Duke Lacrosse Case Update: Crystal Mangum Finally Comes Clean

A surprising twist in the sorry saga that soiled Duke and Durham in 2006.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 18 years since the Duke lacrosse hoax roiled campus, Durham and indeed the nation.

The main protagonist was Crystal Mangum, a Durham native who was an exotic dancer (what a stupid term that is) at the time.

She accused three Duke lacrosse players - David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann - of raping her at a team party. The ongoing circus exposed a lot of fault lines at Duke and in Durham, not least of all in the police department and in the district attorney’s office. Mike Nifong, then in office, disgraced himself and his profession. The entire circus went on for too long before Roy Cooper, then the state’s attorney general, stepped in.

Ultimately the case was dropped and Nifong, who had conspired to withhold DNA evidence that exonerated the accused, was disbarred and symbolically put in jail for a day.

Mangum’s story was pretty unbelievable and full of holes and inconsistencies, but many believed her and a few continued to do so.

That ended on Wednesday as Mangum was interviewed by Katerina DePasquale on her podcast “Let’s Talk with Kat,” and said the following: “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. [I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”

According to the Duke Chronicle, she wrote DePasquale when they were arranging the interview and told her that “[I]t’s been on my heart to do a public apology concerning the Duke lacrosse case. I actually lied about the incident to the public, my family, my friends and to God about it, and I’m not proud about it.”

The interview took place in Raleigh’s Central Prison where Mangum is confined after being convicted in 2013 of killing her boyfriend.

Mangum has had a difficult life that no one would envy and has made many bad decisions. It’s good that she finally came clean about the case and took responsibility for the damage she caused. She appears to have had a religious awakening in prison, referring to the three lacrosse players as her “brothers.”

Mangum is due to be released in 2026. We sincerely hope that she has gotten her life together and wish her the best when she is set free.