Now that at least two sealed grand jury indictments have been handed down in Durham, members of the Duke lacrosse team are finally opening up ... to the media, in an attempt to preemptively save their upper middle class hides. Here is the alleged timeline of the night of March 13, from the players' point of view, as allegedly corroborated by photos and told to Newsweek:
... At 11:02 p.m. on March 13, a group of partygoers, sitting on couches around the edge of the room awaiting the arrival of two strippers, smile for the camera. They're holding plastic cups. Above their heads, a Duke lacrosse poster on the wall reads it's hard to beat a team that never gives up. (Robert Ekstrand, who represents 33 of the players, used a forensics expert to establish the photo times.) The accuser is dropped off at about 11:45, about a half hour after the other (second) stripper arrived. By midnight, according to a photo, the two are almost naked on the beige carpet in front of their visibly happy audience. But by 12:03, the mood has turned: in a photo, the women are standing and the second stripper appears to be reaching toward the guys, all of whom have lost their smiles. She slaps one of them for suggesting the alleged victim use a broom as a sex toy, according to Ekstrand. Then both women lock themselves in the bathroom, Ekstrand details. The partygoers get nervous about what the women are up to and start slipping money under the door asking them to leave, says Bill Thomas, a lawyer who represents one of the captains. The women go out to the second stripper's car at about 12:20, but the accuser has left her purse behind; she goes back inside to get it, according to Ekstrand. A photo at 12:30 shows the alleged victim standing outside the back door of the house looking down into two bags with what appears to be a smile. She's wearing only her scant red-and-white outfit and one shoe. By the time she realizes she's missing a shoe—a few minutes later—the guys have locked the door to keep her out, say the attorneys. A 12:37 photo shows she's lying on the back stoop; she fell, according to Ekstrand. Her elbow is dusted and scraped, and her ankle is cut and bleeding. At 12:41 she gets into the car, and one of the partygoers appears to be helping her. In a call to a police dispatcher at about 1:30 made public last week, one of the first officers to see the accuser, in a parking lot, said she was "passed-out drunk" but "not in distress." Since the release of the recording, Ekstrand has suggested that if any assault happened, it was after the accuser left the house. Defense attorneys said last week that no DNA had been found on or inside the accuser. She was never alone in the house for more than about 10 minutes, according to their timeline.
The Newsweek account goes on to say there is a dispute as to whether the second dancer's story corroborates the boys, or the accuser. Something tells me she said something that's more helpful to Mr. Nifong than to the players, given the fact that we're seeing at least two indictments, which being sealed, may indicate more to come.
And yet, there is the ABC News scoop about a security guard at a nearby Kroger store, where the accuser was inexplicably driven (as opposed to the hospital) by an unknown person -- possibly the second dancer. ABC reportedly has a tape of a conversation between an investigator and the guard, who indicates that she thinks the accuser "wasn't acting the way she'd expect someone to act who had been sexually assaulted." Not sure what that means to the case, since the transcript of the 911 call made by that security guard shows she never really examined the accuser, and what information she had she got from the driver of the car, named Kim. Kim never spoke to the dispatcher. What the ABC info does seem to indicate is that the accuser may have been either drugged, or using drugs. Time will tell which one. (The defense appears to be formulating a storyline that the accuser fabricated the rape charge to avoid being charged herself with drunk and disorderly conduct in public...)
And those same 911 transcripts show a call placed about an hour before the alleged assault by a white woman who was walking past the party house with a Black friend, and who says she and her friend were taunted with racial slurs (called "niggers") by males coming out of that house. That shows the frame of mind some of these guys were apparently in, but not sure it's dispositive either.
This one's filed under "developing..."
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Tags: Duke rape case, Duke, Lacrosse |
