Why was Crystal's statement not taken until April 6th?

Professor KC Johnson had another brilliant post yesterday, "The Lying Game", covering the responses of the defendants in the Ekstrand lawsuit.

KC questions a stunning fact: Crystal's statement was not made until April 6th, three weeks after her accusations. How could an NTO calling for a 46 man DNA sweep be written up without a recorded statement by the accuser?

Suspicions are that DPD investigators Gottlieb & Himan knew they couldn't be locked into a version when they first interviewed Crystal on March 16th. She had told wildly conflicting stories starting on March 14th as she moved through police custody into Duke University Medical Center hands. Her accusations to Durham DPD Officer Shelton, Officer Sutton, and the medical staff were a constantly changing montage of accusations, recantation, varying amount of dancers, and missing money (which, at one point, she admits she may have been deposited into her bank account.) It appears that no one believed her ever-morphing stories until hours later when she fell into the arms of Sane’-Nurse-In-Training Tara Levicy ,who, of course, later infamously stated to attorneys that she never met a woman who lied about rape.

DPD Officer Shelton had rightly figured Crystal accusations out that night in the hallway of DUMC when he proclaimed loudly, "She lying!"

DPD Investigator Jones was so unimpressed by Crystal's wild tales that she had decided to close the rape file.

However DPD Sergent Mark Gottlieb entered the stage to seize the case away from Investigator Jones. The case was now the hands of a police officer who had just been transferred out of the Duke beat because of his unfair treatment of Duke students.

The Hoax began.

The question remains: when should an investigator take a statement from an accuser? The answer to that question becomes moot when the investigators record all interviews.

In the Duke Lacrosse case we have conflicting physical descriptions of her "assaulters" given by the false accuser to each investigator in the same interview on March 16th. Of course neither gave those descriptions in the first discovery. It never appeared in Himan's official department notes, but rather in a handwritten notebook pages of that interview. Sgt Gottlieb's conflicting descriptions appeared months later in a typed presentation which seem to make up for every weakness.

The reality is that less than honest Police Departments don't take a formal statements until they have worked out the conflicts in their theory of the case. The Gell case was clear warning to all NC Police Departments to keep notes. The response of Durham Investigators in this case was simply to either withhold them, not take them, or make them up.

Also this case it is alleged that Levicy modified the Sexual Assault report to suit the evidence, imaginary as it was. The magic towel appears late in the game to explain away the lack of DNA.

Is our Justice system just an adversarial GAME where truth is secondary to winning?

Until North Carolina makes it mandatory that all interviews of accusers and witnesses must be recorded, we will continue to have Hoaxes with less than honorable investigators. Like transcripts for Grand Jury proceedings we are still waiting. More importantly, JUSTICE is waiting. Until we demand change, we will allow ourselves to be in jeopardy to ideologues and corrupt law enforcement officials.