< Previous page

Jackie Brown, manager of Nifong's primary campaign, talked to the prosecutor before and after that meeting, when she called him to discuss the size and cost of a newspaper ad. She reached Nifong on his cell phone as he arrived at DNA Security.

Nifong was in a rare good mood and promised Brown he'd call her in a few minutes, after the meeting. Brown waited for Nifong to return the call. When Brown finally called him back, Nifong was gruff. He was passing through Hillsborough on his way back to Durham.

"His whole demeanor had changed. He was kind of ill and said, 'I really don't want to talk about the ad,' " Brown said. "Whatever happened, he wasn't happy with it."

Nifong had a big problem with his case. His chief witness said that three lacrosse players raped and sodomized her for 30 minutes without using condoms and that one or perhaps all ejaculated -- but if that happened, the men didn't leave a single cell behind.

The next morning, Nifong said at a locally televised forum at N.C. Central University that DNA didn't matter.

"DNA results can often be helpful, but, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, and for most of the years I've been doing this, we didn't have DNA. We had to deal with sexual assault cases the good old-fashioned way. Witnesses got on the stand and told what happened to them. ... It doesn't mean nothing happened. It just means nothing was left behind."

Despite the lack of a DNA link to the players, Nifong filed a sealed motion the next day saying he would seek indictments against Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann.

On April 21, Nifong returned to Burlington to meet with Meehan at DNA Security.

Nifong and Meehan discussed tests Meehan had run on the final samples from the rape kit. The results were the same: There was no DNA from the lacrosse players, but there was DNA from unidentified men. If Mangum had been raped, the DNA was a logical starting point to identify the perpetrators.

Nifong's chief assistant district attorney, David Saacks, had said so in the request for the judge's order that Nifong found on his office copier March 23:

"The DNA evidence requested will immediately rule out any innocent persons, and show conclusive evidence as to who the suspect(s) are in the alleged violent attack upon this victim."

Nifong and Meehan, however, agreed that Meehan would not report that the rape kit turned up DNA from at least four unidentified men. They knew that the DNA wasn't from lacrosse players, Mangum's boyfriend or one of Mangum's drivers.

Nifong then made an odd choice for someone directing a rape investigation:

He did not try to find out whose DNA it was.

< Previous page