Was Crystal Coached to fill in the blanks?

“I knew from talking to her that day that I was hearing stuff I had never heard before or read before. And I knew that some of the things I was hearing she could have been told to make sure that she cleared up those times or whatever. From an investigative standpoint, that's what I was looking at. I was questioning whether or not she was telling me what really happened that night or if she was trying to fill in the blanks.” Linwood Wilson – State Bar Deposition 5/23/2007

Whether Crystal Mangum was coached in a futile effort to rehabilitate her numerous unbelievable accounts remains another unanswered question from the Hoax. DA Investigator Linwood Wilson described for Ms. Jean of the NC State Bar his interview of Mangum on December 21, 2006 and the multitude of unresolved inconsistencies.

December 14, 2006, was to be the beginning of the end for DA Nifong and his Hoax. The defense attorneys filed three crucial motions which eventually led to a disbarment hearing for Nifong, his recusal from the case, and the appointment of Special Prosecutors to take over the case.

December 14: Defense attorneys filed three motions

* Motion to compel discovery regarding DNA analysis (PDF, 4.7MB)

* Motion to suppress the alleged "identification" of the defendants by the accuser (PDF, 10MB)

* Motion to change venue (PDF, 7.5MB)


DA Nifong must have felt the hammer coming down when he saw those motions. A previously scheduled hearing was set for the next day, and he knew he had repeatedly told the court there were no other DNA results. However, Brad Bannon had spent a month pouring over the raw data which he'd had to fight hard to obtain. It would be the most shocking day in court, highlighted by a spellbinding Perry Mason moment.

December 15 - Durham Court Hearing

At the hearing Dr. Brian Meehan, the head of the private DNA lab and expert witness for the State, testified that he and Nifong agreed not to report DNA results favorable to the defendants.

DA Nifong sat dejected, face down and chin in hand, while Brad Bannon and Jim Cooney questioned Dr. Meehan and extracted his testimony that Nifong knew as early as April 10th, a week before the first indictments, that exculpatory DNA from multiple unknown men was found on Crystal’s rape kit swabs.

While court observers were reacting with shock over this revelation, Nifong knew he had another problem. It had been agreed that the next scheduled hearing would be during the week of Feb. 5. At issue would be Crystal Mangum's highly questionable identification of the three indicted players, and the Motion to Suppress would take center stage. Mike Nifong said he would put Mangum on the witness stand, and the defense attorneys were eager to finally present their own witnesses, and more importantly cross-examine Crystal on how she chose those three and why. Judge Osborn Smith would decide whether to throw out the accuser's identification of the three suspects. Nifong knew that without those identifications there would be no case, as there was no other evidence and all the DNA results were favorable to the defense.

Crystal’s third attempt at identifying her alleged assaulters had been attacked by defense attorneys for months, from the moment the transcript of Gottlieb's outrageous, no-wrong-answers line-up was released. Professor James Coleman of Duke School of Law had openly ridiculed it to a national audience on 60 minutes. The motion to suppress the dubious identifications was finally bringing the critical issue before Judge Smith.

The forty-three page motion revealed even more exculpatory evidence. It attacked Mangum's identifications from multiple angles and presented photos showing Dave Evans never had a mustache that night, as Crystal had specifically claimed. It delineated the time problems Nifong had with Crystal's April 6th statement, as well as Reade's air tight alibi. It was devastating to Nifong's Hoax.

That motion to suppress had to be in his reasoning when he sent Linwood Wilson out to interview Crystal for the first time eight months after her statement to the DPD on April 6th. Investigator Wilson would interview her alone - without a witness, as required by procedure, and without a way to record it.

Linwood’s Deposition in Nifong’s State Bar hearing would provide more questions.
Page 126 Ms Jean of the NC Bar is asking the questions

Q. How did the discussion of the mustache arise?
A. Those were--where I've got the question mark out in the margin is when I started asking questions after she had gave me the interview.
And when I--if you notice in here, it says "pictures from Abrams"--the asterisk on the last page that says "pictures from Abrams show," that's when I showed her those pictures that I was talking about having in my folder and--because that's why it says--that "pictures from Abrams show" is her going out of the--going into the house instead of what--they were saying her coming out of the house, okay? When I handed her that, that's when she looks and says, "That's Dave Evans." And then I asked her about the mustache.

Q. So I'm sorry; you showed her what and she said, "That's Dave Evans"?
A. I had that folder that had the pictures of the Abrams show.

Q. Are you saying you showed her a picture of Mr. Evans from the Dan Abrams pictures?
A. No, no, no, no. I picked up the--as I recall, I reached over and nicked up the pictures, which was on like three or four different pages that were printed out that we had gotten off of the Internet from the Abrams show.
When I picked those up to ask her about what had--one of the questions I had gone there to ask her about her coming out because she had said that she left her pocket- book or her bag and her cell phone in the house in the bathroom, and that was one of the discrepancies because Kim had said she went in and couldn't find it in the bathroom. And the guys had said that they found it out in the yard the next day. And the police had said that they had looked for-- they'd walked back there that night and there was no pocketbook back there. So that was one of the discrepancies we were trying to clear up.

So when I showed her that picture, which clearly had her holding her purse in the picture, she said that was her arriving at the house instead of her leaving. And the time stamp said it was 12:30 p.m. So that was one of the issues that we were trying to clear up.

When I took those pictures out of that folder, I had that photo array thing also in there. They were all in that same folder. And that's when she said "That's Dave Evans." And I said, "How do you know that's Dave Evans? She said, "I know who he is now," you know.

And so then I asked her about it. I said, "Well, now, he doesn't have a mustache, though. I thought you said something about a mustache." And she says, "It wasn't a real mustache like yours. It was like a shadow." And I said, "You mean like a 5 o'clock shadow," and she said, "Yes."

Q. Okay. And what was--why did you ask her about the mustache in the first place?
A. Well, because I knew that she had made that comment that he had a mustache, that there were some discrepancies about whether he had a mustache or didn't. And that 's why I asked her. When she said, "That's Dave Evans," I said, "How do you know that's Dave Evans," because I mean I wasn't expecting her to reach over there and say that, because she had basically told me earlier and had told on other occasions that we had talked with her about coming in for an interview that she wasn't reading the newspaper, she wasn't looking at TV, you know, she wasn't following any of this. So I very honestly wanted to know how she knew that was Dave Evans.

Q. And what did she say?
A. She said she recognized him from that night.

Q. But how did she know what his name was?
A. Well, I didn't ask her that. Like I said, didn't get into that. I had the same question. I didn't ask her that. I was uncomfortable going there being the only person there. I felt like--I felt like those questions needed to be asked, but they needed to be asked when there were police officers there present.

Wilson's "explanation " requires suspension of logic to believe. In an investigation wherein those in charge employ witness intimidation and rigged line-ups at will, we are now asked to believe The Big Oops. A seasoned investigator GOES ALONE to ask the complaining witness to clear up details but then , of course, cannot pursue contradictions because...um-m-m-m, he is alone?

How could this supposedly bipolar woman on medication, who later talked about levitation in mid air during her "assault" have been prepared to answer the questions presented in the Suppress motion which was filed only seven days earlier? Was she "told to make sure that she cleared up those times"..?

As for the lack of DNA from the "alleged assault".. How did Crystal explain that? The miraculous answer according to Linwood Wilson was she couldn't even be sure if a penis was used.

Huh?

Her April 6th statement had this, " I would like to add that Adam ejaculated in my mouth and I spit it out onto the floor, part of it fell on onto the floor after he pulled his penis out."

Enough said!

Why go alone in the first place? Do not seasoned investigators expect their questions to lead to answers?

Then Oh My!..the Big Oops continues....helpful photos fall out and an absolute identification is made.

All this is just accidental, as are all the other outrages pursued by these hometown Thugs with Badges. How plagued these unlucky souls like Nifong and his Capo Wilson are by unfortunate unwitting forays into illegal "Oops" territory! Our hearts swoon at their repeated bad luck!

Of course, there is "explanation" after "explanation" just not that meet the test of logic or the rigor of so much repetition!

("Dear, I was just changing a light bulb when you found me in the neighbors bedroom. Oh, the time before, I just happened to walk through the wrong door...And the time BEFORE, well, ah-h-h...."

One of the first acts of the D.A. Hardin after Nifong's removal was to fire Wilson. In a city as egregiously unrepentant as Durham..everything one needs to understand about the ethics and investigative practices of Wilson can be understood by that swift expulsion from his job.

Even as the Durham power players closed ranks and denied their own "infection",even THEY could not ignore the scabs on Wilson from his eager embrace of the crooked tactics of the notorious Legal Leper Nifong.