CRYSTAL MANGUM STORY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW DUKE LACROSSE RAPE CASE

[Music] so [Music] thank you for using global kill link hello how are you hi how you doing crystal um i'm doing good how are you everything is all right everything is all right how's your day going uh it's going pretty good um i was feeling a little nauseous this morning some days are better than others about two years ago they diagnosed me with two um autoimmune diseases so um but i still try to get up and work out and stuff but i feel pretty good okay but what kind of disease you said it was um auto immune diseases they diagnosed me with lupus um first and then i started having problems with like my muscles and like not being able to move after sleeping at night i'm like trying to get out of bed and they diagnosed me with a second autoimmune disease called mixed connective tissue disease so it attacks my smooth muscles so like my heart and my lungs and um my organs it's been it's been pretty rough yeah yeah and i take medication i take this medicine called immune they put me on hydroxychloroquine but i was having muscle spasms it would cause me that muscle fashion so they took me off of that um and during colbit is kind of hard for me to get to my outside appointment so when i come up for minimum custody in june i was going to try to see if i could get out early so that i could get some get better medical care because they need to put me on something that's not that doesn't have a whole lot of side effects um with this imuran that i'm taking i take it three times a day and it causes headaches it causes nausea like i said this morning i couldn't even eat because my stomach was so upset um i lost like 10 pounds in the last two weeks because my stomach's been upset so let me try to write um but i was told to wait till i get to minimum custody and try to write some people on the child all right i'm sorry to hear about that you know you know i mean like you know like they say i don't look like what i've been through you know looking at me you would never be able to tell and people like what you have what because i i go outside and i walk three miles a day sometimes and you know i just i don't let it stop me i'm like april you know she you know she has ms but she still runs and exercises too so exactly that's who that's experience you gotta have you know yeah you can't let life stop you you gotta keep going exactly so i want to welcome you to the revival don vito show and um you know i you know i talked to april and she was telling me to you know tell me all about the case and you know she told me you was there and i said you know i like to get on the show and it puts just some light on her life right now and you know stuff like that so um can you tell everybody what your name is yeah my name is crystal mangum i'm from durham i was born and raised in durham i went to hillside high school and but at the age of 18 i left durham and i joined the military so um i was in the navy for about three years and i had three kids in the process of uh trying to figure figure life out and that caused me to go into exotic dancing and everything which led me to a whole different world that i i wasn't expecting um with the violence and the things that i encountered so i'm pretty sure a lot of people have heard about my case but a lot of it's a lot of things that people don't know um the main thing that i really want people to know is that i was treated unfairly um because of my race and because um i was poor basically and um i was taking advantage of i was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time um i guess i'm probably getting ahead of myself i don't want to um maybe i'm i don't i don't want to um over speak or is there anything in particular that you want me to talk about yes um yeah we're gonna we're gonna get into what you're talking about i want people to like get a good understanding of how you was raised or how you came up and why certain things happen you know it's all about um your story you know i'm not here to to judge you or anything like that i'm just here to shine a little light on your story and certain things you might want to the public to know like you said that they don't know because sometimes they don't put it in the news they always most most of the time they put the bad stuff and not some of the some of the good stuff that could have happened or did happen yeah i want i want to get into that but so when you say you're in the military and you've got three kids and you got to god again i was like as an exotic dancer you know trying to make a living for your kids and stuff like that well um in the beginning it was okay uh i was making a pretty good money uh when i when i initially started exotic dancing i i um [Music] went out with a guy that i met from high school named milton which i've eventually met later on um he took me on the um on trips like to different clubs and um [Music] it was at a club in hillsboro that i met a lady from the escort service and she taught me how i could make more money than what i was making at the time i was making about 300 or 400 a night and i was working three nights a week so i was averaging close to a thousand dollars a week and at the time i was going to durham technical community college and i was trying to study to be a nurse i was just trying to work my way out of the situation that i was in those the guys that i was seeing left me with two kids and basically told me i was on my own uh he he was from a rich family with a rich kid his dad was a retired lapd retired judge he was a white guy my first two kids are biracial so early on i experienced racism but at the time i didn't know it was racism i just saw it as an unfortunate situation that i found myself in and only thing that i really knew was how to survive you know i didn't really think at the time about the dynamics of everything and that you know he was a white guy that really pretty much took advantage of me and just looked at me as just a poor black girl that he could just use and just throw away um so he left me with two kids and um i figured okay i'll do this escorting thing and i'll try to earn as much money as possible so that i can get out and continue to go to school and become a nurse um support my kids in the meantime he's still behind the child support at the time he was something like ten thousand dollars behind in child support um so uh i i did about three three or four uh gigs with the escort service and the fourth gig was um at a fraternity house which at the beginning they told me it was a bachelor party with three or four guys and when i when i got there there were about 10 or 15 guys in the backyard and so immediately you know i knew that there was uh something more to the situation than what i was told because there was more than three or four guys obviously i'm sorry yeah it was on duke campus yeah it was at a fraternity house on duke campus but it was like it was dark and my driver took me and i wasn't really paying attention to even though i grew up in durham like they said markham street i wasn't really paying attention you have to really know me and like understand me to really know that i i don't really pay attention to a lot of detail i do now but like at the time i was like 24 25 i wasn't really paying attention to like my surroundings i took things for granted like i didn't equate markham street with duke university i just it's just another house on markham street you know with um and like i said it was supposed to be a bachelor party if if they had told me it was a fraternity party then maybe an alarm would have went off and said well okay yeah maybe this is associated with the university but because they told me it was a bachelor party i didn't really make the connection at the time more people than you expected yeah i i expected three or four guys uh the lady at the escort service told me there was only three or four guys there and when i got there there was that was like they were drinking out of like plastic cups and there was like 15 10 15 guys and there was one female in the backyard um of course when i got inside the house there was even more guys there there were maybe like 20 20 more guys inside so i'm like well this is just like we had no protection and like i said i took things for granted like now like walking into that situation like all kind of alarm bells will go off like no this is not right yeah i gotta get out now but at the time you know i just took it for granted okay i'm gonna get in and get out but um and then so many things went wrong like my driver went to sleep um he was supposed to come back and pick me up at one o'clock and supposed to be from 11 p.m to 1 00 am and he never came back he went to sleep so and then they took my cell phone so when they trapped me in the bathroom that i had no help like no one was there to help me and i had been drinking i drank like maybe three drinks before i got to the party and then he they gave me something at the party while we were in the bathroom uh while we were changing they were getting impatient so we rushed out and we tried to perform but they were so loud and like yelling at us and telling us to take our clothes off and just trying to tell us like what to do like we were like you know this was just [ __ ] and then kim the other dancer was like yelling back at them and i'm trying to calm her down and she's like no she's yelling at me so it was just so chaotic we ran back in the bathroom so at that point that's when we got separated and i can hear her yelling and screaming outside and they trapped me in the bathroom and um that's when they they raped me inside the bathroom at that point um they said that um they couldn't find like they found semen like inside my underwear and but they said it didn't match anybody at the um at the house because they rushed me to the hospital after um it happened they threw me in her car and took me to kroger parking lot where the police took me to the rape crisis center and then from there they took me to duke hospital and when they did the rape kit they said that um the demon didn't match any of the the players but the thing is is that they waited three days before they even searched the house and a lot of people don't know that like they were you have 60 seconds remaining good all right crystal hello yes i'm here um yeah yeah so um the d.a uh mike knife um he was trying to pressure the police department to go in and investigate and they were dragging their feet saying that um the duke campus police wouldn't let them go in and um nyson was upset because he was saying that duke police was running um or was telling um durham police what to do like he couldn't understand why they were following um duke's lead they were saying they couldn't overstep um duke's boundaries so it took three days for them to sort that out and in the meantime they said when they got there everything was cleaned up so the dna that they found they said it didn't match and then they said they said found dna that matched nightfall on uh on my talk or something so the dna was watched from the beginning um and then they started being stories about me changing my story and they kept coming back to me and asking me what was i sure if they used their penis or did they use a broomstick or something i said well i saw a broomstick handle but i was like out of it like i don't know what they use but i just know that it hurt really bad and so they started getting stories about i don't know if i was raped and they started twisting my words around and it just became so confusing and everything started playing out in the media but at the same time the police officers were telling me don't worry about it everything's gonna be fine don't talk to the media they were telling me um ignore the media don't talk to me and now i realized that it was being played out in the court of public opinion but without me like at the same time the police weren't doing anything so they were using the media against me but they were telling me not to say anything um and then it all fell apart when they set up a meeting with the attorney general's office in raleigh and i met with mary winstead and jim coleman and some members of the fbi and they sat me down for from like eight o'clock in the morning to like four in the afternoon and they basically grill me on everything from like the color of the rub to uh what the guys were wearing um the shade of their eyes like they were just asking me and and it was almost like i was not telling the truth because i couldn't remember certain things that were that had happened or it was to the point where when i left there i was almost a nervous breakdown at the point of a nervous breakdown um i just had my baby because i was also pregnant at the time so it's amazing that my baby actually made it because i was under so much stress [Applause] but you were pregnant while you were you were pregnant at the time when they um when the incident happened uh-huh yeah i was i was pregnant by yeah by matthew of the father of um i mean the guy that i was with at the time um they found out like three months into my pregnancy that i was pregnant and they had me um like basically stripped and took pictures of my naked body and then they did it again when i was like seven months pregnant and looking back on that like that was the most like private the most humiliating thing that i experienced like there was just so many things that wasn't so wrong that went on that i don't even think were legal and then the police officers were like laughing like oh yeah we're going to get them now we're going to have them all stirred up now like um when they see these pictures and then they started being rumors about the baby was lacrosse players um and then the media hike started up again i started having to hide out and um not being able to take my kids to school because they were in the kindergarten in first grade at the time my youngest two so it was a really really stressful period for me and the charges ended up being dropped when roy cooper um after the meeting with the attorney general um office roy cooper battle national television and declared an innocent uh basically he said that i was unstable and that i kept changing my story which none of those things were validated and he also said that the dna evidence was inconclusive which they never showed proof of any of the dna they gave me back all of the things that they tested which they shouldn't have done instead of keeping them as evidence they gave them to me um the meeting with the ag's office was not recorded um they pretty much tried it in the media and threw it out if they had gone to trial there was a i had a strong case uh they would have attacked me but there is there's no way that they would have been allowed to attack me anywhere close to the degree that the media attacked me um because the half of the things that the media was saying were not true like the media said that i was a drug user i've never used drugs in my life i've never been addicted to any type of drugs they said that i was bipolar i've never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder ever in my life um they said that i was a bad mother i've always been a single mother my kids have been with me my entire life they made up these fictitious names for my kids and they put these um fake pictures of my kids online that were not even mine uh they never there's it was just so many things that the media did that there were that were not true to make me look like a typical hood rat you know you think they did that when they were trying to protect the duke lacrosse team oh yeah and they they do it to black women all the time i mean it's just the typical stereotype of a black woman i mean you rarely see a black educated woman being stereotyped in the in the media especially on the news right i mean it's just not it's just not seen and then for a black woman to go against uh uh educated white male they have to make her look that way what you know they they're known for so they're very strong in sports and stuff like that as far as basketball and their name alone duke is a big game he's got a bunch of white boys he got one black girl and they they just goes down and they get found innocent you know it could be real bad so you didn't you would you didn't have you didn't have what it sounded like to me you didn't have like uh you didn't have a strong legal team to really go and fight for you and also you know change they make things to not match and make you look like you know what the hell you talk about so but now they try to expose you in the paper in the negative way yeah yeah sorry to hear that so so how long was this uh case going on a year two it's it started in um march of 2006 and it ended in april of 2007. okay so they did it real fast okay oh yeah yeah all right so they tried to get it out of um uh mike nyson's hands because mike knife off did everything by the book uh they tried to make him look bad and and just take it out of his hands because he he wouldn't uh try to cover things up and um he wasn't trying to side with them or take their money or bribe or um you know trying to cover it up he was trying to get to the truth okay so when they they let the guys go and you went on with your life so what happened to baby you were pregnant um she's 14 now she lives with her dad and um she's healthy she was born five weeks early because of the stress and everything that i was under but uh she's healthy now she has asthma and um eczema but um that's that's minor con considering what she was up against so um and my older two they're they're doing good they're with uh in california they uh supposedly are staying with their dad but he's not really there for them even now they're more there for him than he is for them but um they were in college they were in college but they had to drop out to uh pay to help him pay bills okay um question so how's your mom and pop are you still alive my dad passed away in in 2010 and um my mom she's all-time and she lives with with her uh sister her older sister um this has been really really hard on them because my mom especially knows the truth you know she knows that i i really struggle with understanding how people can be so evil and just so cruel and and it's ironic because a lot of people say that i'm a liar and i struggle to understand how people can so um viciously uh say these cruel and untrue things about me um so it's really the reverse you know it's true like they're lying on me and and not not me lying about them so it's and then when when rich people are guilty they get exonerated but me i'm innocent uh for defending myself against a man who tried to kill me now and i'm sitting in prison and i'm innocent um okay so let's let's let's just you had a boyfriend or something like that what happened yeah um uh there's a movie that's supposed to be coming out shown on this guy named joe in hollywood's working on a movie about a conspiracy uh where he thinks that duke actually kills my boyfriend to frame me to basically seal the bills and to prove that uh to to basically bolster their name to prove that i'm a bad person um but yeah so he was beating on me basically and i stabbed him he was going through alcohol withdrawal while in the hospital recovering from the sample okay so the stab wound didn't injure any organs um they said it mixed his spleen they repaired that with uh this thing called surgical so basically he recovered from that um he was going through with delirium tremens and so duke stabbed put him to sleep and they administered contrast down his throat supposedly to try to check to see if he had an infection because they said he was yelling and screaming incoherently and they thought maybe he had an infection uh they still don't have uh proof of exactly what he was saying or why they put him to sleep just because he was yelling but anyway they put him to sleep and put contrast down his throat he choked on the contrast then they tried to uh revive him or um resuscitate him and they administered air into his stomach or his esophagus instead of his trachea you have 60 seconds remaining into his esophagus they cut off his air supply and he died when they um they put him to sleep and they administer the contrast he choked and he stopped breathing so once they cleared his airway they put the um the breathing tube in his esophagus instead of his trachea they said it was a mistake and um it was a fatal mistake because whenever um my doctor uh friend told me that whenever you intubate somebody in the in their esophagus you have to open up their airway because if you don't you cut off all of their oxygen supply so when they um put the tube in his esophagus they cut off all of his oxygen supply for 20 seconds and he went brain dead um they did resuscitate him after they realized the mistake 20 seconds later but it was too late so he died basically and then he was on life support for 10 days after that meanwhile i'm in county jail thinking that he he's at home you know recovering i'm thinking that everything's fine i'm not knowing that he's basically um on life support because last time i saw him he was chasing me through the woods i was running for my wife so um he said he was taking you through the woods yeah he was choking me and i stabbed him in his side to get him off of me and when i got up to run out the door he was running after me and he checked me through the woods and my friend's house was on the other side of the woods and by the time i got to her door i seen him running back the other way towards the house and i guess we called the police at the same time so the uh i heard the police the 9-1-1 call later on and his cousin said uh yeah my cousin's been stabbed it was the crystal manga and at that point they sent like 30 30 police cars and they just came and arrested me and asked me any questions i tried to tell them that you know he was beating me and i was scared for my life and they didn't care right here that they just said um come on so they answer any questions you know usually in a domestic violence situation they ask questions uh right so it was an emotional part that turned into a first degree murder charge correct right right because you know um the reason it turned into a first degree murder charge is because they went back five days later to confiscate a check that was written to the apartment complex that they found in my purse uh with his name on it the apartment complex that we both live they said that i stole the money order but in the warrant it says that i stole 700 from him so in order to get a first-degree murder charge it has to be in the commission of another crime so they basically called it robbery saying that i stole the money order and that's the reason why i said which it had nothing to do the reason why i the confrontation began to start with was because he was jealous over a police officer that i was talking to in the parking lot that i had met about uh a year earlier that i had had a relationship with so you had a relationship with a police officer uh-huh okay um yeah and um wow so how did they how did um i don't know how did your community or how to reginald or how good uh you know the people feel about that that you uh in a relationship with a police officer um actually he testified at my trial of him and the detention officer that i was friends with they both testified at my trial and i chose not to disclose that at that time because it would just muddy the waters and just um [Music] not be a good thing so um oh yeah that was 14 to 18 years and how much time do you have been i've done 10 years as of um well like i said in jail i come up for minimum custody so as of the 27th of february i was at my five-year mark so i have under five years left okay you have one okay you got under five years left we're going to put you in there yeah yeah something like that right uh i'm going to swan to know which i think i said it's near rocky mountain i'm not rocking out um asheville it's in the mountains um do you get good time stuff like that to cut your time a little shorter yeah and that's included already i did uh two years in county so that's already included february 2026 is my release date but like i said i'm going to try to write to get released early based on my medical conditions yes with kobe yeah yeah i'm so gay so you're close to coming home how you feel about that i feel really good um i just talked to my editor this morning and i i wrote a book called last dance for grace and they trying to work on a movie uh based on that that book and then i have a another movie coming out about the medical issues dealing with reginald's death and then i just wrote another book uh called history her past that i'm trying to get published through amazon so financially i should be sure i should be good um i'm just focused on getting out and getting back with my kids they miss so much time you know i've missed so much out of their lives and they need me so much right now especially my son he's trying to be a man and he's just struggling he wants things to happen so fast and i keep telling him just take it one day at a time he's like mom trying i just i want you to get out and i want to help you and he's trying to be a man did anybody do a documentary or a movie on you yet no not yet that's what my editor is working on that um that movie uh last dance for grades based on the book that we wrote together and then the other like i said the other movie that they're trying to do but no not yet i'm working on it hbo excuse me if you're interested i'm sorry i have some people who might want to be interested we could talk later on that okay like what would be your angle have you thought about it i guess we have to we could talk once we get off this um recording thing you know we could talk yeah okay okay but uh meanwhile um so what did you do as far as like you know to better yourself like any educational stuff that you've been there i want to well i'll have my bachelor's in psychology and i was working towards my masters in psychology when i got this on charge i want to finish getting my masters but right now they have everything on hold because of kovitz um but yeah i wanted to get my master's in psychology and i also want to get a paralegal license because i want to work with young girls who have been victims of sexual abuse and keep them out of the system or at least help them in their early stages in the system that's my main focus right now uh in the meantime i'm working out trying to stay in shape i got up to like 165 but now i'm back at 150 so i want to stay at 150 i'm 5'4 um i try to keep my dress looking good and [Music] um i um i'm working right now and i'm in a work release program with correctional enterprise so we make about a thousand dollars every every three months it's pretty good for prison um [Music] so i crochet i'm learning how to knit like i said i love to work out and stay in shape keep in shape trying to keep my six pack yeah so how do you guys gotta compete with april eh working right now yeah yeah yeah i'm 42. so you'll be home before you're 46 47. you're still young yeah i'ma try to i'm angry for at least for next year i'm gonna start writing like i said it's as soon as soon as june hit i'm gonna start writing and i got some stuff lined up i'm excited so hello you have my uh you have my contact number so if you're available tomorrow give me a call tomorrow so you can talk okay i'll do that i'll do that it was nice talking to you and i was like it's just so overwhelming like trying to put everything together so i appreciate you helping me piece stuff together because it's it's frustrating yeah i can imagine that's why it's so april you know i wanted to talk to you and i wanted to interview you it just lets you you know a lot of times you were young when it happened you you you're more mature you're older you know you regret the things that happen you know uh you want to you want to you know uh start your new life and go on with your life because your kids are waiting for you and stuff like that and you know it's sometimes when a lot of a lot of people get they get they kind of lose people in the prison system you know like they treat you like you don't you don't live you're not living anymore so for you to do this interview you're going to kind of light on your life and it's called you know create some attention to who you are as a woman now you know what i'm saying yeah i'm definitely trying to better myself and i was definitely more on educational opportunities in the future all right so listen um uh great talking to you thank you for letting me interview today and like i said if you could give me a call tomorrow somewhere around noon and stuff like that we can talk about uh like a movie situation or documentary situation if you like okay i'll do that and and you know all right we already got her a situation going on right now so it definitely can happen okay okay what's the name of your um your show again vibing with don vito okay all right all right all right if any questions at facebook you can fit in with everything she knows everything and um you know we're gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna air it on on our channel on youtube and stuff like that you know create some awareness and stuff like that and then you know like i talked about it like doing a documentary stuff we could talk um you know once we get off the recorder tomorrow okay that's nice talking to you nice talking to you i've you got three things you give me your time you know and um i can see it changing you from the way you're talking like you you you talking very good very positive you grew up since you've been in prison as long as you believe in god we all could be forgiven trust that trust and believe that um definitely his mercy and grace that's the only way exactly so you have a great day and um i'm gonna talk to you tomorrow okay okay all right chris thank you have a good one thank you [Music] you