Report depicts dazed accuser

Mangum was not credible, AG found

One year after the infamous Duke lacrosse party, special prosecutors were the first officials to question Crystal Gail Mangum about her conflicting stories about being gang-raped, according to a report released Friday by the state attorney general.

The prosecutors, Jim Coman and Mary Winstead, said they met a woman who showed up impaired on a cocktail of prescription drugs. She denied irrefutable facts and changed her story so often, even during a single interview, that the lawyers thought she was improvising.

District Attorney Mike Nifong bet his career on Mangum and the case that besmeared Durham, Duke University and its students, and, ultimately, the North Carolina justice system.

"The state's cases rested primarily on a witness whose recollection of the facts of the allegations was imprecise and contradictory," Attorney General Roy Cooper's 21-page report said. "The accusing witness attempted to avoid the contradictions by changing her story, contradicting previous stories or alleging the evidence had been fabricated."

Mangum has not spoken to the media about the case for more than a year. She could not be reached for comment Friday.

Cooper released the report 16 days after he proclaimed the three former players -- Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann -- innocent of the sexual assault and kidnapping charges that threw their lives into turmoil.

Nifong, battling ethics and professional misconduct charges over the case, declined to comment about the latest development.

The report rarely mentions Nifong. But the findings, based largely on Nifong's files and interviews with Nifong's witnesses, reinforce charges that he pushed ahead with a case that crumbled before indictments were brought.

Not once during the 10 months in which the Durham district attorney was responsible for the case did Nifong, his investigator or police ask Mangum about problems with her allegations. Only after Jan. 12, when Nifong handed the case to Cooper's office, did prosecutors challenge Mangum.

"This was apparently the first time these questions of inconsistencies had been asked formally," the report said. "In meetings with the special prosecutors, the accusing witness, when recounting the events of that night, changed her story on so many important issues as to give the impression that she was improvising as the interview progressed, even when she was faced with irrefutable evidence that what she was saying was not credible."

At times, the prosecutors said, she claimed that time-stamped photos and video of the party were fabricated. She claimed Duke doctored photographs with images contradicting her accounts.

During a March 29 interview, Mangum made new assertions, including that 10 men assaulted and pushed her around in the backyard and that the three accused players kicked her in the neck on the back porch after a gang-rape.

She gave a new account of the supposed assault during that interview. Mangum told special prosecutors that players took off her underwear and, while crouching and squatting, took turns holding her up in the air while the others sexually assaulted her in the small bathroom.

Signs of impairment

At a meeting with special prosecutors April 4, Mangum exhibited the unsteady gait, the slurred speech and other mannerisms consistent with her actions at the lacrosse team party, the report said. Before that meeting, the prosecutors said, the accuser had ingested a cocktail of prescription drugs, two anti-depressants, a sleeping pill and methadone.

"While witnesses often have inconsistencies in details when recounting events over time, the volume of inconsistent statements and the fact that many of these were substantial and were in regard to significant events rendered the truthfulness of the accusing witness in serious doubt," the report said.