Duke lacrosse: Gang threats, new timeline

Tensions continue to rise here in Durham, where a Duke administrator sent an all-campus email about a possible gang threat to students in the neighborhood where the alleged rape occurred.

The student newspaper report begins as follows:

Durham Police Department officers approached residents outside houses on N. Buchanan Boulevard shortly after 6 p.m. Friday night, telling them that there were threats of gang violence targeted at Duke students.

DPD desk officer D. Myatt said rumors of the threat originated from the magistrate's office. A magistrate, however, said he was unaware of any such rumors.

"Duke and Durham police have substantially increased patrol coverage of the area, including Trinity Park, Ninth Street and East Campus," wrote Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, in an e-mail sent to all students 10 p.m. Friday evening.

Meanwhile, the DA is saying that no charges will be filed until at least April 10, prolonging the state of uncertainty that is pervading the campus:

District Attorney Mike Nifong said Friday that no charges will be filed in the investigation of a report of rape at a Duke University lacrosse party until at least the week of April 10. He also said he won't release DNA results that had been expected next week.

The tests, which are comparing the DNA of 46 lacrosse players with samples taken from the accuser as well as from towels, rags and rugs in the house where the party was held, could be completed next week, Nifong said.

But Nifong said he had no plans to announce the state's evidence before a trial.

"That's just not how we do business, and I would not anticipate that we would treat this case any differently," Nifong said in an interview.

Finally, the News & Observer has put together a timeline of the night of the incident based in part on statements by a neighbor:

Men began to socialize at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. on Monday, March 13, nearly 12 hours before a woman said she had been raped by three men at a party where Duke lacrosse players were present. There was a flurry of activity in the period between about 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. Here is how events unfolded, according to information in court documents, police reports and interviews with the accuser, plus accounts given by Jason Bissey, who lives next door to 610 N. Buchanan, in interviews and in a statement to police. Times of the 911 calls and police movements are exact. Others are estimates.

2 p.m.: Bissey sees at least five men standing in the backyard of 610 Buchanan drinking beer.

4 p.m.: Bissey sees several young men drinking in the backyard.

8:30 p.m.: The accuser is called by her escort agency and told to report to the Buchanan Boulevard house that night.

11:30 p.m.: Bissey, after being out for a while, returns to his apartment . Several young men are gathered near the back door of 610 Buchanan.

11:50 p.m.: Bissey, on his porch, notices two women walk to the back of the house, where a man greets them.

Midnight: Bissey sees the two women go into the house.

12:20 TO 12:30 a.m.: Tuesday, March 14, Bissey hears voices in the alley beside the house. At least two men are discussing money, one saying, "It's only $100." Bissey sees a man leaning into the window of a car parked outside the house. One of the women he saw earlier gets out of the car and says she needs to get her shoe. She walks to the back door of the house.

Between 12:45 AND 1 A.M.: Bissey sees a car, which at least one of the women had been in earlier, speed away. One man standing across from the house, on the Duke campus, shouts, "... Thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt." Several men come out of the house; Bissey hears at least one of them say, "Guys, let's go," repeatedly. Within minutes, there is silence. The lights at 610 Buchanan are dim, and no one is outside.

12:53 a.m.: An unidentified woman calls 911 and says a man near 610 Buchanan called her and a friend a racial slur.

12:55 a.m.: Police arrive and see evidence of a party at the house, but no stragglers. No one answers the door, and police can't find the woman who called 911.

1:06 a.m.: Police leave.

1:22 a.m. A security guard calls 911, reporting that a woman is in a parked car at the Kroger grocery store on Hillsborough Road and won't get out. The guard says the woman appears to be intoxicated and is hardly speaking or moving.

1:32 a.m.: Police arrive at Kroger. They talk to the woman, who reports that she was raped at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. She is taken to Duke Hospital for tests, and a nurse finds evidence consistent with an assault.

This timeline appears to resolve some of the questions I raised earlier. In particular, if the victim thought the assault lasted approximately 30 minutes, that's roughly consistent with her re-entering the house between 12:20 and 12:30 AM and leaving between 12:45 AM and 12:55 AM. And the neighbor hearing the team leaving the house during that time appears to address questions about why the house was dark and quiet when police arrived at 12:55 AM.

Comments

[Sharon Cullars]

Thanks for posting the timeline.

[Raleighite]

Doesn't it seem like Nifong is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't?
If he releases information piecemeal, knowing that subsequent findings could refute earlier ones, then he's fanning the flames and increasing the possibility of backlash against the players and the school.
If he holds information back, then he's accused of allowing things to spin out of control.
And, as he said, if he treats this case differently than other criminal investigations, that puts the DA's office in a questionable light. The very last thing anyone should want is to jeopordize this potential prosecution over some kind of procedural glitch.
On the DNA issue, would it be standard procedure to release DNA evidence as soon as it's ascertained or would they typically hold that until charges are filed?

[John]

The timeline is problematic. Here's why, everyday it looks more and more like the 911 caller (first call) reporting the racial slurs were the dancers. We know the dancers left together now. The second dancer admitted to
driving the alleged victim to Kroger. Where a second call was made from inside Kroger saying a woman was intoxicated and wouldn't get out of another woman's vehicle (Kim). Kim is the other dancer.

The First 911 caller says there was ONE white guy on the Duke wall (opposite side of street from House) that yelled a racial slur toward her and her black girlfriend. This coincides with the Unfriendly (to the team) neighbor's story. The police station is very close. TWO minutes after that call the police arrived and the Home was empty according to the N&O. This also coincide with the neighbors story that the group left in the opposite direction about 3 minutes after the girls left. Then the police pulled up. Two units spent 11 minutes looking through windows and walking around the house and checking the doors.

The feuding neigbor stayed outside on his front porch and watched the action. He had a bird's eye view. He didn't report the players yelling at anyone else, in fact, he reported the ONE player yelling the slur at the 2 dancers was on the same side of the road as the woman in the 911 call reports initially. Her first story was ONE white guy on the Duke Wall side of the street. That's exactly what the neighbor saw with the dancers. The problem, for the dancers, is both were in the same car (we know that know) and the caller reported that she was not harmed IN ANY WAY and that it's really NOT AN EMERGENCY. She also says she how ANGRY she is (possible motive).

With the Police station being closer, the second dancer drove to Kroger to report an intoxicated woman that wouldn't get out of her car. The second dancer lied to the police that she picked up the woman walking near the Kroger. The Police initially said that the woman hear in the background inside the Kroger reporting the woman in her to the Kroger Security guard was not the other dancer. A week later, the police reversed themselves and now say that the second dancer WAS the one that prompted the bizarre call from Kroger. The dancer can be heard in the background clearly saying "Maybe they can take her where she needs to go better than I can"

We heard early on that the dancer arrived at the house drunk or high. Then the call from Kroger describes her as such. This is consistent with her criminal record of a DWI conviction, having her license suspended THREE times and on eluding arrest conviction. Source:
http://www.wral.com/news/8370290/detail.html

Near the bottom of the article in the above link, her record is stated.

.

[B]

As a Durham resident and Duke employee, I hope that they figure what truly happened, and mete out the appropriate punishment. I also hope that the DA does NOT release information piecemeal: that instead, he will wait until he has an iron-clad case against the perpetrators and announce the charges and evidence only after taking them into custody.

On Raleighite's observation about the DA: We should also note that Mike Nifong, who is prominently running for reelection (lawn flags everywhere here in Durham), announced at the outset that he himself will be prosecuting this high-profile crime. (I think one news article actually said he was "taking over" the case, no doubt from a junior staffer about to handle the first big case of his/her career!) But perhaps that's what you get when DAs (and judges) are elected, rather than appointed. In any event, this was going to be a huge case and Nifong probably would have taken it on regardless of the election calendar. But I do think the timing ensures that Nifong's team will be playing very nice with the media for the duration of the case.

To John's comment: I'm not sure what you mean (re: the dancer having a "motive"). Surely you're not suggesting that no crime occurred at all? The DA must have medical evidence of sexual assault (let's keep it clean and call it "male genetic material") from the victim's body, otherwise there's little reason to compel DNA samples from the entire team.

It's the inevitable character assassinations of the victim and her partner that are particularly distasteful to me. ''DWIs! Exotic dancing! Working for an "Escort Service"!'' We can all read that subtext pretty clearly: the always-disgusting "She had it coming" defense. Rape is a crime, regardless of the subjective appearance of the victim's virtues (or seeming lack thereof).

Rape cases are always ugly, and thanks to the racial overtones at work here, this one is doubly so. I only hope that they run a clean and competent investigation while quashing the potentially dehumanizing media circus. Thankfully for all of us, this won't be decided in the papers or the blogs, but in a court of law.

[Raleighite]

Have we not advanced, as a society, to the point where we acknowledge that people's lives are often messy and filled with mistakes and regrets, but that NO ONE deserves to be raped, sodomized, beaten and strangled?
John also seems to have an awful lot of what sounds like inside information on this case, however on one point, he is incorrect. The 911 caller (the woman who called about the slurs) is white. She is not the victim, who is black.
First of all, she pointedly says "with my black girlfriend" to the dispatcher, because otherwise the dispatcher would wonder why these guys would call her that name (at least it seems clear to me that that is what she meant.)
Second, have you listened to the audio tape of the call? Sorry for being politically incorrect, but it seems clear that she is white.
Last, the Durham police and DA have both stated that they are confident that the 911 caller is not the victim.
But most important, and maybe you'd have to be a woman to understand this, but I just can't believe that any woman would put herself through the police report, the hospital, the examination, and the rest of it if it didn't happen. I'm not saying no one's ever done it, but this case seems particularly horrific and I just can't see it.
Again, life is messy and sometime details and timelines aren't exact, but that doesn't mean the attack didn't happen.