Lacrosse Players' Case a Trial for Parents

Fogarty said one of the dancers hurled her own racially and sexually demeaning remarks.

The vile e-mail was a reference to the violent cult movie "American Psycho," they later learned. "I don't know how you could ever justify that," Walsh said. "He was trying to be funny. He wasn't."

"Stupid," said Clute, summing up the entire night.

But a long way from the heinous allegation of rape, according to Walsh, who said these "tangential issues" obscured the essential fact that no assault had occurred. "I'm not saying these aren't important issues to talk about, but the fate of these boys' lives are being lost in the shuffle."

Their lawyers told the parents to keep quiet, no matter how difficult. There were former headmasters, coaches and priests who spoke on their sons' behalf.

The contrast was sharply drawn: privileged white athletes against a black single mother putting herself through college while moonlighting for an escort service. The 27-year-old accuser wasn't talking, but her elderly parents, with only a screened porch on a shotgun house to protect them from the TV cameras, came out to say how much they loved their daughter. The NAACP was calling for justice.

In the court of public opinion, the lacrosse players were losing. Walsh talked to his cousin, Bob Bennett, President Bill Clinton's lawyer in the Paula Jones case. Some parents felt bringing Bennett on as an adviser was a good idea, but others feared his prominence would somehow imply guilt. Bennett worked behind the scenes.

He could do nothing to stop Nifong's prosecution. Even though the DNA tests showed no clear matches, a grand jury indicted Reade Seligmann of Essex Fells, N.J., and Collin Finnerty of Garden City, N.Y., both sophomores whom the accuser apparently identified in a photo lineup.

"That made me know that this whole thing was a spin of the roulette wheel," Fogarty said.

Nifong said a third indictment is likely.

The parents went to Durham to cheer their sons, and held group meetings. The mother who used to assign parents' tailgate duties was now e-mailing daily news coverage. The one news outlet they felt was challenging the prosecutor's narrative was "The Abrams Report" on MSNBC, hosted by Dan Abrams, a Duke alumnus. They started funneling him tips.

Just when they thought the evidence was breaking their way -- a second round of DNA testing that provided no conclusive matches, ATM and taxi records for Seligmann that showed he was not in the house during the time frame the woman provided, the toxicology report that never materialized to show the woman may have been given a date rape drug, and conflicting medical records about the woman's physical condition during her rape exam -- a third player was indicted. He was David Evans, a team captain and Landon grad from Bethesda.