The Damage Done

More and more the case has become as much about Nifong's actions as about what happened that night. Nifong has declined repeated SI requests for an interview, and since winning the May 2 primary, he has been markedly mum. He polled 2 to 1 among African-American voters, an advantage that more than accounted for his victory margin of 883 votes.

"People say it's maybe political: I can't read his mind," Bethea-Shields says. "I'm more concerned with the effect it has on that young lady and those 46 young men and whoever else has been swept up in this whirlpool. If you want to say it's about sexism or classism? It's about all that. But the basic thing is, was there a crime? Will we ever get to the truth?"

THE COACH

THE THREATS began on March 25, the day Duke athletic director Joe Alleva announced the forfeiture of two lacrosse games. Coach Mike Pressler's in-box filled with e-mails detailing the harm he would suffer. His wife, Susan, fielded anonymous hate calls. He sent his eight-year-old daughter out of town. For several days the Blue Devils' coach would get up at 5 a.m. to tear down the signs taped to his house. DO YOUR DUTY. TURN THEM IN, read one; the rest he won't repeat. One day, while he walked in his driveway, a car sped by and three eggs shattered at his feet. "Boom, boom, boom," Pressler says.

He gave, until now, no interviews. Sleep? "One eye open: You don't sleep at all," Pressler says of the first week after the rape allegations became public. "If something does happen, it's my home and my family, and I've got to be ready for that. And then there's the anxiety: What's next if the season's canceled? If changes are made? I've got to keep my cool for my family and the players. If the guys see I'm frazzled, it's going to filter down. But when I was alone, you can imagine what was going through my mind."

So far, no one has taken a more obvious hit from the case than the 46-year-old Pressler, the 2005 national coach of the year, a man who had spent the last 16 years building the Duke program to the highest level. On April 5 he woke up still thinking he could salvage the season. Then, around noon, news broke of McFadyen's e-mail, which described how he would kill and skin a stripper at the next party while gratifying himself in his " Duke issue spandex." Few outside the team knew that McFadyen's twisted boast was a takeoff on American Psycho, the Bret Easton Ellis novel that will be taught in at least two classes at Duke this fall. But even those who vouch for McFadyen's character were horrified. "Based on the context, where we were with the case?" Pressler says. "We all let out a gasp."

"Kerosene," says one top school official. Symbolically, it was the Duke case's equivalent of the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, confirming all the worst suspicions about the roles of class, race, sex, power and privilege at the university. In the face of what Duke president Richard Brodhead refers to as "the heightened, not to say hysterical" tone of those speaking out, he had little choice. McFadyen was suspended, and five committees were formed to investigate the program and Duke's response to the rape allegations. Half an hour after the e-mail was made public in court, Pressler met with Alleva, who offered him the choice of resigning or accepting an indefinite suspension. In other words: Quit or wait to be fired.

Pressler will only say, "I resigned." But no one close to the program buys that. As Mark Anderson, Pressler's lawyer, puts it, "Mike was the sacrificial lamb."

Before Pressler's arrival in 1991, Duke lacrosse was a perennial ACC also-ran; last spring the Blue Devils lost to Johns Hopkins by a goal in the NCAA championship game. Pressler has graduated 100% of his players, and from 2001 to '05 twice as many of his players made the ACC academic honor roll as did lacrosse players at any other conference school. Though everyone knew the 2006 season would be about winning the national title, Sherwood says Pressler more often stressed increasing the team's honor-roll numbers. After his midterm grades came out last fall, Sherwood, a third-string walk-on out of Baldwin ( N.Y.) High, was confronted by Pressler. The coach assigned Flannery to find him two tutors, and Sherwood's freshman teammates began riding him about his studies. On the field and off, the team motto applied: All in, all the way.

"Right then I knew Pressler was another parent for me," Sherwood says.