Former stripper and current murder convict Crystal Mangum admitted 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 falsely testified against them by saying they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong. I betrayed the trust of many other people who believed in me,” Mangum said. “[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted confirmation from people and not from God.”
Mangum, who is serving a prison sentence for the murder of her boyfriend, falsely accused three Duke players of raping her while she performed at a team party in March 2006. The players she accused were arrested, sparking 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 she has told,” former North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said at the time.
Mangum cannot now be prosecuted for perjury because the statute of limitations for perjury charges in North Carolina is only about two years.
The accusations even led to the team having to cancel a game against Georgetown in March 2008.
Former Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, who served as lead prosecutor in the case, said in March 2006 interview with CBS News that “there is no doubt that an assault occurred” and that it was “racially motivated.”
“The information I have leads me to conclude that this was a rape,” Nifong said. “The circumstances of the rape indicated a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done. It makes even more so a crime that is by its very nature one of the most offensive and invasive.”
Nifong was later disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar on June 16, 2007, for lying in court and withholding DNA evidence, ultimately absolving the defendants of responsibility for Mangum’s allegations.
Mangum also claimed 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 charged in March 2011 with first-degree murder and two counts of robbery. A year earlier, she was convicted of misdemeanor assault after starting a fire that nearly burned down her home with her three children inside.
In a videotaped police interview, she told officers that she had gotten into a confrontation with her boyfriend at the time, not Daye, and that she burned his clothes, smashed the windshield of his car and threatened to stab him.
According to North Carolina Department of Corrections records, she was born on July 18, 1978, the son of a truck driver. She grew up the youngest of three children not far from the home where she claims she was attacked 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 from Durham, and raped. She said one of the men was her boyfriend at the time and a physically and emotionally abusive man who was seven years older than her.
Creedmoor Police Chief Ted Pollard said Mangum filed a report on the incident on August 18, 1996, three years after the rapes allegedly occurred.
However, the case was not prosecuted as the accuser withdrew from the charges out of fear for her life, her relatives said.
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 from the lacrosse case itself.
Clark said Mangum realizes she has mental health issues.
‘I’m sad for her. I hope people realize how hard it is to be her,” Clark said.
