Woman who falsely accused Duke players of rape freed after murder sentence

The woman who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape and then murdered her boyfriend was released from prison in North Carolina 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 Friday morning. She was serving a 14- to 18-year sentence. 

Mangum 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. 

“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,” Mangum said. “[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”

Mangum thrust herself into the center of a massive national news story when she originally accused the three Duke students of raping her while she was performing as a stripper at a lacrosse team party in March 2006. 

The players she accused were then 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 innocent. Still, Mangum was not prosecuted for perjury due to questions about her mental health. 

But Mangum cannot be prosecuted for perjury now because the statute of limitations on perjury charges in North Carolina only lasts around 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 disbarred in 2007 after it was revealed he ahd 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 hadn’t been handed over to the defense.

Mangum was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny in March 2011. A year before that, she was convicted on misdemeanor charges after setting a fire that nearly torched her home with her three children inside. 

In a videotaped police interrogation, she told officers she got into a confrontation with her boyfriend at the time, not Daye, and burned his clothes, smashed his car windshield and threatened to stab him.

According to North Carolina Department of Corrections records, 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.

Creedmoor Police Chief Ted Pollard said Mangum filed a report on the incident Aug. 18, 1996, three years after the rapes allegedly took place. The case, however, was not pursue because the accuser backed away from the charges out of fear for her 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 of the lacrosse case itself.

Clark said Mangum realizes she has mental health problems.

“I’m sad for her. I hope people realize how difficult it is being her,” Clark said.

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