Topic category:  Other/General

Collin Finnerty was declared innocent of bogus kidnapping, rape and sexual offense charges by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and is moving on to Loyola of Maryland, where he should be beyond the reach of the scoundrels at Duke and in Durham, North Carolina.

Likewise, equally innocent Reade Seligmann should be safe at Brown University.

"Lucky" David Evans graduated before he was indicted and no longer is under indictment too.

So now it is particularly fitting to address the question, "Why did false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum accuse Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans?"

Unfortunately, Finnerty North Carolina attorney (and former North Carolina Democrat Party Chairman) Wade Smith promptly gave Attorney General Cooper a pass on not prosecuting Ms. Mangum for filing a false rape report. (Whether that was a gift of appreciation for that entirely deserved declaration of innocence or part of a quid pro quo, I do not know.)

If Ms. Mangum had been prosecuted, however, we might well have learned not only why Ms. Mangum kept the cruel Duke Hoax going so long, but why she made Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans "the winners" of what the families of the members of the 2005-2006 Duke University Men's Lacrosse Team called "the Crystal lottery."

I appreciate the phrase, but I think it is misleading: a lottery is supposed to be random and I doubt that any of the Three was picked randomly when Ms. Mangum finally got around to "identifying."

Recall Detective Himan's contemporaneous notes of Ms. Mangum's descriptions of the three alleged attackers.

Collin did not even remotely match any of the descriptions.

Yes, Collin closely matched one of Sergeant Gottlieb's belatedly claimed "from memory" versions of Ms. Mangum's description, but who really believes that Ms. Mangum actually said what Sergeant Gottlieb said she said instead of what Detective Himan's contemporaneous notes show she said?

Did Ms. Mangum do her own investigation of team members and figure out that Collin Finnerty's family was very wealthy?

Did someone do that for her?

If so, who?

There's no doubt that former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong should have announced after investigation and receipt of the DNA test results that he had no case against any of the team members instead of manipulating grand jurors into issuing unwarranted indictments against the Three targeted by Ms. Mangum.

But there's also no doubt that what Ms. Mangum did should be investigated and why she did it should be determined.

Such an investigation may uncover a conspiracy to obtain enormous sums of money from the families of the Three.

If that is the case, all the conspirators should be prosecuted.

North Carolina journalist and television commentator Cash Michaels reported on an alleged attempt to buy off Ms. Mangum for more than $1,000,000 after her phony gang rape claim.

I doubt there was one.

I do not find it credible that Ms. Mangum picked the Three at random. After all, according to the second stripper, Ms. Mangum said that she wanted to go back to that party after the fabricated gang rape because there was money to be made.

There's ample justification for investigating whether Ms. Mangum kept the Hoax going for financial reasons.

But the North Carolina authorities apparently don't dare go there.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.