Updated Monday April 4, 1 PM.. Crystal Gail Mangum, the Durham prostitute whose incendiary lies touched off the lacrosse hoax, is under arrest again -- this time charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit robbery and inflicting serious injury.
At her first appearance (in this case) before a judge, Mangum was ordered held in $300,000 bail. Far less than each of the lax players, by the way.
Police responded two times early Sunday morning to the apartment were Mangum was living at 3507 Century Oaks Drive.
The first was over a rent dispute; we know that the man who leased the apartment let Mangum and her three kids move in with him after a couple of dates.
Around 3:15 AM Sunday, police responded again, finding a 46 year old man stabbed in the torso. We believe the location is just south of the NCCU campus in the Emory Woods Orchards development. Mangum was found cowering in a nearby apartment.
A neighbor identified the victim as Reggie Wilson, who was in "bad shape" when taken to Duke Hospital. Duke Hospital has a policy of not giving out condition reports on victims of violent crime.
Crystal, now 32, is an honors graduate of North Carolina Central, getting her diploma just months after a Duke lax party where she was hired as a stripper. She ignited the 2006 lax hoax by falsely crying rape. Durham's dishonest DA carried the charges forward until the state attorney general took over, declaring three lax players under indictment to be "innocent."
Nifong himself was subsequently disbarred and convicted of criminal contempt of court, for which he served a symbolic one day in prison.
Mangum escaped prosecution for her part in the hoax -- for example filing false police reports -- because the state attorney general considered her a loon.
Before the hoax, she had been charged with attempted murder of a cop -- trying to run him down with a taxi cab that she stole. The felonies were reduced and she served probation.
Last December, she was convicted of five misdemeanor charges, including child abuse. Originally charged with felonies including attempted murder, she had allegedly set fire to the house that she and her boyfriend were in, along with her kids.
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