday night, denied the assertion.

"I'm not asking them to get their stories straight at all," Baker said. "Certainly, as the chief executive officer of this organization, I feel like it's my duty to this Council and this community to make sure I'm in touch with what's going on."

Talked [sic] about the court filing at the City Council meeting, he said he interviewed officers after a Duke University report came out saying they had not taken the alleged victim's rape allegations seriously in the beginning. WRAL

Baker said he has never received any indication that the woman said she was raped by 20 men or that she changed her story.

"I have no idea where that came from," Baker said. "I've had a lot of conversations with the investigators in this case and with officials at Duke, and at no time did anyone indicate the accuser changed her story. If that were true, I'm sure someone would have mentioned it to me." News & Observer

Last June, defense attorney Joe Cheshire revealed that Durham police reports confirmed the assertions made in the Bowen-Chambers report, contradicting Baker's earlier denials. At a press conference following the June 22 hearing, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong's newly promoted Chief Investigator, Linwood "The Fixer" Wilson, interrupted Cheshire in an attempt to promote the Credible Accuser Hoax. Speaking to the press later that day, Wilson claimed to have read all of the discovery documents and stated boldly, but falsely, that the accuser had never changed her story.

And in a truly extraordinary development, even for a case as botched as this one: yesterday, defense attorney Joseph Cheshire gave a press conference stating that the newly turned-over documents contained another version of events from the accuser, this one claiming she was raped by five players, not three; and that there were four dancers at the party, not two. Cheshire was interrupted by Nifong's chief investigator, who informed the press that Cheshire was lying. The investigator, Linwood Wilson, then gave interviews to local and national media members stating, according to a Raleigh TV station, "that he personally read all 1814 pages of discovery documents and has not read that the alleged victim changed her version of the story." HNN

A bitter exchange that [sic] started outside of the courtroom when Linwood Wilson, an investigator for the District Attorney's Office, interrupted a press conference by defense attorney, Joseph Cheshire.

The interruption came as Cheshire was referencing the discovery documents that indicate the accuser gave conflicting accounts of the alleged rape.

In affidavits filed by police, authorities said the accuser told police she was raped by three men at the March 13 team party where she was hired to perform as an exotic dancer with a second woman. District Attorney Mike Nifong won indictments against three players and has said they were the only ones implicated by the evidence.

After the exchange, Wilson told Eyewitness News that he personally read all 1814 pages of discovery documents and has not read that the alleged victim changed her version of the story.

Friday morning, Cheshire, who represents charged player David Evans, provided proof. He sent Wilson a report written by Durham Police officer, G.D. Sutton, stating that the alleged victim first mentioned "20 guys at a bachelor party" and then says that she was "assaulted by five guys." WTVD

While Chalmers may be the latest to perpetuate the Credible Accuser Hoax within a Hoax, Patrick "Excuse Machine" Baker and Linwood "The Intimidator" Wilson set the stage for his unoriginal and inept deception. However, Chalmers, Baker, and Wilson, were not the only Hoax conspirators to promote the Credible Accuser Hoax. The Hoaxist in Chief, Defendant Nifong, actively participated in the deception as well in both private and public statements.

Defense attorney Bill Thomas revealed to the News & Observer's Joseph Neff that the rogue district attorney offered the ruse in a conversation on April 4, 2006.

Thomas said Nifong wouldn't listen: "He said that he had personally interviewed her and had spoke with her at length about this case, and that he fully believed every word she said about this incident, and that he knew a lot more about this case than I did, and that he was going to proceed as he saw fit."

Nifong was smug and self-assured, Thomas said: "I had 27 years of experience with him, and he was looking me in the eye. He said he had interviewed her, he discussed the details of the case, he believed her and that my view of her as perhaps being a call girl working for an escort service, running around making things up for financial gain, was absolutely false. ... He went on to say what a wonderful person she was. He said she was fully believable, she was intelligent, articulate ... and telling a convincing story about what happened." N&O

In a September court motion, Nifong would repeat the false validation of the pseudo-victim's credibility made to Thomas, despite his previous and subsequent in-court claims to have never interviewed the false accuser, by attesting to the pseudo victim's ability to recall in great detail the non-event.

In a motion filed on September 20, District Attorney Mike Nifong states that the Duke Hoax accuser has the “ability to recall in great detail the events prior to and during” her alleged assault. Considering that nearly all of the details she has provided in her police statements, her statements to medical personnel, her “identification” sessions, and her News & Observer interview have been contradicted by her own words, forensic evidence and the statements of other witnesses, it is difficult to imagine on what basis Nifong has concluded that she has the “ability to recall in great detail.”

If DA Nifong is to be believed, neither he, nor anyone else from his office, has asked the accuser to relate her recollections, therefore, the basis for Nifong’s affirmation of the accuser’s great "memory" cannot be his personal evaluation of her sincerity, clarity or credibility with regard to these “details.” It seems absurd that Mr. Nifong would vouch for her “ability to recall in great detail” without ever having heard those details recalled firsthand. His claim also appears to be contradicted by his continual willingness to offer his own contradictions of many of those "details" supposedly recalled. LS

For the first several months of the Nifong/Mangum Hoax, one of the greatest illusions that propped up the enduring lie and to which the Credible Accuser Hoax contributed was the fallacy that "Nifong must have something." Speculation from advocates of the Hoax and core co-conspirators on what that "something" was ranged from the use of date rape drugs and condoms, to an informant, to the ominous and mysterious unnamed "something" otherwise known as Nifong's "whole" cards.

The rogue dissembler helped foster this illusion in an appearance on MSNBC’s Rita Cosby Live and Direct in May:

COSBY: I believe you‘re someone who maybe has something more than the public knows.

NIFONG: Well, one would hope that I would not be proceeding without some evidence. And there is a lot more evidence in the hands of the defense attorneys right now than most of the public knows about. And I expect that soon there will be more such evidence.

COSBY: Is it safe to say just in general you have a lot more than we know about?

NIFONG: I think that‘s probably pretty safe to say.

Hoax fanatic Georgia Goslee helped the illusion along in June in an appearance on The Abrams Report:

Well, there must have been some really significant...Nifong would not have indicted...these guys, Dan...Listen. No, he would not...have indicted these guys. He’s not a neophyte prosecutor.

In July, Durham cheerleader Bob Ashley, editor of the Herald-Sun, seconded Nifong’s sleight of mouth in an editorial:

Nifong's critics have questioned everything from his character to his legal savvy. We think that the 25-year veteran of the prosecutor's office must have some evidence, or he would have dropped the case long ago.

In October, Al McSurely, chairman of the NC NAACP Legal Redress Committee, sang the "Nifong must have something" theme song for the Wilmington Journal.

“The prosecution hasn’t shown any of its whole [sic] cards yet, and I don’t think it will until trial.”

Following Cooper's Declaration of Innocence, which was based not only on the false accuser's total absence of credibility but also on a mountain of affirmative evidence of innocence, strident Hoax supporters continued the "Nifong must have something" battle cry by distorting the AG's decision from one based on factual innocence to one based on insufficient evidence, withheld evidence, and illicit payoffs. Essentially, the new spin went from "Nifong must have something" to "Nifong had something, but not enough."

“We respect the integrity of the Attorney General’s investigation and supported the involvement of special prosecutors,” Rev. William Barber, president of the NC NAACP, said in a statement. “If his office believes the State lacks sufficient evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that all the elements of each crime took place, then it is the State’s constitutional duty to dismiss the charges. We trust that the SBI has left no stone unturned in the investigation of this case.” Wilmington Journal

In a television interview with Jim Braude of New England Cable News, Wendy Murphy threatens to continue her vicious campaign against NC Attorney General Roy Cooper, the exonerated defendants of the Nifong/Mangum Hoax, and their attorneys for a "very long time." While accusing the State of North Carolina's top prosecutor of basing his decision to exonerate the Hoax defendants on political motives rather than factual innocence, Murphy cites the Wilmington Journal as the source for her continued claims that the false accuser was paid off and the Associated Press as the source for her accusations that defense attorney's withheld 1,200 pages of evidence. LS

Chalmers' self-serving, futile attempt to resurrect the Credible Accuser Hoax within a Hoax and his inane suggestion that the fraudulent accuser had out-smarted his investigators, combined with his false assertion that his investigators were privy to none of the affirmative evidence of innocence cited by the special prosecutors, is a variation on the "Nifong must have something" theme. Rather than "Nifong must have something," Chalmers attempts a Hoax of his own by pretending that "DPD had something" prior to the grand jury.