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The woman who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape and then murdered her boyfriend was released from a North Carolina prison Friday, according to multiple reports.
Crystal Mangum, who has been in prison since 2013 on charges of murdering Reginald Daye in 2011, left the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh on Friday morning. She served a sentence of 14 to 18 years.
Mangum previously confessed to lying about being raped by the lacrosse players in an interview on the independent media outlet “Let’s Talk With Kat” in December 2024.
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Crystal Mangum, who was at the center of the Duke University lacrosse scandal, was accused of stabbing a man on April 3, 2011 at an apartment in Durham, NC. (Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/MCT)
“I gave false testimony against them by saying 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.” Mangum said. “[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted confirmation from people and not from God.”
Mangum thrust herself into the center of a massive national news story when she initially accused the three Duke students of raping her while performing as a stripper at a lacrosse team party in March 2006.
The players she accused were subsequently arrested, and the allegations even resulted in the team having to cancel its season.
The players, David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, were eventually found not guilty. Still, Mangum was not prosecuted for perjury because of questions about her mental health.
But Mangum cannot be prosecuted for perjury now because the statute of limitations for perjury charges in North Carolina is only about two years.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Mike Nifong, was the Durham County district attorney at the time of the trial and was eventually dismissed in 2007 after it was revealed that he failed to turn over DNA evidence that would have been helpful to the defense’s case.
The Associated Press reported at the time that Nifong said he was unaware that crucial evidence had not been turned over to the defense.
Crystal Gail Mangum appears at a press conference on October 23, 2008 to promote a book about her life in Durham, NC. Mangum went on to say that she was assaulted in March 2006 at a Duke lacrosse team party where she had been hired to dance. (Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News Observer/MCT)
Mangum was indicted on first-degree murder and two counts of theft in March 2011. A year earlier, she was convicted on misdemeanor charges after starting a fire that nearly burned her home with her three children inside.
In a videotaped police interview, she told officers she confronted her boyfriend at the time, not Daye, and burned his clothes, smashed his car windshield and threatened to stab him.
According to the North Carolina Department of Corrections, she was born on July 18, 1978, to a truck driver. She grew up the youngest of three children, not far from the house where she claimed she was assaulted 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, North Carolina, 15 miles away from Durham, and raped. She said one of the men was her boyfriend at the time and was a physically and emotionally abusive man, seven years older than she was.
Pictured in this August 2010 file photo, Crystal Mangum, who was at the center of the Duke University lacrosse scandal, was charged with stabbing a man on April 3, 2011, at an apartment in Durham, NC. (Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/MCT)
Creedmoor Police Chief Ted Pollard said Mangum filed a report about the incident on Aug. 18, 1996, three years after the rapes allegedly occurred. However, the case was not pursued because the prosecutor withdrew from the charges for fear of his life, according to her relatives.
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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 feel bad for her. I hope people realize how hard it is to be her,” Clark said.
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