Gottlieb Confesses

The deposition of Durham Police Department Sergeant Mark Gottlieb, the supervisor of the Nifong/Mangum Hoax “investigation,” offers the clearest indication to date that the Grand Jury was intentionally manipulated and deceived into bringing indictments against three innocent men for invented crimes. Gottlieb’s sworn statement is tantamount to a confession to obstruction of justice and perjury. In describing his testimony to the Grand Jury, Sgt. Gottlieb admits that he stated, falsely, that Crystal Mangum offered a consistent story from her March 14 SANE examination onward.

Sgt. Gottlieb described his testimony to the Grand Jury as follows:

I told the facts of what's documented in my report. I talked about the way Ms. Mangum presented herself at her home, what she told us, what was found at the search warrant at the residence. I explained how these people had come down to the station and given their statements. I pointed out what was again found at the search warrant. I spoke to them about the time cards issues. I talked to them about the PowerPoint presentation. And they asked me about the medical report. I told them that the SANE nurse found the information to be consistent with the story she was giving. I explained to them that there were inconsistencies in the very beginning when she was crying, upset, whatever. But as soon as Nurse Levicy was able to calm her down, which didn't take long at all, she never changed her story from that point. I hope that covers in all.

Sgt. Gottlieb's description of his Grand Jury testimony is reminiscent of the bizarre explanation given by DPD Chief Steve Chalmers following his widely ridiculed "report" on the department's complicity in the Hoax. In response to Chalmer's similar attempt to suggest that the false accuser was a credible and consistent witness prior to the Grand Jury deception, we noted:

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.

At the time of Chalmer's effort to spin the false accuser as credible and consistent, we also noted that his was not the first attempt to dupe the public with the Credible Accuser Hoax Within the Hoax.

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.

...

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

With his admission to the State Bar, Sgt. Gottlieb demonstrates that the "credible accuser with a consistent story" fallacy was not only presented to the public in an effort to sell the Hoax but also to the Grand Jury in order to deceptively secure the indictments of innocent men for crimes that never occurred. Even if one were to ignore, as Gottlieb (and Chalmers, Baker, Wilson, and Nifong) suggests he and the Durham Police Department investigators in his charge did, the fact that the false accuser's fantastic tales were contradicted by nearly all of the physical and other evidence available prior to his Grand Jury deception, the inconsistencies in the accuser's multiple re-tellings (beginning with the SANE examination, Gottlieb's arbitrary starting point, and preceding the Grand Jury) clearly demonstrate that Ms. Mangum, contrary to Gottlieb's false testimony, changed her story continuously.

Despite Sgt. Gottlieb’s blatantly false assertions to the Grand Jury, it appears that Ms. Mangum did not manage to maintain consistency within her interview and examination with Nurse Levicy, let alone “never changed her story from that point.”

“In fact, Ms. Mangum gave in-training S.A.N.E. nurse Tara Levicy two different stories. One version was given during the checklist interview and another one during the narrative interview.” TJN, August 2006

In the narrative interview, Ms. Mangum described the only physical assault she imagined as:

“They kept grabbing me.”

In the checklist interview, Mangum told Levicy that she had been:

"pinched," "pushed," and "kicked in my butt."

While this initial inconsistency may appear to be trivial, it is only the start of countless inconsistencies that would arise, contrary to Gottlieb’s false Grand Jury testimony, in the statements of Ms. Mangum from the time of her SANE examination until the sergeant’s Grand Jury appearance. Over the course of multiple statements made to Gottlieb, other police investigators, the media, and medical personnel, the false accuser would contradict her own statements continuously between March 14 and April 17.

As noted above, the accuser alternately told the SANE (sexual assault nurse examiner), Tara Levicy, on March 14, 2006, that the extent of her imagined physical assault was being “grabbed” or “pinched, pushed and kicked in my butt.” In addition to those statements, the false one “continued to deny that she suffered physical blows by hands or that she was restrained or tied down in any way. She specifically denied being choked. She specifically denied that fists were used against her.” Despite those descriptions and contrary to Sgt. Gottlieb’s Grand Jury testimony, on March 16, 2006, Ms. Mangum told Sgt. Gottlieb and Investigator Benjamin Himan that she was choked or strangled. In between those two statements, she informed staffers at UNC Medical Center on March 15, 2006, that she had been knocked to the floor and hit her head on a sink. On April 3, 2006, she told physicians at UNC that her neck had been squeezed and kicked. In her written statement to police given on April 6, 2006, she contended that she was kicked in her “behind” and back before the assault, while also being hit in the face and kicked by both “Dan” and “Brett” and she omits any mention of being choked or strangled.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination on March 14 onward.

In her SANE interview, Ms. Mangum indicated that “Brett” did not engage in any sexual assault. In direct contradiction, on March 16 the false accuser told Sgt. Gottlieb and Inv. Himan that “Brett” was the first to rape and sodomize her. On April 4, Mangum would describe, directly to Sgt. Gottlieb, being assaulted by each of three men she falsely identified as her attackers during the PowerPoint lineup he conducted. In her handwritten statement of April 6, the inconsistent fabricator described “Brett” raping and sodomizing her after “Matt.”

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination on March 14 onward.

In her SANE interview, Ms. Mangum describes “Matt” as her oral attacker, noting graphically: “that’s why my breath smells so bad.” Later, it would become Adam who assaulted her orally, as noted by both Sgt. Gottlieb and Inv. Himan in their accounts of her March 16 version of the imagined assault.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination on March 14 onward.

In the sexual exam assault report of March 14, the accuser said that Matt claimed he was getting married but in her handwritten statement of April 6, Adam was the attacker who claimed he was getting married.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination onward.

In the sexual exam assault report of March 14, the accuser said that Brett and Nikki carried her back into the house against her will. On March 16, the accuser told Inv. Himan that Adam came to the car and took her back to into the house. In her handwritten statement of April 6, it became Dan and Adam who came to the car to apologize and bring her back inside.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination onward.

In the SANE examination of March 14, fellow dancer Kim Roberts is included among the attackers and described by the false accuser as having helped carry her into the house against her will. Ten days later, in an interview with the News & Observer, the accuser indicated “she thought the other woman hired to dance with her also had been assaulted.” In her written report of April 6, she describes Roberts as a victim, rather than an accomplice:

“Three guys grabbed Nikki…Brett, Adam and Matt grabbed me. They separated us at the master bedroom door while we tried to hold on to each other. Brett, Adam and Matt took me into the bathroom.”

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination onward.

In the SANE examination of March 14, the accuser claims to have been sexually assaulted by three men, yet described being sexually assaulted by only two of those men. In subsequent interviews and statements, she would identify four men as her three attackers (April 4), describe being sexually assaulted by three men (April 4 & 6), and name four men (April 6) as her three attackers.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination onward.

In the SANE examination on March 14, Mangum claimed that fellow dancer and assault accomplice Kim Roberts “had pushed her out of her car onto the street” after leaving the party. In her April 6 written statement to police, Roberts was no longer an attacker, but a rescuer who kindly offered to take her to get help.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination onward.

In the SANE examination of March 14, Mangum indicated that she had only one drink the night of the party. To the doctors at UNC Medical Center the next day, she would state that she “was drunk and had had a lot of alcohol that night.” In her police interviews she would alternately state “she had consumed a 24-ounce bottle of beer“ and “she drank two 22-ounce beers.” To SANE Tara Levicy, Mangum admitted to taking a muscle relaxant, Flexeril, in addition to the alcohol she consumed. However, Sgt. Gottlieb indicates she denied such in her interviews with police, while he implies that mention of the drug use was invented by defense attorneys.

Yet, Gottlieb falsely told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story” from the SANE examination onward.

From who and how many did what, to the role of Kim Roberts, to her consumption of alcohol and drugs, nearly every detail offered by the false accuser, Crystal Mangum, changed over the course of several retellings between the Sane Examination on March 14 and the Grand Jury indictments on April 17. Each of the contradictions were known, or should have been known to the supervisor of the investigation - Sgt. Mark Gottlieb. In an apparent attempt to deflect attention from some of the more obvious contradictions, Sgt. Gottlieb claims, incredibly, that to this day he has not yet had the time to review Mangum's March 15 and April 3 UNC medical records that contradict what she told SANE Levicy on March 14. Yet, he inexplicably used her discredited claims to Ms. Levicy as a starting point for the illusion of consistency he fraudulently presented to the Grand Jury. Many of the partial list of contradictions presented above were made directly to Sgt. Gottlieb himself. Despite the countless inconsistencies in the stories told by the accuser from the time “Nurse Levicy was able to calm her down” until he presented “evidence” to the Grand Jury, the accuser’s story repeatedly changed. Yet, Gottlieb falsely, and deliberately, told the Grand Jury the accuser “never changed her story,” while attempting to secure indictments against innocent men for crimes that never occurred.

Playing Stupid

Durham Police Investigate Crystal Mangum's Contradicting Stories

In multiple interviews following Thursday’s Durham City Council meeting, which included a 6-1 vote in favor of a resolution to commission an external review of the city’s police department’s role in the Hoax, Chief of Police Steve Chalmers went out of his way to insist that Durham Police had no exculpatory evidence prior to presenting the frame that resulted in the indictment of factually innocent men for a crime that never occurred. To further his point in one interview, the suddenly visible Chief Chalmers blamed the defense attorneys for his investigators failure to uncover the Hoax. Regarding exculpatory evidence, the Chief would tell WRAL’s Julia Lewis:

Well no we never did say that [“Look we need to take a second look at this case, we don’t have a case here” to Defendant Nifong] Again because again at the point in time that we went before the Grand Jury we presented to the Grand Jury the information and evidence that we had. Keeping in mind we had actually sought information, as we indicated in our report, that we had sought exculpatory evidence from the defense attorneys and we had none … They didn’t give it to us.”

In an interview with Ray Gronberg of the Herald-Sun, Chalmers added another blatantly false assertion to his growing list of misrepresentations:

“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.”

Notably, the Chief makes it a point to emphasize the falsehood that the Durham Police Department had no evidence of the fraud prior to presenting their case to the Grand Jury. Chalmers transparent deception reveals either that he has less knowledge of the facts of the case than the greenest blog hooligan or that he has an ability to dissemble unrivaled by even Durham County’s rogue District Attorney, Mike Nifong.

In yesterday’s post, we noted the most significant evidence of actual innocence available to his investigators prior to their appearance before the Grand jury that would be manipulated into bringing charges against the Duke Innocents.

Despite Chalmers' denial, his investigators were privy to the clearest evidence of factual innocence a full eight days before testifying to the Grand Jury on April 17, 2006. Both Inv. Benjamin Himan and Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, the two officers who personally deceived the Grand Jury, attended the same meeting with Dr. Brian Meehan of DNA Security, Inc. that resulted in the amended State Bar complaint against District Attorney Mike Nifong for withholding evidence from the defense attorneys. On April 10, 2006, Himan and Gottlieb learned from Meehan that DNA evidence recovered from Crystal Mangum’s nether regions and panties belonged to several men, none of whom were the innocent men his officers sought to frame or any other Duke Lacrosse player.

In describing the powerful evidence of factual innocence revealed to Defendant Nifong, Inv. Himan, and Sgt. Gottlieb by Dr. Meehan at the April 10 meeting, State Bar DHC Chair F. Lane Williamson stated at a recent hearing for Defendant Nifong:

We're talking about DNA testing that was done. And, of course, everybody--you know, whether it's justified or not--puts a lot of credence in that. And it's one thing to have--well, as a layman, I understand when the person who does the testing tells me, "I didn't find anything on these lacrosse players.

I also understand as a layperson if he tells me, "But we found DNA from other men." I also understand as a lawyer that it's one thing--you know, using the old thing--absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But here, knowing that there's testing that has found DNA from other people, that is evidence of absence. And I don't need to be--I don't need to understand anything about the science. That's all I need to understand.

Chalmers’ attempt to suggest that his officers had no exculpatory evidence prior to April 17, 2006 offers the clearest indication to date that Himan and Gottlieb intentionally ignored and withheld evidence of factual innocence from the Grand Jury while pleading for indictments of innocent men on behalf of the rogue District Attorney.

While the DNA soup the false accuser was soaked in may be the greatest evidence of innocence known to Durham police prior to their presenting a fraudulent case to the Grand Jury on April 17, 2006, a mountain of additional exculpatory evidence was available to them by that time as well.

Some of the exculpatory evidence that belies Chalmers’ “We had none” statement includes:

• Results of DNA testing conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation two and a half weeks prior to April 17, 2006 and promised by Inv. Ben Himan and Assistant District Attorney David Saacks to “immediately rule out any innocent persons,” demonstrated the innocence of the suspects and clearly showed that the imagined assault could not have occurred as alleged by the filer of the false police report;

• The alleged brutal, 30 minute, condom-less gang rape, during which the accuser claimed two alleged attackers ejaculated, left no traces of DNA from the accused on, in, or near the accuser;

• There was a total absence of any DNA from the accused on the false accuser, despite the fact that the SANE exam took place within several hours of the alleged attack, and the accuser had neither bathed nor changed her clothes;

• The alleged brutal, 30 minute, condom-less gang rape left no DNA from the accuser on the floor, towels, or rugs in the bathroom;

• Despite allegedly having spit out the oral attacker’s ejaculate onto a bathroom rug, neither the rug nor the accuser’s mouth retained DNA from the alleged attacker, and the rug did not show traces of the accuser’s saliva;

• The alleged brutal, 30 minute gang rape, which the accuser claimed also included kicking in the butt, physical striking, strangulation and her head hitting a sink, left no visible bruises, nor any signs of physical trauma detectable upon medical examination by multiple nurses and doctors, except for three small non-bleeding scratches on the accuser's leg and foot;

• Photographs of the false accuser taken by police on March 16, 2006 contradict the accuser's story and the accounts given by Durham police investigators on affidavits and likely to the Grand Jury;
  

• The accuser failed to identify Reade Seligmann as her attacker the first time she viewed his photograph in a lineup when he was included as a known innocent by police;

• The accuser was only 70% certain that Mr. Seligmann was even at the party, yet 100% certain that he forced her to perform oral sex.
  

• The accuser identifies Collin Finnerty as an alleged assailant despite his physical appearance being exactly opposite the descriptions the accuser gave to Inv. Himan during her initial police interview;

• The only player identified by the accuser, in both the March lineup attempts and the April manufactured lineup, as having been in attendance at the party on two of the three lineup attempts was not even in Durham, let alone at the party;

• In addition to the player misidentified in both March and April, at least one other player was recognized as having been at the party yet was not present

• The accuser “recognized” 15 players at one viewing but didn't recognize them at another;

• Two of the four alleged attackers the accuser identified in April were not identified by her in March.
  

• Kim Roberts, the accidental outcry witness, clearly stated to Investigator Himan, in March of 2006, that the false accusations were a “crock” and impossible due to the brief time she was separated from the accuser;

• Statements from team captains David Evans, Matt Zash, and Dan Flannery given on March 16, 2006 offered additional exculpatory evidence as did the photographs on the cell phone of Zash seized on March 16, 2006;

• The accuser misidentifies the person who made the broom comment that precipitated the end of the dancer’s performance;

• The wildly divergent, and logic defying, versions offered by Mangum clearly offered exculpatory evidence prior to April 17, 2006;

At his Durham-in-Wonderland blog, preeminent Hoax blogger Professor KC Johnson eviscerates Chalmers’ deception of the consistency of Mangum’s wildly divergent tales that were described by North Carolina Attorney General Cooper, when asked if she had EVER told the same story twice, as follows: “She's told many stories. Some things are consistent within those stories, but there were many stories that were told.” Professor Johnson offers more than a dozen versions of Mangum’s changing stories that precede April 17, 2006, the date Chalmers officers duped the Grand Jury into returning a true bill against innocent men for a crime that never occurred.

Highlights from Professor Johnson’s dissection of Chalmers’ deception include:

Identifications

On March 16, Mangum said she was 70 percent certain she saw Reade Seligmann someplace at the party. On April 6, she said she was 100 percent certain he looked like one of her attackers.

On March 21, Mangum said she didn’t recognize Dave Evans. On April 6, she said that she was 90 percent sure Evans looked like one of her attackers, except that Evans had no mustache. She hadn’t mentioned that any of her attackers had mustaches at any point previously.

On March 16, Mangum described her three attackers as a “white male, short, red cheeks fluffy hair chubby face, brn”; “Heavy set short haircut 260-270”; and “chubby.” On April 6, she said she was 100 percent Collin Finnerty, who doesn’t even remotely resemble any of those descriptions, attacked her.
Number of Attackers

On the morning on March 14, Mangum spent several hours with Officer Gwen Sutton (who Mangum later would not recognize); she told Sutton that there were five attackers. Then, in her interview with SANE nurse-in-training Tara Levicy on March 14, it was three attackers. The number was still three on March 16, when Sgt. Mark Gottlieb and Officer Ben Himan interviewed her. But by April 6, the number of attackers had risen to six—three who committed the crime, and three who dragged a crying Kim Roberts away from her at the bathroom door.

Names of Attackers

In the Levicy interview, Mangum said her attackers names were Matt, Adam, and Brett. She said the same in her March 16 Gottlieb/Himan interview, and the officers then constructed photo lineups using lacrosse players with those first names as the suspects. But by April 6, Mangum said her attackers’ real names were not Matt, Adam, and Brett, and that these three names were “aliases.”

What Her Attackers Did

In the Levicy interview, Mangum said that Matt assaulted her orally and vaginally; Adam assaulted her anally; and Brett did neither. By March 16, the claim was that Matt assaulted her anally; Adam assaulted her orally; and Brett assaulted her vaginally and anally. And on April 6, Matt and Brett assaulted her vaginally and anally; while Adam assaulted her orally.

The Marital Plans of Her Attackers

On March 14, Mangum claimed that, during the attack, Matt mentioned he was getting married the next day. No record survives of Mangum making any such claim in her March 16 interview with Gottlieb and Himan. By April 6, one of the attackers was back on the eve of betrothal, only this time it was Adam who was getting married the next day.

The Role of Kim Roberts

In her interviews with the Durham Access Center nurse and then with Levicy, Mangum accused Roberts of stealing her money; the Levicy interview also featured Roberts as a de facto accomplice to the criminals, someone who carried her back into the house and then helped clean her up and dress her after the “attack.” By April 6, however, Roberts was a fellow victim, torn away—in tears—from Mangum at the bathroom door.

The Nature of the Attack

In her discussions with Duke Hospital medical personnel, Mangum denied that she had been struck during the attack. The next day, she told UNC doctors that she had been “knocked to the floor multiple times and had hit her head on the sink.”

Mangum’s Alcohol Intake

In her March 14 interview with Levicy, Mangum said she might have had one or two beers before the dance. The next day, she informed UNC doctors that during the attack, she was “drunk and did not feel pain.” The following day, according to the Gottlieb memo, Mangum was a virtual teetotaler, having consumed no alcohol other than a mixed drink the sergeant implied had been spiked.

In addition to the items outlined by Johnson, there are countless additional inconsistencies and variations to Ms. Mangum’s continually changing invention. Among the more notable are:

• The amount of money allegedly taken from her changed from $2000.00 as told to Officer Sutton, to $400.00 as apparently told to Himan and Gottlieb prior to the March 16 search warrant for 610 n. Buchanan, and then back to $2000 as implied by her written statement of April 6;

• Magnum offered apparently divergent descriptions of Adam, Matt, and Brett to Inv. Himan and Sgt. Gottlieb with the same interview on March 16 as detailed by their contradicting notes;

• She identified four men as the three imaginary attackers in her April 4 lineup lottery;

• The false accuser names four make believe attackers (Adam, Matt, Brett, and Dan) as the three men who “assaulted” her in her written statement of April 6;

• She recanted her allegations entirely on March 14, stating that she was not sexually assaulted after initially nodding her head in response to a direct inquiry to start the hoax and before the invention of the variations detailed above;

• Despite Mangum's claims, Kim Roberts, the “outcry witness,” did not seek help for the accuser when calling 911 to report being racially slurred when driving-while walking by 610 N. Buchanan, despite allegedly being told by the accuser that she had been hurt by the young men, and allegedly offering to get help.

The list of exculpatory evidence at the disposal of Durham Police prior to the Grand jury and the compilation of inconsistencies in Mangum's stories also available to the investigators who duped the Grand Jury could go on almost indefinitely. The pages of this blog, our forum, Johnson’s blog, The Johnsville News, Talk Left, and several other blogs are littered with additional examples.

In response to Chalmers' bizarre assertion, defense attorney Brad Bannon noted:

"That is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard in my life, and I can't believe anyone who has read the case file would say those things," Bannon said. "[The accuser] never told the same story twice. Her accounts were all over the place between March 14 and when these cases were submitted to the grand jury. That statement by the police chief lets me know he knows nothing about the investigation he's commenting about."

While Johnson and Bannon politely offer the Chief the courtesy of ignorance or delusion as an excuse, we draw a far more ominous inference from the Chief’s continued deception. By repeatedly pointing to the Grand Jury as the point in time for which his department was blind to the only crime committed, filing a false police report, the Chief demonstrates his willingness to employ blatant deception to deflect the logical conclusion that his officers, Inv. Ben Himan and Sgt. Mark Gottlieb, deliberately, intentionally, and knowingly mislead the Grand Jury.

While attempting to justify the deception presented to the Grand Jury with deception of his own, Chalmers naively states:

"There's nothing that's being alleged that we did criminally. The allegation is that we did not conduct a good investigation."

To the contrary, there have been, and will continue to be allegations of criminal conduct on the part of his department. Although Chalmers feigns ignorance of such, his proactive attempt to deflect suspicion from the obvious distortions presented to the Grand Jury, and his employment of sloppy deception and clumsy misrepresentation to disguise the same, reveals his intention to mislead the public into believing that his department was merely incompetent and not corrupt or criminal. By playing stupid for the cameras, Chalmers makes a desperate attempt to hide the complicity of his department in the Hoax but instead directs clear attention to the questions, “What did his investigators know before facing the Grand Jury and what, instead, did they present?”

Note to Chalmers: When your best defense is pretending to have been outsmarted by Crystal Mangum, you're in trouble.

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.

Indicators of False Accusations (Updated)

Originally published November 28, 2006, this post has been updated to reflect subsequently released information and Durham Chief of Police Steve Chalmers' attempt to pretend that Crystal Mangum outsmarted his investigators with her transparently false accusations.

The National Center for Women and Policing, a division of the Feminist Majority Foundation, provides training, and training materials, to law enforcement agencies with the intention of improving the ability of these agencies to response effectively to sexual assault crimes. Among their many informative and instructive publications, is a training manual entitled, “Unfounded Cases and False Accusations.” Examination of this training manual casts further aspersions on both the validity of the Duke Hoax accuser’s claims, the failure of investigators under the direction of Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong to critically inspect those frail accusations, and recent statements made by Durham Chief of Police Steve Chalmers suggesting that Crystal Mangum offered consistent and credible accusations that outsmarted his investigators.

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This training manual is designed, primarily, to discourage law enforcement agencies and officers from viewing allegations of sexual assault from a perspective of suspicion that accusations are often unfounded or false. The first eighteen pages of this law enforcement training manual provides a compelling and persuasive argument for why all accusations of sexual assault require acceptance on face value, initially. To help these agencies identify potentially false accusations, the manual concludes with a six page appendix, “Indicators and Investigation of False Allegations,” which outlines the common characteristics of false accusations. The concluding appendix suggests that an allegation should only be considered skeptically when many of the common characteristics of false allegations are found. In total, the National Center for Women and Policing training manual suggests twenty-nine common characteristics of false allegations, nearly all of which were manifested by Crystal Mangum and ignored by Chalmers' investigators.

Rightfully, the manual cautions:

“An allegation should only be considered suspect when many of the indicators are present, and it should only be determined to be false when the investigative facts directly contradict the victim’s account of events.”

Comparison of these indicators to the circumstances surrounding the Hoax reveal clearly that Chalmers' investigators had overwhelming reason to conclude Mangum's accusation were false. By our count, as many as twenty-five of the twenty-nine indicators noted by the training manual appear to be present within the hoax initiator’s accusations and the surrounding circumstances. Further, it has been demonstrated on multiple occasions, here and elsewhere, that nearly all of the investigative facts, most of which were available to Chalmers' investigators prior to duping the Grand Jury, directly contradict the “victim’s” account of events. By following the suggestion offered above, not only should the allegations have been considered suspect but also they should have been determined to be false in the course of an honest investigation.

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While many of the items presented in the comparison that follows have only recently been made known to the public, all of the demonstrable commonalities between the Hoax and the indicators were either known to investigators prior to the Grand Jury dates or could have been discovered in the course of a thorough pre-indictment investigation. One would think that with 25 of 29 red flags going up, the false accuser's story would be approached with a bit of skepticism. Instead, Durham Police and DA Nifong ignored the cautions that one would expect even the least competent of investigators to pick up on while relying on the following departures from logic to justify their mutual dismissal of the possibility that the accusations were false:

"Nifong dismissed that theory, saying a hoax would have to include faking injuries to the woman's body..."If this is all a hoax that was ... designed to get the lacrosse team ... what other major lacrosse program is behind that hoax? The presumed motivation would be to end the season of the Duke lacrosse team, and that's obviously been accomplished," Nifong said. "Seriously, when you think about it, who would be motivated to do a hoax like that? What possible reason would somebody have to do that?" N&O

“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.” Steve Chalmers

Following his Declaration of Innocence, Attorney General Roy Cooper noted with disdain the failure of the DA and DPD to challange the false accusations:

Attorney General Cooper says he's appalled that Nifong didn’t challenge her about that. "We can't see where she was ever asked the tough questions." CBS

Perhaps, Nifong was simply waiting for the final four indicators to present themselves before deciding the investigation had reached the stage where an accusation that screams "Hoax!" demanded to be questioned as such.

"I've had conversations with (the accuser) about how she's doing. I've had conversations with (the accuser) about her seeing her kids," Nifong said. "I haven't talked with her about the facts of that night. ... We're not at that stage yet." BayNews9

Chalmers' admits that neither his investigators nor his top brass questioned the decision to proceed with the false charges.

Well no we never did say that [“Look we need to take a second look at this case, we don’t have a case here” to Defendant Nifong] Again because again at the point in time that we went before the Grand Jury we presented to the Grand Jury the information and evidence that we had. Keeping in mind we had actually sought information, as we indicated in our report, that we had sought exculpatory evidence from the defense attorneys and we had none … They didn’t give it to us. WRAL

Some Nifong apologists and agenda motivated opportunists argued for thirteen months that the false accusations deserved their day in court, to be decided upon by a jury of twelve citizens, yet in reality what was dictated by the situation, as evidenced by the comparison to follow, was that these allegation be viewed from a perspective of doubt and suspicion. Chalmers, with his suggestion that his investigators were justified in pitching the transparently false accusation to the Grand Jury while withholding evidence of factual innocence, echoes the rabid pleas of the "On with the trial" mob.

Quite clearly, either the investigators directed by District Attorney Nifong were outsmarted by Crystal Mangum, as Chalmers would like people to believe, or the investigators were willfully led astray, as evidenced by the deception employed by Chalmers to argue for incompetency. It is entirely inexcusable that accusations which presented themselves as nearly perfect textbook models of what is defined by this training manual as accusations deserving of suspicion were never evaluated as potentially false until honest prosecutors from the Attorney General's office replaced Defendant Nifong.

Comparison of the Twenty Nine Indicators of False Accusations to the Hoax

1. The falsely accused will often be “a stranger, a “slight acquaintance,” [or] a “friend of a friend.”

“…a woman hired to dance at a Duke University lacrosse team party claimed that members of the team raped her…” NYT

2. The false accuser will often claim “to have fought with all their ability. They typically report punching, kicking, and scratching their assailants until they are themselves finally overpowered.”

“…the woman has said that she effectively tried to fight them off, that she broke off some of her nails in the process…” MSNBC

“According to the application for a search warrant, the woman recalls being "hit, kicked and strangled. … She tried to defend herself, but was overpowered." ABC

“She was allegedly dragged into a bathroom, beaten, choked and sodomized by three assailants as she fought back.” Final Call

3. The false accuser will likely “bolster an inability to resist by claiming they were attacked and raped by more than one person.”

“She ended up in the bathroom with five guys who forced her to have intercourse and perform sexual acts...She later stated that she was penetrated by all five of the guys.” Durham Police officer Gwendolyn Sutton

“The female was picked up at the Kroger on Hillsborough Rd., and she was claiming
that she was raped by approximately 20 white males at 610 N. Buchanan Street."
ABC

This police report dated March 14, 2006 lists the number of suspects as two: BlueLineRadio

“The woman identified four players as her assailants.” N&O

"In the police statement she describes the rape in this way. 'Three guys – three guys
grabbed Nicky,' that's you. 'Brett, Adam, and Matt grabbed me. They separated us
at the master bedroom door while we tried to hold on to each other.” CBS

"The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming
she had been assaulted three years earlier when she was 14." NBC17

4. The “pseudo-victim claims the assailant was exceptionally large or powerful and able to overcome her resistance with relative ease.”

“In Officer Himan’s handwritten notes, the woman described all three as chubby or heavy. Adam: “white male, short, red cheeks fluffy hair chubby face, brn.” Matt: “Heavy set short haircut 260-270.” Bret: “Chubby.” NYT

5. A false accusation will “include the face-saving element of either having resisted or having been confronted with a situation that made resistance impossible.”

“The victim stated that she tried to leave, but the three males (Adam, Bret, and Matt) forcefully held her legs arms and raped and sexually assaulted her anally, vaginally and orally. The victim stated she was hit, kicked, and strangled during the assault. As she attempted to defend herself, she was overpowered.” TJN

6. “The report of rape is not seen by false claimants as requiring collateral reports of oral or anal sex, unless such acts are included in the person’s sexual repertoire.”

"Specifically, defendants say that another rectal swab of the woman who filed the charges against them revealed the presence of DNA from at least two males that did not match the defendants." ABC

"DNA Security discovered the DNA of at least two males in the accuser's rectum that did not match the Defendants, their lacrosse teammates, or anyone else who provided a reference sample." Addendum to Motion to Compel Discovery: Expert D.N.A. Analysis

7. “Under-describing of the attack may be another manifestation of the false claimant’s naiveté as to what actually occurs in these crimes.”

8. "Women who make false allegations seem to more frequently report that they had their eyes closed at the time, that they “passed out” and do not recall the penetration, or that they cannot recall the specifics of the actual sex act itself."

“Well, if you are being forced to have sex against your will, you may not necessarily notice whether or not somebody behind you is using a condom. This was not a consensual sex situation. This was a struggle, wherein she was struggling just to be able to breathe. So I'm not sure that she would really have much way of knowing whether a condom was being used.” Mike Nifong

"In dropping the rape charges, Nifong filed court papers that said the accuser told an investigator Thursday that she is no longer certain whether she was penetrated vaginally with the men's penises, as she had claimed earlier." FOX

9. "The accuser “may also provide an emotionless, but exquisitely detailed, description of the event. She must either “invent” the acts she alleges, or she must convert a consensual sexual experience into a “rape.” Unable to recount objectively something that was done to her, she tends either to become vague and evasive or to cross the cultural barrier and become overly descriptive."

“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.” LS

10. "False complainants do not usually present serious physical injuries."

"when she told police she had been raped, doctors at Duke Hospital noted that the woman had two scratches on her right knee and a short scratch on her right heel. None of the scratches were bleeding. Other than diffuse swelling in her vagina, the doctors documented no other injuries." N&O

“The woman was seen in the Duke Hospital emergency room the morning of March 14...She reported that she was in excruciating pain, rating it a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. Nurses and doctors, however, found no obvious discomfort and no associated symptoms of pain, such as grimacing, sweating, or changes in vital signs or posture.” N&O

11. "However, as one moves along the continuum of personal pathology, the extent of self-inflicted harm can increase."

“The second dancer in the Duke University lacrosse rape case told a television interviewer Monday that after she and the accuser left a team party, the accuser wanted to have marks on her body.” N&O

12. "False victims who have injured themselves tend to exhibit an unusually wide array of wounds. In spite of this, extremely sensitive organs or tissues such as the eyes, nipples, lips, or genitalia are almost never injured."

TRAVIS: "Well, I could see the bruises on her face. She had a scratch on her arm. And then I didn`t know the whole -- you know, the whole detail what went on, because she was feeling bad at the time. And she also said her leg was hurting."

GRACE: Well, you know what? I can understand that. I can understand that. Sir, you said you saw bruises on her face. Where were they?

TRAVIS: Right up under her eyes, and her jaw was swollen.

GRACE: And where was the scratch on her arm?

TRAVIS: It was on her right arm, I believe it were.

GRACE: Where, above or below the elbow?

TRAVIS: It was between the wrist and her elbow. Grace

“The S.A.N.E nurse's physical examination of the pelvic area of Crystal Mangum, which included the Vulva, Vagina, Cerix, Fundus and Rectal areas, noted only "diffuse edema of the vaginal walls." The S.A.N.E. nurse's report contains no opinion or conclusion that [the accuser] had signs, symptoms, and injuries consistent with beigh raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally." TJN

“Well, here's the problem: Edema, diffuse or otherwise, is not an injury. It is the body's response to an injury, an infection, or a disease or inflammatory process of some sort. It can be caused by any number of things.” Forensic Talk

13. "Characteristic of pseudo-victims who injure themselves is their tendency to be strangely indifferent to their wounds. They appear to accept their injuries with a degree of nonchalance not found in people who sustain similar injuries at the hands of others."

“On March 17, the woman showed Thomas a hospital bracelet and paperwork. While she talked about being owed money, the accuser never gave any word or indication of being hurt, he said.” N&O

14. “The consistency or inconsistency of the evidence may suggest that a rape complaint has been exaggerated or is completely false. An absence of the kinds of evidence usually associated with rapes can sometimes be as revealing in identifying false allegations as its presence is in establishing that a rape has actually taken place.”

"First of all, we're talking about 46 different people (who were tested). … Most experts will say (condoms aren't) going to prevent an exchange of DNA. And, also, the nature of the alleged rape was more than just simple sex. There was violence involved, there was touching. And, if that was the case, there would be some DNA present." CBS

“...the only evidence of physical trauma the S.A.N.E nurse in training could find on [the accuser] was a scratch on her knee and a small laceration to her heel, both of which were non-bleeding.”

“ [the accuser] told the S.A.N.E. nurse in training that she was not choked; that no condoms, fingers or foreign objects were used during the alleged sexual assault; and that the S.A.N.E. nurse in training noted that [the accuser's] head, neck, throat, mouth, chest, breasts, addomen, and upper and lower extremities all were normal even though [the accuser] complained of "tenderness" over her body.” TJN

Lacking any "scientific or other evidence independent of the victim's testimony" to corroborate that aspect of the case, the district attorney said in court papers, "the state is unable to meet its burden of proof with respect to this offense." AP

15. “Complainant cannot recall where the crime took place even though she does not report being blindfolded, under influence of drugs or alcohol, or moved from location to location.”

“'Her statements are inconsistent about which bathroom it occurred in.” Gaynor

“Her accounts diverged widely on details of sexual contact, physical assault, alcohol consumption and the behavior of Kim Roberts, the second dancer, whom the accuser called "Nikki." N&O

16. "Crime scene does not support story."

“Defense attorney Bill Thomas said authorities found none of the alleged victim's DNA in the bathroom where she told police she was attacked.” ABC

“None of the woman's DNA was found on the floor, rugs or towels in the bathroom where the rape allegedly occurred.” N&O

17. "Damage to her clothing is inconsistent with any injuries she reports (i.e., cuts or scratches inconsistent with tears or cuts in clothing)."

"A member of the defense team, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because the defense is working with players who could still be indicted, showed photos to the AP on Wednesday that show the accuser on the back porch of the off-campus house, with her clothing intact. She is smiling and looking through her purse. "

"The defense team member said the digital photos were taken at 12:30 a.m., citing an electronic time-stamp known as metadata." ABC

18. "Complainant presents cut-and-paste letters allegedly from the rapist in which death or rape threats are made."

19. "Note or letter is identifiable with pseudo-victim (via handwriting analysis, indented writing, typewriter comparison, paper stock, or fingerprint comparison)."

20. "Confirming laboratory findings are absent."

TL: "No DNA that matched the players was found on or within or on the surface of the accuser's body or any of her belongings or clothing. Not even under her fingernails. You can listen to the defense attorneys' news conference here. They say the findings show there is no evidence that any sexual activity occurred in that house on that night. If you re-read what she said happened, it is an impossibility."(video)

Defense attorneys have insisted all the players are innocent, citing DNA tests they say found no match between any of the team's white players and the accuser. According to defense attorneys, second, more detailed DNA tests came back Friday and prove no player had sex with the dancer — but that the accuser had sex with another man. Attorney Joseph Cheshire said the tests showed genetic material from a "single male source" was found on a vaginal swab taken from the accuser, but that material did not match any of the players. "In other words, it appears this woman had sex with a male," said Cheshire, who spoke at a news conference with other defense attorneys in the case. "It also appears with certainty it wasn't a Duke lacrosse player." CBS

21. "In false rape allegations, extensive and important information on the complainant is often available. In general, this information suggests that the pseudo-victim has experienced numerous personal problems and that her ability to cope is seriously impaired."

"This request is based on the fact that the complaining witness has a history of criminal activity and behavior, which includes alcohol abuse, drug abuse and dishonesty, all conduct which indicate mental, emotional and/or physical problems, which affect her credibility as a witness," the defense said in court papers. ABC

22. "In temporal sequence, the “rape” follows one or more escalating incidents revealing difficulties in her personal relationships."

On March 11, Haynes said, a couple came into the club and the accuser, who danced under the name "Precious," started pulling the female customer's hair. Someone complained, and Haynes said she told the accuser to go to the bathroom. When Haynes followed, she found the accuser naked and passed out cold, she said. Someone called the woman's boyfriend, and it took four people to get her outside
to the car. N&O

23."Complainant has history of mental or emotional problems."

“Medical records in police files show that doctors had previously diagnosed depression and bipolar disorder.” NYT

One physician wrote, "Due to the patient's long psychological history, she is at very high risk of narcotic abuse, and at clinic, we have recommended not to prescribe the patient any narcotics." N&O

“Upon information and belief, the complaining witness has suffered from mental and
emotional problems for a portion of her life and based on the presently known facts of this case and the criminal history of the complaining witness, there is a good chance she may have been committed at least once to a hospital or drug treatment program.” MSNBC

24. "Complainant has previous record of having been assaulted or raped under similar circumstances."

"The woman who claims she was raped by three Duke University lacrosse players last month also filed a complaint in 1996 saying she was raped by three other men." Fox

"The mother also told ESSENCE that when her daughter was 17 or 18, she was raped by several men, one of whom was someone she knew." Essence

25. "Allegation was made after a similar crime received publicity (suggesting modeling or “copycat” motive in which the similarity to the publicized crime offers credibility)."

26. "Complainant has extensive record of medical care for dramatic illnesses or injuries."

"The mother of the alleged victim told ESSENCE magazine that her daughter did go away to a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, for about a week last year, where she was treated for a 'nervous breakdown." Essence

27. Friends or associates report that the complainant’s postassaultive behavior and activities were inconsistent with her allegation.

"She wasn't – she obviously wasn't hurt or, 'cause she was fine. She wouldn't have went back in the house if she was hurt. She's was fine," Roberts says

"In the days and weeks after the attack the accuser went back to the hospital complaining of neck, back and knee pain she claimed was caused by the rape. 60 Minutes obtained a video of her dancing at a strip club two weeks after the alleged attack. The club manager told 60 Minutes that she had consistently performed her routine normally." CBS

The video segment, about a minute long, shows the woman, introduced as Precious, as she approached a floor-to-ceiling pole on a stage, dressed in a thong and skimpy top. She grasped the pole and lowered herself into a squatting position, so that her buttocks almost touched the floor. With her hands on the floor, she stretched out her right leg vertically, as though she was kicking to the ceiling while squatting, and waved her leg several times to either side of the pole. N&O

"The trip in that car from the house … went from happy to crazy," Roberts told Cuomo. ABC

"Four days after she said she was raped, the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case told co-workers at a Hillsborough strip club that she was going to get money from some boys at a Duke party who hadn't paid her, the club's former security manager said."

"The accuser never gave any indication that the party was a bad time, let alone that she was assaulted or raped, Thomas said."She was as regular as pie," Thomas said. "She didn't do anything different."

"The other girls would have known if something had happened," Thomas said. Thomas said dancers must sign in when they take guests into the club's VIP room. He said those sheets show that the woman had signed in March 17 and 18. The club's owner, Victor Olatoye, said the club's records show the woman was dancing at the club March 23, 24, 25 and into the early hours of March 26." N&O

"She was regular. She danced like she always danced, good old Precious." N&O

28. Complainant becomes outraged when asked to corroborate her victimization.

At one point, the woman threatened to drop the case if her family continued to talk to the media, he said. N&O

29. Complainant tries to steer the interview into “safe” topics or those that tend to engender sympathy.

"I've had conversations with (the accuser) about how she's doing. I've had conversations with (the accuser) about her seeing her kids," Nifong said. "I haven't talked with her about the facts of that night. ... We're not at that stage yet."

Nifong said he met with the accuser and an investigator on April 11, but didn't discuss details of the case because the woman was "too traumatized." Nifong said the woman didn't make eye contact with him and often seemed on the verge of crying. Their discussion centered around how the case would develop, he said.

"She probably did not speak 15 words during the meeting," Nifong said. SFGate

"The woman spoke for an hour. She talked about her life — joining the Navy and moving to California shortly after finishing high school, marrying a man 14 years her senior, becoming pregnant by a sailor, returning home to North Carolina and getting divorced" NYT