Woman who lied about being raped by three men at party released from prison following murder conviction
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Queen City News
A woman who falsely accused three members of a lacrosse team of sexually assaulting her has been released from prison after being jailed for the killing of her boyfriend.
Crystal Mangum was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 after the April 2011 stabbing of her boyfriend Reginald Daye.
After being found guilty of the stabbing, Mangum was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Now, after serving her custodial sentence Mangum has been released on parole.
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She will be subject to her parole conditions for another nine months before her sentence is fully completed.
Mangum was released from North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, where she was led to a car where a parole officer took her to a friend's place in Durham, where she will be living.
Former exotic dancer Mangum had previously been thrust into the national spotlight when she falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her.
Mangum and another dancer had performed at a party which the lacrosse players had thrown on March 13 2006.
After the party, she falsely accused the athletes of the assault.
The case would go on to capture national attention, raising issues around class, gender, race, and sex work.
Speaking to Katerena DePasquale’s Let’s Talk with Kat podcast in 2024, Mangum said: “I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong."
She added: “I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me and made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God, and that was wrong when God already loved me for who I was."
After the case, Durham County Attorney Mike Nifong was later discovered to have withheld crucial evidence from defence lawyers.
This could have resulted in the athletes being cleared much earlier. Nifong was disbarred in 2007.
After she was accused of killing Mangum, a police officer who interviewed her boyfriend Reginald Daye in hospital before his death testified that he had said that he told Mangum to leave their apartment because he was fed up with her bringing other men round, according to news reports from WRAL.
In court, Mangum said that Daye had hit her, choked her, and kicked open the bathroom door where she was hiding before dragging her out by her hair.
The police officer said that Daye had acknowledged kicking open the bathroom door and dragging Mangum by her hair, but claimed that he had been trying to get away from her when she stabbed him.