COVER STORY
The PRICE Of SILENCE:
DUKE LACROSSE ACCUSER STANDS BY HER STORY
In April 2006, Crystal Gail Mangum, a student at North Carolina
Central University, who worked as a stripper and an escort, accused
three members of the Duke lacrosse team — Reade Seligmann,
Collin Finnerty, and David Evans — of raping her at an off-campus
party that had occurred a few weeks before. The case captivated
the country, with the media breathlessly reporting the statements
of prosecutor Mike Nifong, who was later fired, disbarred and
imprisoned for 24 hours, and then those of the players’ defense
attorneys in a seemingly endless loop of contradictions. In April
2007, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said there was
“no credible evidence that an attack occurred at that house on
that night,” dropped the charges against the athletes and declared
them innocent. Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans have since reached
a confidential settlement with Duke University,which was said to
pay them as much as $20 million each, or a total of $60 million.
The party at the house at 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, which
has since been torn down, is said to have cost Duke upwards
of $100 million in legal settlements and in legal, and other,
fees. Meanwhile, Mangum, who Cooper never charged with any
wrongdoing, is serving a prison sentence, in Raleigh, of up to 18 years for the 2011 murder of her
boyfriend.
- William D. Cohan
Adapted from THE PRICE OF SILENCE: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the
Corruption of Our Great Universities by William D. Cohan, published April 8, 2014 by Scribner, a Division
of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.”
I visited with Crystal Mangum in November
2012, nearly seven years after the alleged
incident at 610 North Buchanan. She was in
Durham County Jail awaiting a November
2013 trial for the alleged murder of her then
boyfriend, Reginald Daye, whom Mangum
stabbed on April 3, 2011, in what she claimed
was “self-defense” after an argument at their
Durham apartment. In the warrant for her
arrest, Durham police wrote that there was
“probable cause” to believe that Mangum
“unlawfully, willfully and feloniously did
assault” Daye with a “KITCHEN KNIFE, a
deadly weapon, with the intent to kill and
[inflict] serious injury.”
In a 911 call from Daye’s
nephew to police, after
Daye had been stabbed,
the nephew said to the
dispatcher, “It’s Crystal
Mangum. THE Crystal
Mangum! I told him
she was trouble from
the damn beginning.”
Daye died 11 days later
at Duke Hospital. “His
death was a result of
medical malpractice
at Duke Hospital,”
Mangum told me from
jail. “Everything was fine. He was getting ready
to be discharged. All of a sudden they put that
endotracheal tube — instead of putt