That Night at Duke

The room went dead silent as the North Carolina attorney general, Roy Cooper, began to speak. The three Duke lacrosse players and their families were gathered in front of a TV at the Raleigh Sheraton Hotel to learn how the state would proceed in a criminal investigation that had appalled and titillated the nation for more than a year. Reade Seligmann was praying, and so was Collin Finnerty, heads bent down, bobbing slightly as the attorney general spoke slowly. The families were pretty sure, based on signals from the attorney general's office, that the case would be dropped. But when the families heard the word "innocent," they erupted. "I was hysterically crying," recalls Seligmann, a strapping 21-year-old. "Everybody was hysterically crying. People were swarmed. It was like a pile-on."

The elation could not erase some bitter memories. Finnerty could recall the dread he felt as he peered over his father's shoulder that day in April 2006. His dad, Kevin Finnerty, was writing down what the family's lawyer was telling him on the phone, that Collin—Duke sophomore, gifted student-athlete, seemingly destined for good things in life—had just been charged with rape. Collin wept—his stunned girlfriend, Jessica Hannan, had never seen him cry before—overwhelmed with the realization that he could go to prison for 30 years for a crime he did not commit.

Finnerty, Seligmann and the third duke player charged in the rape case, David Evans, were vindicated last week. The attorney general did not just find "insufficient evidence," as prosecutors usually do when they drop a criminal charge. Cooper declared that the three players were innocent, that no rape had taken place, that a "rogue prosecutor" had overreached and that, "in the rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see clearly."

For the players, listening to Cooper's announcement was like stepping through a looking glass. For many months, they had lived in an alternate universe. There was the "reality" that endlessly replayed on cable TV: that some loutish, vicious, pampered jocks had raped an exotic dancer. Then there was the tawdry but mundane truth: that some foolish and crude college boys had hired two strippers and reaped nothing but shame. For young men accustomed to success, the feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness, was lonely and isolating. It was also maturing.

After the A.G.'s announcement, Finnerty and Seligmann, as well as their parents, some siblings and Finnerty's girlfriend, spoke to NEWSWEEK about the experience. The magazine also obtained the handwritten statements given by Evans and the other two team captains, Daniel Flannery and Matthew Zash, to the Durham police two days after the alleged rape. The statements, never before made public, and interviews with defense attorneys familiar with the evidence, tell the real story of what happened that night.

Evans, a Duke senior, was an old-fashioned Big Man on Campus—co-captain of a lacrosse team in the running for a national championship, a young man with a Wall Street job lined up after graduation. But on this mild night in March he was, in effect, master of ceremonies for a strip show. Though Duke was on spring break, the players had stayed on campus to practice, and they decided they needed a little diversion. Along with his co-captains, Evans had invited the team over to the house on North Buchanan Boulevard to watch a pair of exotic dancers perform.