Duke Lacrosse Saga in Pictures

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March 13, 2006 — Three co-captains of the Duke lacrosse team host a team party at their off-campus residence at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. during spring break. They hire two strippers to perform for two hours for $400 each. Approximately 40 other students attended the party; most, but not all, were team members.

March 13, 2006 —The first stripper, Kim Roberts, aka Nikki, arrived at the party shortly after 11 pm. At approximately 11:40 pm the second dancer, Crystal Gail Mangum, aka Precious, was dropped off at the party house by her driver. Sometime just before midnight, the two veteran sex-workers entered the living room to begin their performance for the party attendees.

March 14, 2006, 12:00:12 a.m. — The first party picture of the two strippers. The accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum is wearing pink and white lace lingerie. She is lying face down on the floor. The second performer, Kim Roberts, is wearing all white.

March 14, 2006, 12:01 - 12:02 a.m. — Lacrosse party photos. Crystal Mangum and Kim Roberts performing.

March 14, 2006, 12:03:57 a.m. — Crystal Gail Mangum and Kim Roberts leave the living room after a very brief performance. The photo shows Mangum left her right shoe on the floor. The women go to the back of the house. At 12:05 a.m., just after the performance ended, Reade Seligmann, began using his cell phone and initiated a series of calls to his girlfriend and others. At 12:14 a.m., he called On Time Taxi company to pick him up. Seligmann and his teammate, Robert Wellington, were picked up at approximately 12:19 a.m.

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March 14, 2006, 12:24 am — Reade Seligmann getting out of a taxi driven by Moezeldin Elmostafa at a Wachovia Bank ATM. The bank is at Ninth St. and Main, 0.9 miles from the the Duke lacrosse house. Seligmann's attorneys provided this photo and other information confirming his alibi in a court filing on May 1, 2006.

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March 14, 2006, 12:30:12 a.m — Crystal Mangum is standing outside the back door of the house. The team captains told police she was pounding at the door around that time, but they wouldn’t let her in. She is carrying the shaving kit of Dave Evans, perhaps due to her intoxicated state. Her clothes are intact.

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March 14, 2006, 12:30:47 a.m. — Crystal Mangum is still on the back steps of the Duke lacrosse house. She is still clutching Dave Evans' shaving kit. She is demurely smiling.

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March 14, 2006, 12:38 a.m — Crystal Gail Mangum lying face down on the back steps of the lacrosse house, passed out. Mangum had consumed alcohol and taken the drug Flexeril prior to the party. The NC State Attorney General's report said she was high at one of the interview sessions with investigators in 2007.

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March 14, 2006, 12:41 am — Mangum was helped to Roberts' car by some of the players and the night appeared to be coming to an end.

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March 14, 2006 — In order to stay out of an involuntary 24-hour intoxication confinement Crystal Gail Mangum started telling numerous contradicting versions of the alleged crime in the hours after the party. One version that she told Durham police investigators Mark Gottlieb and Benjamin Himan on March 16th was used for a Probable Cause Affidavit. That version of the alleged crime was described as follows:

Shortly after going back into the dwelling the two women were separated. Two males, Adam and Matt pulled the victim into the bathroom. Someone closed the door to the bathroom where she was, and said "sweet heart you can't leave." 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. The victim reported she was sexually assaulted for an approximately 30 minute time period by the three males...

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March 16, 2006 — A police photo shows that there are no signs of injury two days after Crystal Mangum alleged that she was brutally gang-raped, beaten, and strangled.

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March 17, 2006 — In the days and weeks after the attack Crystal Mangum went back to the hospital complaining of neck, back and knee pain she claimed was caused by the rape. 60 Minutes and other news outlets show a video of Mangum dancing at the Platinum Pleasures Club on March 25-26th, eleven days after the alleged attack. The club manager, H.P. Thomas, tells 60 Minutes that she had consistently performed her routine normally. Thomas also told Inside Edition that Mangum was back pole dancing three days (Mar. 17th) after making allegations of a brutal sexual assault.

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March 22, 2006 — The second stripper/sex-worker, Kim Roberts, aka Kim Pittman, is arrested for a parole violation stemming from a 2001 embezzlement conviction. Before her arrest she calls the rape allegation a "crock." The convicted felon starts cooperating with Durham investigators and Mike Nifong in order to improve her chances of staying out of jail.

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March 25, 2006 — Durham police spokesman, Cpl. David Addison, lied about the full cooperation of the Duke lacrosse co-captains. The Herald-Sun reported: “Addison said police approached the lacrosse team with the five-page search warrant on March 16, but that all of the members refused to cooperate with the investigation. The refusal led officials to issue a "non-testimonial" order -- which allows police to threaten suspects with legal consequences if they choose not hand over evidence -- for each player's DNA." Addison said it was "unfortunate" that police had to go to such lengths, but that the team members "denied participation or knowing anything... Addison said the team got several chances to cooperate with police and that the non-testimonial order was issued only after the players kept silent."

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March 25, 2006 — A woman hired to dance for the Duke lacrosse team describes a night of racial slurs, growing fear and, finally, sexual violence — North Carolina's leading newspaper, the News & Observer, publishes a sympathetic, misleading, and inflammatory front page story about Crystal Mangum that is based on Mangum's only public interview. The article entitled "Dancer gives details of ordeal" makes Mangum into a poor, single mother and college student, who is clearly the victim of a brutal gang-rape and racial attack. The paper withheld and covered-up for over a year Mangum's claim that the second stripper, Kim Roberts, was also sexually assaulted at the party. Mangum said Roberts didn't report the attack because she was afraid she’d lose her job. Mangum also accused Roberts of being willing to “do just about anything for money.”

Mangum was on her way to work, pole dancing, when she told the N&O reporter, "This [Duke lacrosse party] was the first time she had been hired to dance provocatively for a group".

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March 25, 2006 - April 2006 — Numerous protests were held to condemn the lacrosse team and their non-cooperation. The "Castrate" banner is symbolic of the rush to judgment atmosphere around the Duke Campus. Duke President Brodhead does nothing to quell the fury. The three lacrosse team captains, who lived in the party house, had fully cooperated with the police investigation; but that fact is not widely reported.

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March 27, 2006 — Ruth Sheehan, a columnist for the News & Observer writes an article entitled, "Team's silence is sickening." In the story she convicts the Duke lacrosse team of being a gang of rapists. The article starts off:

Members of the Duke men's lacrosse team: You know. We know you know.

Whatever happened in the bathroom at the stripper party gone terribly terribly bad, you know who was involved. Every one of you does. And one of you needs to come forward and tell the police.

Ms. Sheehan was one of the few journalists, who later apologized to the lacrosse team for her rush to judgement.

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March 28, 2006 — Vigilante and Wanted Posters targeting the lacrosse team start circulating on and around the Duke campus. The local Crime Stoppers organization and DPD Cpl. David Addision are involved in the distribution of the Wanted Posters.

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March 29, 2006 — Prof. Houston Baker, a member of the Duke Departments of English and African-American Studies, released a public letter denouncing the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us." He stated that "male athletes" were "veritably given license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech, and feel proud of themselves in the bargain." Baker later sent an email to a lacrosse parent in which he called the lacrosse players a "scummy bunch of white males," who lived like "a bunch of farm animals." Baker soon left Duke and took a job at Vanderbilt.

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March 29, 2006 — Duke President, Richard H. Brodhead apologizes to the still anonymous Kim Roberts for her fake 911 call:

"I was asked about the 911 tape involving a racial slur, which only became known late yesterday. I have now had the opportunity to listen to the tape. It is disgusting. Racism and its hateful language have no place in this community. I am sorry the woman and her friend were subjected to such abuse."

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March 31, 2006 — Nancy Grace of CNN does a "guilty until proven innocent" story about the case:

DAVE FOLEY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Nancy, in terms of this, we`re dealing with young people, OK, who are not necessarily familiar with the law, number one. So they need to have their legal rights...

GRACE: You`re kidding, right?

FOLEY: ... protected...

GRACE: You`re -- you`re kidding?

FOLEY: No, I`m not kidding.

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April 2, 2006 — Rev. Sam Wells, Dean of the Duke Chapel, gives a sermon in which he denounces the lacrosse team. He discusses an incident with "disputed facts of an ugly evening." An incident rooted in "a disturbingly extensive experience of sexual violence, of abiding racism, of crimes rarely reported and perpetrators seldom named, confronted, or convicted, of lives deeply scarred, of hurt and pain long suppressed. The activists among us shout loudly about reckless drinking, the reputation of particular sports teams, the sense of entitlement, the need to reassess what it means to be a man..."

"The last week has exposed the reality that sexual practices are an area where some male students are accustomed to manipulating, exploiting and terrorizing women all the time – and that this has been accepted by many as a given."

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April 4, 2006 — Crystal Gail Mangum identifies four assailants at a procedurally flawed police photo ID session. She said the mugshot of David Evans looked like her assailant without his mustache. She was 90% sure that Evans was her assailant. Mangum never told the same story twice about the alleged crime and could not ID any assailants until three weeks after the incident.

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April 5, 2006 — Lacrosse coach Mike Pressler is forced to resign. He is told by Duke Athletic Director Joe Alleva that the incident is "not about the truth" any longer. Duke President Richard Brodhead cancels the team's season after authorities unseal a search warrant containing an e-mail from player Ryan McFadyen in which he says he wants to kill and skin strippers. McFadyen is suspended from school. The e-mail is later shown to be part of a running joke based on the American Psycho novel. McFadyen is reinstated in June. Brodhead introduces committees assigned to examine the administration's response to the incident, the lacrosse team's culture, and the overall campus culture.

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April 6, 2006 — Duke professors known as the "Group of 88" sponsor an advertisement in The Chronicle entitled "What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?" It denounces the lacrosse team and expresses concern "about what happened" to Crystal Mangum. It thanks the demonstrators "for not waiting and for making yourselves heard." The slapdash ad described a culture of sexism and racism at Duke that spawned the crime.

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April 7, 2006 — Mike Nifong demonstrates for Dan Abrams of MS-NBC how Crystal Gail Mangum was grabbed from behind and strangled by a lacrosse player during the alleged assault. Nifong completely fabricated this scenario.

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April 9, 2006 — A crowd of protesters gather on Sunday at the site of the alleged rape involving members of the Duke lacrosse team. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

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April 11, 2006 — Nifong attends an open forum at Mangum's college, North Carolina Central University (NCCU). A mostly black crowd of 700 heckles, hisses and screams at Nifong because he would not agree with a claim that Duke University tampered with the DNA evidence, and because he won't arrest the entire lacrosse team. Nifong needs a police escort to help exit the building after the forum.

The forum mob echoes the sentiment of Chan Hall, a member of the NCCU student government, who told Newsweek that the Duke students should be prosecuted "whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past."

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April 11, 2006 — Eric Adelson of ESPN The Magazine writes a wild story in which an anonymous source claims Crystal Mangum was "pretty banged up," "beat up," "hysterical," "there were bruises on her face, neck, and arms" and "there were injuries to the woman’s pelvic area" when she arrived at Duke Medical Center after the incident. All of this is not true. The story is picked up by other news outlets.

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April 16, 2006 — Protesters and the media gathered in front of the Duke lacrosse team’s house on Easter Sunday.

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Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnertry

April 18, 2006 — Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann are indicted for the sexual assault and kidnapping of Crystal Mangum. They turn themselves into authorities at the back of the Durham County Jail. They were handcuffed and driven 15 yards to the front of the jail, where they were then paraded in front of waiting camera crews.

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Durham Sheriff Col. George Naylor (left) hands out police mug shots of Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann to the media.

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April 20, 2006 — Richard Brodhead makes an appearance at the Durham Chamber of Commerce meeting, two days after Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty are arrested. WRAL-TV quotes Brodhead as saying, “If our students did what is alleged, it is appalling to the worst degree. If they didn’t do it, whatever they did is bad enough." Finnerty and Seligmann just went to a party and drank some beer.

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May 1 2006 — New Black Panther Party demonstrates at Duke University and at the lacrosse house. New Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Shabazz leads chants:

Shabazz: "What do we want?"
Crowd: "JUSTICE!"

Shabazz: "When do we want it?"
Crowd: "NOW!"

Shabazz: "How do we find Duke University?"
Crowd: "GUILTY!"

Shabazz: "How do we find the lacrosse team?"
Crowd: "GUILTY!"

Shabazz: "How do we find Seligmann?"
Crowd: "GUILTY!"

Shabazz: "How do we find Finnerty?"
Crowd: "GUILTY!"

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May 2, 2006 — Mike Nifong wins the Democratic primary election with 45% of the vote to Freda Black's 42%. Black support enables Nifong to win despite growing criticism about his case against the Duke defendants. ADA Shamieka Rhinehart (above) said of Nifong: "He's a good man. I'm so proud of him."

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May 15, 2006 — One day after his graduation, David Evans is indicted. After surrendering to police he tells reporters the accusations are "fantastic lies" and reiterates that he and his teammates are innocent.

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June 19, 2006 — Dan Abrams of MS-NBC examined the entire 1300 page discovery file for the Duke case and reports that Nifong has no case.

"I don‘t understand how Mike Nifong brought this case. I really don‘t understand it."

"I‘ve seen it all now everything that the D.A. handed over to the defense team, and this case is even weaker than I originally thought."

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June 28, 2006 — The Independent Weekly (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) publishes a front page Hal Crowther article that libels the lacrosse team and bends over backwards to support Nifong.

“To imply that rich white athletes are unsafe in the North Carolina legal system is like saying the Pope can’t get a fair trial in Vatican City.”

Duke history professor Peter Wood joins in bashing the lacrosse team: "A few years ago, a new kind of student began to show up at Duke," recalls Wood, who's had two of the three rape defendants in his classes. "Cynical, arrogant, callous, dismissive--you could almost say openly hostile. They weren't all athletes, by any means. But some of the first ones I noticed were lacrosse players."

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July 22, 2006 — North Carolina columnist Cash Michaels uses Crystal Mangum's cousin Jakki, aka Clyde Yancey, as a source to report wild stories about Duke alumni offering Mangum $2 million in hush money to drop the case. Michaels claims he was only reporting what he was told by Jakki.The NC NAACP echoes this lie in a legal memorandum. Mangum even says this story is false.

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August 9, 2006 — The North Carolina NAACP publishes a legal memorandum on their website authored by the NAACP legal redress committee lawyer, Al McSurely, entitled ‘Crimes and Torts committed by Duke Lacrosse Team Players.’ The memo is filled with case-related errors and and is clearly libelous to the Duke lacrosse team. The NAACP leaves it posted on their website until August 2007.

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August 25, 2006 — Duff Wilson and Jonathan D. Glater of the NY Times write a 5,000+ word article that attempts to prop up Mike Nifong's sagging case. Dan Abrams of MS-NBC calls the article, “shameful.”

It is an editorial disguised as a news story that tries to advance a race-sex-class ideological agenda. It has several glaring factual errors. It says: "an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury." This was a lie. Wilson later recanted his own story.

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August 29th 2006 — Moezeldin Elmostafa is acquitted of a misdemeanor charge related to a three-year-old shoplifting case that surfaced after the cabbie came forward as an alibi witness for Reade Seligmann. Nifong and his henchmen were intimidating a witness. He was arrested May 1oth.

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October 15, 2006 — A CBS 60 Minutes lacrosse story by Ed Bradley features an interview where Kim Roberts directly contradicts the statements of Crystal Mangum regarding the alleged rape. Bradley posthumously won a Peabody award for this story.

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October 30, 2006 — Kim Roberts tells Chris Cuomo of ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview that Crystal Gail Mangum told her to "go ahead, put marks on me" after the alleged attack. Roberts said the comments "chilled me to the bone, and I decided right then and there to go to the authorities."

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November 7, 2007 — Mike Nifong, right, tries to approach Bob Harris, left, play-by-play announcer for the Duke Blue Devils, while visiting a polling location at Temple Baptist Church in Durham, N.C. Harris refused to shake Nifong's hand.

The reported exchange between Harris and Nifong:

You've got to be nicer than that," Nifong said.

"Get out of here," Harris said. "Don't pull this crap."

"This isn't about Duke," Nifong said. "This isn't about Duke at all."

"No," Harris said. "It's about honesty. You're not honest."

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November 7, 2006 — Nifong defeats Lewis Cheek and write-in candidate Steve Monks to win his DA election bid. He receives 49.5% of the 56,213 votes cast in the hotly contested race. Nifong's race-baiting strategy worked. He received over 95 percent of the black vote.

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Nifong reveled in his victory: "while receiving props from friends and supporters, the victorious D.A. allowed himself to crow just a little.

When the returns showed a clear margin in Nifong's advantage, a local lawyer went up to shake Nifong's hand and pat him on the shoulder.

'I just wanted to be the first to congratulate you,' the man said.

'You aren't," Nifong said. "Most people went ahead and congratulated me yesterday.'"

When the final vote totals were confirmed, there was an immediate cheer from the yellow-clad Nifong supporters clustered on one side [of the courthouse]. Shanieka Rhinehart, an assistant district attorney, started a chant of "Let's go Nifong" and others supporters exchanged hugs and high-fives.

"This goes to show that justice can't be bought by a bunch of rich white boys from New York," said Harris Johnson, a former state Democratic party official and Durham resident for 56 years.

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December 15, 2006 — Under cross-examination by defense attorney, Brad Bannon, at a pre-trial hearing, Brian Meehan, the director of DNA Security repeatedly admitted that he and Mike Nifong agreed to coordinate an effort to avoid turning over exculpatory information to the defense. This is the definition of a conspiracy. This was the dramatic turning point when Nifong's case started completely coming apart.

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December 16, 2006 — Amy Poehler of Saturday Night Live does a parody of Nancy Grace reporting the Duke case:

"For the false accuser, when they are finally proved to be lying, it’s like being raped all over again—except for the fact that they weren’t actually raped the first time. And in that moment, the phony victim is forced to relive the horror of what she claimed had happened to her, which is not only emotionally wrenching, but almost impossible to do—since, again, it didn’t actually happen to her."

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December 21, 2006 — Nifong sends his investigator, Linwood Wilson, to re-interview Crystal Gail Mangum. This is one day after he received the initial grievance letter from the NC State Bar. Mangum as described by Wilson recants her previous statements. For the first time, she starts using the real names of the defendants. Mangum now remembers that: "Someone opened the door and handed them towels and they started wiping me off, Dave Evans off and wiping up the floor." This new version of the crime wipes clean the significance of DNA evidence.

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December 22, 2006 — Nifong dismissed part of the rape case against three former Duke University lacrosse players after Mangum told DA investigator, Linwood Wilson, she wasn’t certain now if she had been penetrated during the attack. The three men were still charged with first-degree sexual offense and first-degree kidnapping.

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December 28, 2006 — The North Carolina bar filed ethics charges against Nifong. The charges accussed him of saying misleading and inflammatory things to the media about the lacrosse players. Specifically, the charges say: "Nifong engaged in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation."

January 2, 2007 — Nifong is sworn into office at a private ceremony. He amazingly says: "I need to be part of the healing process."

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January 12, 2007 — Columnist Barry Saunders of the News & Observer expresses the viewpoint of Nifong's supporters in the black community. They want a court to decide the matter. — "Accusers, even when they're strippers with possibly faulty memories, have a right to be heard -- once prosecutors ensure that the case deserves to be heard. So let it be heard....That's why we have courts."

Saunders like many people who were incited by this case forgets that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment only guarantees that the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.

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January 12, 2007 — Nifong asks to be removed from the case. “He feels, as a result of the accusations against him, that he would be a distraction and he wants to make sure the accuser receives a fair trial,” Nifong's attorney David Freedman told The Associated Press. “He still believes in the case. He just believes his continued presence would hurt her.”
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January 14, 2006 — CBS 60 Minutes interview: When asked what they would say to Nifong if he were in the room, Rae Evans, the mother of indicted player David Evans, says, "I would say with a smile on my face, 'Mr. Nifong, you've picked on the wrong families … and you will pay every day for the rest of your life.'"

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January 20, 2007 — Charlotte Allen, The Weekly Standard: ... it was the Duke faculty that could be said to have cooked up the ambient language that came to clothe virtually all media descriptions of the assault case -- that boilerplate about "race, gender, and class" (or maybe "race, gender, sexuality, and class") and "privileged white males" that you could not read a news story about the assault case without encountering, whether in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or Newsweek for example. The journalists channeled the academics ... The metanarrative they came up with was three parts Mandingo and one part Josephine Baker: rich white plantation owners and their scions lusting after tawny-skinned beauties and concocting fantasies of their outsize sexual appetites so as to rape, abuse, and prostitute them with impunity....

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January 25, 2007 — NY Post: The prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case lied to the court and withheld evidence from the defense about the sensational rape charges, the North Carolina state bar charged yesterday...

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January 29, 2007 — Rev. William Barber head of the NC NAACP is invited to give a Sunday sermon at the Duke Chapel. He defends Crystal Mangum, saying, “What about a society where young ladies even have to consider sexual occupation for financial sustainment, or to use those things as a flawed attempt to gain self-esteem?” He called attention to "the real issue of sexual violence against so many women.” On January 18th Barber had said, "We sincerely believe that the high level of public scrutiny and controversy involved in this matter is unwarranted and threatens to pervert the truth finding process." He asked the defense attorneys to shut up and stop leaking information about the case to the media. Barber said it could contaminate a potential jury pool and heighten community emotions.

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April 11, 2007 — North Carolina, Attorney General Roy Cooper holds a press conference and declares all three Duke defendants are completely "innocent." He calls Mike Nifong a "rogue prosecutor."

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April 11, 2007 — David Evans, Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and their attorneys hold a press conference after Attorney General Roy Cooper's announcement.

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April 12, 2007 — The New York Post published Crystal Mangum's 2003 mugshot on the front page.

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June 12, 2007 — On day one of the North Carolina State Bar Disciplinary Hearing Durham PD investigator Ben Himan revealed that Nifong was worried about the lack of evidence early in the case. He quoted Nifong as saying, "'You know we're f*****d"

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June 12, 2007 — Defendant Mike Nifong listens to testimony regarding his unethical prosecutorial misconduct during the first day of the state bar hearing.

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June 15, 2007 — State Bar Disciplinary Hearing Committee Chairman F. Lane Williamson reacts to Mike Nifong's "Mr. Magoo" defense for his premeditated, contrived, corrupt, unethical, and malicious prosecution of three innocent men.

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June 15, 2007 — On day four of the state bar hearing a teary-eyed Mike Nifong said whatever the outcome of the ethics hearing he will resign as Durham DA. He offered a half-hearted apology to the lacrosse players. Nifong's weak apology was shortlived when two hours later he restated that he thought "something happened that night."

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June 15, 2007 — Mie Nifong's son and wife watch him offer his resignation on the witness stand.

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June 19, 2007 - Judge Orlando Hudson suspends Mike Nifong with pay and asks the Durham County sheriff to confiscate the former prosecutor's keys and courthouse access card. Hudson signs an order, which removes Nifong from office until his resignation becomes effective.

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June 25, 2006 — Mike Nifong's chief investigator, Linwood Wilson is fired by new DA Jim Hardin. For over a year Wilson did everything he could to undermine justice and help railroad three innocent men. The next day Judge Orlando Hudson accused Wilson of threatening a witness and violating the constitutional rights of someone in a case not related to the Duke incident.

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July 26, 2007 — Disgraced former prosecutor Mike Nifong issues his third apology to the Duke players at his criminal contempt hearing. He said, "there is “no credible evidence” that three Duke lacrosse players committed any of the crimes he accused them of more than a year ago. It is his first unequivocal apology for prosecuting the bogus lacrosse case.

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August 15, 2007 — Nifong turned in his law license as ordered - but complained that the document wasn't fit for showing off anyway because his dog ate some of it. He also accused the bar of "Fundamental Unfairness." On August 23, 2007, the State Bar sends Nifong a bill for $8897.71 to cover the costs of the depositions and hearing.

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August 31, 2007 — Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III finds Nifong guilty of criminal contempt after a two day trial. Nifong is sentenced to 24 hours in jail.

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September 4, 2007 — The book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, is released. Stuart Taylor, Jr. and Prof. KC Johnson wrote the definitive book about the lacrosse case. They go on Good Morning America to talk about the injustice.

Stuart Taylor Jr. said: "I think it happened in, most generally, because Mike Nifong, the prosecutor, was desperate to win an election. The reason he was desperate to win an election was not that he wanted to be a big-shot politician or governor. He was worried about his pension."

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September 7, 2007 — Mike Nifong goes to jail for 24 hours. He is escorted to and from the jail by a group of his supporters in a very strange procession. His mug shot is quickly published around the world.

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September 29, 2007 — Duke University President Richard Brodhead apologized at a Duke Law School conference for the school's lack of full support for the three lacrosse players falsely accused last year of raping Crystal Gail Mangum.

It was Brodhead's first public apology for the university's handling of the case. He said:

First and foremost, I regret our failure to reach out to the lacrosse players and their families in this time of extraordinary peril. Given the complexities of the case, getting this communication right would never have been easy. But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they most needed support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it, and I apologize. [...]

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October 5, 2007 — The three former Duke lacrosse players wrongly accused of rape filed a sweeping civil rights lawsuit against the city of Durham, a host of police officers, former District Attorney Mike Nifong, and the DNA laboratory hired by the disbarred former prosecutor.

David F. Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Read Seligmann, Plaintiffs v.
The City of Durham, North Carolina, Michael B. Nifong, Mark Gottlieb, Benjamin Himan, David Addison, Linwood Wilson, Steven Chalmers, Beverly Council, Ronald Hodge, Jeff Lamb, Steven Mihaich, Michael Ripberger, Lee Russ, DNA Security, Inc., Richard Clark, and Brian Meehan, Defendants.

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December 18, 2007 — ABC News reported:

Unindicted Duke LAX players sue Duke University -- In a filing Tuesday in Federal Court, [three] unindicted Duke Lacrosse players are suing Duke University, the City of Durham, Duke University professors, Mike Nifong and the DNA lab involved in the case.

The suit also names doctors and nurses who treated the alleged victim the night she claimed she'd been raped at a party. The players are also suing City Manager Patrick Baker and former Durham Police Chief Stephen Chalmers. As part of the investigation, the unindicted players had to give up DNA samples and were named in the school paper. [...]

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Robert Bork, Jr. (left), spokesman for the lacrosse plaintiffs & Steven Henkelman, father of Duke lacrosse player Erik Henkelman speak at a Washington press conference

On February 21, 2008, 38 members of the Duke lacrosse team and several of their parents filed a lawsuit against Duke University, the City of Durham and a number of other defendants for their roles in what has come to be known as the Duke lacrosse scandal.

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On March 27, 2008, Durham taxi driver Moezeldin Elmostafa received the Reader's Digest 2008 Hero of the Year Award. Peggy Northrup of Reader's Digest presented the award on the Today Show.

Moezeldin Elmostafa was a key witness in supporting Reade Seligmann's alibi. Because he came forward Nifong and his people tried to intimidate Elmostafa by arresting him on an old bogus warrant (for picking up an alleged shoplifter).

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On October 23, 2008, Crystal Mangum held a press conference to promote a forthcoming book, entitled The Last Dance for Grace. The Crystal Mangum Story, in which she maintains she was assaulted by the Duke lacrosse players.

At the press conference Mangum states, "I'm not just someone that tried to frame innocent people for sexual assault."

Lacrosse attorney Joe Cheshire said, “Her press conference and her continued assertion that an assault happened is really pathetic . . . She’s clearly doing this to make money. By continuing to lie, she makes everything in the book, everything she says, a lie."

Phil Seligmann, father of former Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann, responded to Mangum's press conference by issuing a statement. He said: "Ms. Mangum's 'manuscript' is simply a pathetic attempt to further her need to remain in the public eye at the expense of demonstrably innocent individuals... We are presently evaluating all available legal options. If Ms. Mangum and those associated with her continue to slander Reade, we will have no choice and will not hesitate to utilize those options."

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February 17, 2010 — Duke lacrosse accuser, Crystal Mangum, is arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, five counts of arson, assault and battery, communicating threats, three counts of misdemeanor child abuse, injury to personal property, identity theft and resisting a public officer.

Durham police arrested Duke lacrosse accuser Crystal Gale Mangum, 33, after she allegedly assaulted her boyfriend, set his clothes on fire in a bathtub and threatened to stab him.

On December 17, 2010, a 12-member Durham jury found Mangum guilty of five misdeameanors: three counts of child abuse, one count of injury to personal property, and one count of resisting a public officer.

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April 18, 2011 — Mangum Indicted for Murder

On April 3, 2011, Mangum was arrested for stabbing her boyfriend seven times in the chest. According to Durham Police Department reports, Mangum stabbed Reginald Daye, 46, with a kitchen knife “with the intent to kill and inflicting serious injury.”

On April 13, 2011, the victim of Mangum's knife attack, Reginald Daye, 46, died at Duke University Hospital.

On April 18, 2011, Crystal Gail Mangum was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny in the death of her boyfriend, Reginald Daye. She has remained in jail since her April 3rd, 2010, arrest.

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related:
TJN: The Duke Lacrosse Saga in Cartoons
TJN: Crystal Gail Mangum
TJN: Duke Case: Index/Timeline [case coverage from March 24, 2006 - Feb. 2010]