What will Mangum do?

A book is to be published in October by the Duke hoax false accuser Crystal Mangum.

There’s understandably a good deal of concern among fair-minded people that Mangum will use the book to reprise her lies which did such great harm to many innocent people.

In the same Apr. 11, 2007 press conference in which he told us the three players were innocent and there’d never been any credible evidence of their guilt, NC Attorney General Roy Cooper said some in his office thought Mangum might actually believe some of what she’d charged and that she still wished to pursue the charges even then.

So it’s certainly possible we’ll get a reprise of her lies.

But it’s also possible we might get a surprise.

Let me tell you why I say that:

From March 2006 at least through December 2006 Mangum demonstrated some capacity to cooperate in a plan we know was an elaborate frame-up attempt.

She gave an interview to the N&O and only to the hoax-enabling N&O. She kept showing up for photo ID sessions until Nifong and certain DPD officers and their supervisors arranged the “no wrong choices” ID session. She wrote out a statement that fit the frame-up script. And in December she met with Linwood Wilson and “adjusted” or went along with an “adjustment” to her story intended to sustain the frame-up attempt.

I’m confident she allowed herself to be “coached.” It wasn’t just happenstance, for example, that she gave only the N&O an interview.

Had she given more than one press interview, heaven only knows what wild embellishments we’d have heard.

Someone or some people told her “your story is ‘out there’ now” and not to speak to any of the other media trying to interview her. Another news organization would likely not “tidy up” the interview the way the N&O did.

Mangum followed that advice.

Like most of you, I think she persisted in long-term, goal-directed behavior and allowed herself to be “coached” because of a powerful motivator: the money she expected to collect from the players.

Now, if today Mangum’s no worse off as regards her chronic problems than in 2006, then she’s open to “coaching” and can follow a plan she thinks will lead to money.

If you allow that Mangum’s prime motive is money, would she and her “coaches’ really write (lend her name to) a book that tries to further victimize the lacrosse players and possibly make the case for a suit against them?

Wouldn’t that be foolish?

The players have the evidence (or really lack thereof), brilliant legal counsel and impressive financial resources on their side. She has none of them.

The last thing Mangum should do is anything that’ll antagonize the players, their families and attorneys. (And the blog hooligans)

Her best move as regards the players is to say she remembers a foggy night in Durham town followed by lots of police interviews and all those photos of white boys (“Gee, this is hard.”) and her Duke medical records showing “blunt force trauma” and so on.

Mangum should say that looking back on it all now, she’s sorry for what the players went through.

What’s more, while at the time she had lots of mental health and drug dependence problems, she doubts she would ever have persisted in her wild tales but for the police, the DA, the N&O, the “outpouring of support from Duke faculty, the NAACP and ‘community activists,’” and what she thought her Duke patient records showed, but which she now knows were false.

Folks, you see where I’m going, don’t you?

Are the people “coaching” Mangum smart enough to know they don’t want attorneys of the caliber of Brendan Sullivan, Barry Scheck, Charles Cooper and Bob Ekstrand turning on Mangum and, for practical purposes, them?

You’d have to be pretty dumb not to.

On the other hand, if a woman who should have been told in March 2006 “Get thee to a mental health clinic while Social Services takes temporary custody of your children,” was instead told, “We’ll come pick you up and bring you to headquarters for some more photo ID’ing,” might she not wonder now in a more sober frame of mind whether she was really mistreated by Durham City Police?

And might she not say maybe she’s owed something for being mistreated “just like those white lacrosse boys who all look alike?”

And then there’s Duke’s (Levicy’s) treatment of Mangum’s medical records and the false statements made about her medical condition.

When health professionals employed by a medical center make false statements about how you presented in the ER and about your medical records, do you have some cause of action against the professionals and the medical center?

Folks, the thoughts I’ve put down here today have been going through my head for a long time.