Former stripper and current murder convict Crystal Mangum confessed to lying about being raped by Duke Lacrosse players in an interview on the independent media outlet “Let’s Talk With Kat” on Thursday.
“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t and that was wrong, and I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me,” Mangum said. “[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”
Mangum, who is serving a prison sentence for murdering her boyfriend, falsely accused three Duke players of raping her while she was performing at a team party in March 2006. The players she accused were arrested, igniting a national controversy and conversations about racism.
The three players, David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, were all found innocent of the crimes. But Mangum was not prosecuted for perjury due to questions about her mental health.
“She may have actually believed the many different stories that she has been telling,” said former North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said at the time.
Mangum can not be prosecuted for perjury now because statute of limitations on perjury charges in North Carolina only lasts around two years.
The allegations even resulted in the team having to cancel a game against Georgetown in March 2008.
Former Durham County district attorney Mike Nifong, who served as the lead prosecutor in the case, said in a March 2006 interview with CBS News that “there’s no doubt a sexual assault took place” and that it was “racially motivated.”
“The information that I have does lead me to conclude that a rape did occur,” Nifong said. “The circumstances of the rape indicated a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done. It makes a crime that is by its nature one of the most offensive and invasive even more so.”
Nifong was later disbarred on June 16, 2007, by the North Carolina State Bar for lying in court and withholding DNA evidence which ultimately absolved the defendants of responsibility for Mangum’s allegations.
Mangum also asserted that “something” happened that night in a book she published in 2008 titled “Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story.”
“I will never say that nothing at all happened that night,” she wrote.
Mangum was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny in March 2011. A year before that, she was convicted on misdemeanor charges after setting a fire that nearly torched her home with her three children inside.
In a videotaped police interrogation, she told officers she got into a confrontation with her boyfriend at the time, not Daye, and burned his clothes, smashed his car windshield and threatened to stab him.
According to North Carolina Department of Corrections records, she was born on July 18, 1978, to a truck driver. She grew up the youngest of three children, not far from the house where she claimed she was assaulted in 2006.
In 1993, when she was 14 years old, Mangum claimed to have been kidnapped by three men, driven to a house in Creedmoor, NC, 15 miles away from Durham, and raped. She said one of the men was her boyfriend at the time and was a physically and emotionally abusive man seven years older than she was.
Creedmoor Police Chief Ted Pollard said Mangum filed a report on the incident on Aug. 18, 1996, three years after the rapes allegedly took place.
The case, however, was not pursued, because the accuser backed away from the charges out of fear for her life, according to her relatives.
Vincent Clark, a friend who co-authored Mangum’s self-published memoir, said he hopes people don’t rush to judgment — echoing one of the oft-cited lessons of the lacrosse case itself.
Clark said Mangum realizes she has mental health problems.
“I’m sad for her. I hope people realize how difficult it is being her,” Clark said.
