Woman Convicted of Murdering Boyfriend Blames Police Prejudice: "I Want People to Know the Truth"

When Crystal Mangum’s son witnessed his terrified and battered mother come rushing into their Durham, North Carolina home in April 2011, the young boy called police for help.

His mother, 32, told him that she had been with her boyfriend, 46-year-old Reginald Daye, and after getting in a fight, Mangum stabbed Daye.

“She kept telling me, like, he was beating her,” RJ Ramseier, Mangum’s son, said on Snapped: Behind Bars, airing Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen. “That she did it in self-defense. I was definitely scared for her. I’d never seen her frantic like that.”

It wasn’t Mangum's first run-in with the law.

In 2006, the then-27-year-old falsely accused members of the Duke University lacrosse team of rape. And in 2010, she was charged and arrested after a fight with her boyfriend, Milton Walker. It was a little over a year later that she stabbed another boyfriend: Reginald Daye. Now, more than a decade into her prison sentence, she’s sharing her story from the North Carolina Correction Institute for Women.

Her story was first told during Season 24, Episode 7 of Snapped, which aired on Oxygen in 2018.

“I want people to know the truth surrounding Reginald Daye’s death,” Crystal Mangum said on Snapped: Behind Bars. “It’s frustrating to know that I’m sitting in jail for a crime that not only I didn’t commit, but a crime that doesn’t exist.”

Read on to learn more about the bombshell autopsy report that’s now casting doubt on Mangum’s guilt, as well as how she feels she was mistreated by police, prosecutors, and the community.

On April 3, 2011, Crystal Mangum and her boyfriend, Reginald Daye, got into a fight after attending a party with Daye’s family. Daye’s nephew and neighbor called police after the altercation turned violent. Officers found a knife stabbed into the armrest of a couch, knives scattered across the kitchen floor, holes in the bathroom door, and blood on the floor.

Crystal Mangum. Photo: Oxygen

“I was still in fight or flight mode after I stabbed him,” Mangum said. “I didn’t even have enough strength to call the police. It took all the strength in me just to run. I went through a period of shock. I felt at my lowest.”

Mangum ran to the home where her children were living, and her young son called 911 for help.

“They just arrested me. They didn’t ask me what happened or anything,” Mangum said. “When they got to the apartment, they didn’t ask me any questions, they just said, ‘Get up, Crystal.’”

Mangum said she explained to police that she stabbed Daye in self-defense during a fight.

“Reginald started yelling at me,” Mangum claim. “And he hit me … I locked myself in the bathroom to get away from him. What more could I do? He kicked the door in. He was not in his right mind.”

She claimed to police that Daye took knives from the kitchen and began throwing them at her, before trying to strangle her on the floor.

“I was no match for him, so I stabbed him to get him off of me,” Mangum claimed.

Police said Mangum’s injuries during her arrest matched her story of self-defense.

“I observed her physically distraught,” Al Brown, Durham police crime scene specialist, said on Snapped: Behind Bars. “She was upset. And she appeared like she had been in an assault. Her hair was just a mess. She had a swollen face. She had wounds on her hands and arms that was consistent with being defensive wounds.”

Daye, who was in the hospital after the attack, admitted to police to hitting and jumping on Mangum during a fight. He also admitted he kicked the bathroom door open and pulled her hair. But he claimed that it was Mangum who ran into the kitchen and took the knives to attack him.

“He said that I was the aggressor, but I don’t know where he got that from. He was the aggressor,” Mangum said.

Ten days after he was stabbed, Reginald Daye died in the hospital, and murder charges were filed against Crystal Mangum.

Crystal Mangum became a notorious public figure after she falsely accused members of the Duke University lacrosse team of rape in 2006. She was working as an exotic dancer to help pay for college and was hired by the group of lacrosse players to perform at a party at their house. She later identified three players as raping her at the party, but DNA testing showed the players had no connection to her. The attorney general dropped all charges against them, but in the process, Mangum became a household name in Durham.

“I believe the police treated my mom not as the victim as she was, but because of what happened with Duke, she was just judged based off of who they thought she was,” Ramseier said. “It was a lot going against her and not too much going for her.”

In November 2013, she went on trial for Reginald Daye’s murder.

“My biggest fears were that people were going to judge me based on the Duke case. And not on the facts,” Mangum said. “In court, they made it seem like I was the aggressor.”

Prosecutors called Mangum’s ex-boyfriend, Milton Walker, as a witness, and he provided damaging testimony. The couple got into a fight one year before Daye’s death.

“Milton Walker took the stand and said, ‘She threatened to kill me with knives.’ She then burns all his stuff in the bathtub,” Amanda Lamb, reporter for WRAL-TV, explained on Snapped: Behind Bars.

On Nov. 22, 2013, she was found guilty of Daye’s murder, and sentenced to 14-18 years in prison.

“When they read the verdict of guilty, I thought, ‘Lord, help me,’” Mangum said. “I just didn’t have any more faith in the judicial system at that point. I felt like I was all alone. And I just felt like I was free-falling into a whole new world.”  

In 2019, a new report from a renowned pathologist found that Crystal Mangum was not responsible for Reginald Daye’s death. Dr. Cyril Wecht wrote a report stating after Daye had a successful surgery, he went into respiratory distress, and doctors believed they placed a tube in his trachea to help him breathe.

“It looks like on the first attempt they actually placed that tube into the esophagus,” said Meredith Wessel, assistant to Dr. Cyril Wecht, on Snapped: Behind Bars. “Unfortunately, they did not catch that, and so he was deprived of oxygen, which ultimately caused irreversible brain damage.”

Wecht believed that Mangum’s death was an accidental death from the misplaced tube, not a murder from the stab wound. Following the report, Mangum filed a lawsuit to compel the North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner to review Daye’s autopsy. But in April 2023, the medical examiner concluded the stabbing was the official cause of death. Mangum appealed, but a judge declined to hear her case in July 2024.

Mangum is still hoping to get her name cleared one day.

“I’m just grateful to be alive,” she said. “I regret that he lost his life. I felt like I didn’t have any other choice.”

Mangum is expected to be released from prison in 2026, at the age of 47.

Watch all-new episodes of Snapped: Behind Bars on Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen.