Shocking Transcripts in ‘Cornell 7 Gang Rape’ — Why Aren’t They Facing Charges?

Shocking new details raising new questions for the alleged Cornell 7 and the district attorney whose office decided not to prosecute them. We're now hearing about what Jane Doe allegedly told investigators in 2024. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. In a newly leaked transcript, and the district attorney says he never saw it, including the victim saying, quote, I can say with 100% confidence I was raped. It's just another layer to this story, raising the question, why weren't any of the seven fraternity brothers charged? We're on the case presented by Law and Crime. I'm Chris Stewart. So this new transcript, which CBS News New York was able to get through sources, is raising new questions about why criminal charges were never filed in connection to the Cornell 7. The students were punished by the university. Two of them were expelled, but nothing from the DA's office, even though that DA now says he is revisiting the case and plans to present it to a grand jury. Now, we had an interview today set up with the district attorney of Tompkins County, New York, Matthew Van Houten, and we had it on the book since yesterday, and we were really hoping to talk to him about this transcript now that this information has been made public. And the fact that he said he didn't know, and he said he didn't know, and the fact that he said he didn't know, and the fact that he said he didn't know, and the fact that he said he did not know about that transcript. He's done several media interviews since Jane Doe's lawsuit came to light, but today, just a couple hours before we were set to talk to him, he canceled the interview telling us that he needs to shift his focus to the investigation and to pursuing the additional evidence that has recently come to light, and he won't be doing any more media appearances at this time, but he will keep the public informed on the developments of this case and any action by a grand jury. Now, Van Houten told CBS News New York he never saw this 2024 transcript that the TV station was able to get, and in this transcript, reportedly, the victim, Jane Doe, in this case says that with, quote, 100% confidence, she was raped, and yet the DA's office decided not to press charges. Now, Cornell University did its own investigation into the case, and two of the seven men named in Jane Doe's lawsuit, they're a fraternity, and they're a fraternity, and they're a fraternity, and they're brothers. They were expelled from the Ivy League school, and then the five others received lesser penalties like suspensions. Now, the public didn't seem to have any knowledge of this case until this month when Jane Doe filed this bombshell lawsuit laying out what she says happened inside this fraternity house in October of 2024, the Chi Phi fraternity house in Cornell, and the frat's been kicked off campus. Now, I'm going to run through some of the details briefly, and then I'm going to show you what this fraternity house in Cornell has done. I'm going to run through some of the details briefly, and then I'm going to show you what this fraternity house in Cornell has done. John Doe alumni and John Doe's on the executive board, and the suit also names Orazio Petito, who is reportedly the president of Chi Phi back in 2024. Now, according to the filing, quote, on the evening of October 19th, 2024 into the morning of October 20th, 2024, plaintiff Doe was the victim of one or more criminal sex acts at the hands of defendants Ingalls, Newell, Lee, Lopez, Sarabia, Norris, and Kretschmar. John Doe was the victim of one or more criminal sex acts at the hands of defendants Ingalls, Newell, Lee, Lopez, Sarabia, Norris, and Kretschmar. The lawsuit says that Jane Doe, who is a member of Delta Delta Delta, went to a Greek life event in Ithaca at this bar called Mooney's, and she drank vodka. And the suit says that she had 10 drinks in just about three hours, and the victim was reportedly just 20 years old, so below the legal drinking age. She says after going to that bar and another nightclub, she goes to Chi Phi, and she went there to hang out with someone she thought of as a friend. His name is Matthew Ingalls, and he is one of the so-called Cornell Seven. Jane Doe claims that Ingalls was the victim of one or more criminal sex acts at the hands of defendants Ingalls gave her a beer, and the two danced in the main room of the fraternity house. The pair then moves to a quieter area where Jane Doe says Ingalls propositioned her to participate in a threesome with another fraternity brother. The lawsuit alleges that Jane Doe was too incapacitated to consciously agree to something like that, but says Ingalls left her alone with other frat members before reportedly offering her drugs. The filing then gets into some very disturbing and alleged specifics. While on the couch, defendant Ingalls and Newell began passing around a plastic bag containing a white powdery substance claimed to be ketamine, which is a dissociative, anesthetic, and hallucinogenic property. Defendants Ingalls and Newell then pressured plaintiff into snorting the alleged ketamine with them, a drug she had never done before. During this time, defendant Ingalls and Newell also plied plaintiff with a drug that with marijuana and Jamaican liquor, believed to be some type of high-proof rum. Soon after, defendant Ingalls and Newell began engaging in sex acts with plaintiff, all without her consent. And this lawsuit goes on, saying that defendant Lopez and Newell then placed plaintiff on a bed, and the two men began having sex with plaintiff, initiating another assault, all without plaintiff's consent. At approximately 1.42 a.m., defendant Newell sent a message into a member's Snapchat group titled Chi Phi Actives, in which the active fraternity members are present, claiming there was, and I'm not going to say the word here, but. This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. If you're looking for a better way to save on electricity, both night and day, look no further than TXU Energy Free Nights and Cool Summer. It gives you free energy all night, every night, all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use every summer. It's the only plan that lets you use free energy to get more savings. So while nights are always free, summer days are always free. So if you're looking for a better way to save now, always discounted. With savings like that, you'll never look at a free night's plan the same way again. Learn more at TXU.com. Rep number 1-0-0-0-4. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. You know what? Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. See terms. Free P word upstairs referring to plaintiff they're at. So there is an actual screenshot of the alleged Snapchat conversation, which is included in the lawsuit, and it shows supposed messages from defendants Norris, Kretzmar, Ingalls, and Lee. The lawsuit continues to go into further more graphic detail. of what Jane Doe says happened to her. She claims that she was raped multiple times, that she was made to take ketamine multiple times, and was allegedly subjected to having multiple men inhale drugs off her. Jane Doe says she eventually lost consciousness, and when she woke up, she made it back to her sorority. And according to the lawsuit later that day, plaintiff became aware of what had happened to her at the house the previous night, and that it was becoming public knowledge on Cornell's campus. And with the encouragement of her friends, on or about November 8, 2024, plaintiff reported the incident to Cornell's private police force, known as Cornell University Police Department. On or about November 8, 2024, temporary suspensions were also issued for several students, including defendants Ingalls, Newell, Lee, Lopez, Sarabia, Norris, and Kretzmar, who were afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to Cornell. Now, that part of it, the idea that you have these people who have been punished, at least in the academic side of things, and then were told that they could mitigate that punishment by writing essays, I mean, that grabbed a lot of headlines, and Cornell has pushed back on that part of the story, and we'll have their statement here in just a bit. Now, D.A. Van Halen has said that the information that he had in his office at the time when they decided not to move forward with charges is different from what Jane Doe is now saying in this lawsuit. But we're also now seeing what Jane Doe reportedly told the police in her own words, because there is a transcript that CBS News New York obtained through sources of when Jane Doe met with Cornell police in November 2024. It's just about three weeks after she says she was raped in the fraternity house. The transcript says that a campus police investigator asked the questions, but a Title IX investigator? victim advocate and Jane Doe's advisor were also there on the first day. Jane Doe allegedly told the investigator that she had been drinking and using drugs and that she had gaps in her memory, which is consistent, it seems, with what's alleged in the lawsuit. Jane Doe alleged that there was sexual activity in the beginning that was consensual. She said, yeah, as much as I can be, because again, I was super drunk when I got there, but I was pretty okay with all of this. She also said, quote, and then of course I was being hit at the same time, physically hit very, very hard. She then goes on to say that she doesn't remember the end of the night, quote, where I was raped. She says it's unclear how many people had sex with her that night. And she also says, quote, I can say with 100% confidence I was raped. Jane Doe allegedly told the investigator back in November, 2024, that she swatted one man's hand away and told him she was uncomfortable. And she told another man, quote, no, a few times. Now in the back and forth, apparently in this transcript, the detective does ask Jane Doe if she actually said the word no, or if it was something like she was too tired. And allegedly Jane Doe responded saying, I think it's I'm tired. Now the detective then asked if Jane Doe just, quote, gave in to the man. And she said, no, I don't think I'm tired. And she said, no, I'm tired. And she gave in to the men's sexual advances. And she said, reportedly, quote, yes, it was coercion. Yes. Saying she was, quote, completely and totally incapacitated. Now these are her words back in 2024. Jane Doe then signed a six page statement of what she had reportedly said. And in the transcript, she goes on to say, quote, I'm very confident about this. Van Houten told CBS News New York that he never saw this transcript. He said that his decision not to bring charges was based on Jane Doe's signed statement in 2024. That statement hasn't been made public. When Van Houten was told about the line where you have a alleged victim saying with 100 percent certainty she was raped, he told CBS News New York, quote, if she had said those words, we certainly would want to have explored that more. Like I said, that wasn't provided to me. But he says now he's looking for that transcript. himself. Join us now to talk more about this. Vinny Palitan, host of Vinny Palitan Investigates over on the Court TV YouTube channel. Always good to collab with you on these, Vinny. You know, this transcript comes out today and you see that line that Jane Doe had said in 2024 that she, you know, with 100 percent certainty or confidence that she had been raped. And the thing for me is like at this point, like we don't know what happened and they're investigating it and seeing if they can unearth anything new. But it just seems like, you know, it's like, you know, we keep hearing about like an inconsistency of information going from police and whatever they heard back in 2024. It goes through whatever chain of command and then it gets to the office where the person makes the decision whether they're going forward. And now we're hearing there's a ton of stuff that they didn't hear about back when they made this decision. Right. And it seems the decision was made based upon a written statement. Now, the statement had been reviewed by the accuser had been signed by the accuser, but it wasn't all the information. The best holiday finds aren't always the ones you went looking for. At Ross, discover unexpected gifts, fashion, decor and plenty of reasons to keep looking. Ross, expect the unexpected. And it wasn't every statement that she had made. And I think what may have happened here, this is a it seems like it's a smaller jurisdiction in the DA's office where I worked. We had a sex crimes unit in the prosecutor's office, so they would handle sex crimes in the entire jurisdiction. So they had specialized investigators who were who understood how to interview accusers, how to interview victims of sexual assault and how to get to the truth. Right. Because it's a really difficult type of crime to investigate, because especially when you talk about an issue of in this case, it looks like consent is the issue. Did she or did she not consent? Could she consent? What was her state of inebriation, et cetera? Was it voluntarily under the influence or involuntarily? I mean, there's a lot of issues like that that need to be gone through. But without the specialized type of investigation and sensitivity that maybe they just didn't have in the office, I don't know. It seems like something got got missed here. And the DA didn't have all the information. The DA was relying upon a written statement. But the DA's didn't do their own investigation. They relied on the locals to do it. And the locals here, you know, do they have an expertise in that area? I doubt it. It's the campus police. It's the Cornell University Police Department. Are they specialized and have the specialized training to deal with victims of sexual assault or accusers in cases like this? To me, that's where everything kind of comes down to. I mean, I don't think they had the information. I don't think the DA had all the information. And I don't think they had the mechanism in place to get all the information, which is probably something that they should have. Right. And, you know, you think of like campus, I mean, campus sexual assaults, like it's a problem across the country. And you would hope that a campus police department, you know, of the thing, you know, like, you know, those of us who went to college, like drinking, you're going to deal with when you're a campus cop, like you're going to have to deal with drunk kids. But then also, sadly, like this is an issue that comes up a lot on campuses. And you would hope that, you know, you're going to have to deal with, you know, that Cornell University would be able to, you know, have officers who'd be able to handle this. Like, and it's unclear, you know, at this point, if there was, you know, what that looks like, but the transcript part of it, Vinny, because you do have this statement and the statement, like, according to the article that CBS News New York did, like the statement came from this, this meeting that she had. And you have like a title nine investigator who's there. You have like, you know, advisors who were there. She's talking to an officer. And then you have the statement that apparently the DA went off of and not. Pressing charges. But also the transcript in this meeting has her saying a hundred percent certainty that she was raped. And it's like, how often would a prosecutor look at the transcript from the meeting where you're looking at already the statement that she signed? Right. Right. You've got the signed statement. And what's interesting is just that statement itself. I was one hundred percent raped. Right. That's a conclusion. Right. That's a conclusion. That's like her making a legal decision on what happened to her. Now, maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. She believes she was. The question becomes the conduct and the state of mind and everything else that she's describing, not the conclusion that she's making, but the the conduct that she's describing. That's what the district attorney based his decision on. He said he looked at what was in that statement, which described the conduct, but didn't necessarily include the conclusion, the overall feeling of the accuser in this case, which was I was raped. And that's powerful. Right. Because you kind of know when what happened was not what she's really saying is I didn't want this to happen. I didn't consent to this happening by making that statement. But then describing the actual conduct, uh, and the way it was written and signed off by her on what happened that night, the D.A. came to a different conclusion. Unless there are facts that were left out of that or facts that were either not described appropriately or described accurately in the statement or needed more follow up. And that's probably, again, where the disconnect becomes. The statement says what it says, but there's no opportunity for a follow up questions when you're just reading a statement. So if the D.A. or the attorneys who are making this decision are there actually interviewing the accuser and she says this happened, then that happened. There's areas for follow up. OK, well, well, what happened next? Or did you consent to that? Did you remember that? What were you thinking? What exactly did you say? Did you try to pull away? Because this is not a black and white situation. There are some things that you can do. Alleged that she admits was consensual and others that she's claiming now that was not and trying to to pierce through all that becomes the challenge. And I think the most powerful part of it is that statement. I was, you know, 100 percent raped because that gives you like the overall thought that she has about what what happened to her that day. And I think if you ask anyone, you know, were you raped? I think people kind of understand that. What that means, like someone engaged in activity that I was not OK with, that I was not. not consenting to, that I did not want to happen, that happened without me saying, let's do this, or without me saying, that is okay, without me consenting to it. And consent isn't just like a one-time thing. When you're in a situation where you've got one person, two people, then three people, then there's four, then there's seven, then there's three. So while nights are always free, summer days are now always discounted. Learn more at TXU.com, rep number 1-0-0-0-4. Free, then there's two, then there's just one. Every situation has to be consensual, intended to, along the way. So it's not that simple, and I think the problem was this statement didn't allow for the follow-up questions and for the nuance of what actually happened to this young woman. But I think it's captured best by that one statement, which is this is the way she felt about what happened to her. That's why you need this investigation to go forward now. Well, and you also have, like, just as, you know, from how the public, has received this story, like, this back and forth from Jane Doe's attorney and the district attorney, where the DA said he did not have that screen grab of the Snapchat message, but then Jane Doe's attorney said, you know, in an interview that the police did have that Snapchat message. So, like, that was not passed along to the DA. And, you know, you just wonder in, like, how often, you know, how often do these cases, you know, go through this office? It's like, how does that information not get, if you're going to make that decision, like, hey, we're not even going to bring this thing to a grand jury the first time around, you know, now they're, I think they're planning to the second time, but it's like, how do you not, you know, have these pieces of information? This is more a question for the campus police, like visual pieces of evidence that a prosecutor would need if you wanted to go forward. And if he didn't have it, like, why did that not make it up the chain of command? Yeah, it should have. And then they should have, I mean, I don't think the entire investigation is just this statement. What other evidence do you have? Like, what, what else is there in here? And that's, wasn't, seems like it wasn't part of the analysis that was done back in 2024, but it'll obviously be done now, but it, it should have been done back then. And maybe this is a DA's office that has to rethink the way we intake cases, because the way it works is generally is that, you know, the DA is the head law enforcement person in the county, in the jurisdiction, but depending upon the size of the county and the size of the DA's office, they may not have specialized units. They may not have a ton of their own investigators and they rely upon the local agencies to do all the investigations and they kind of do the legal work, but maybe they have to rethink how you're going to look at certain crimes when it comes to things like maybe arson, sex crimes, murder. Um, I would think most prosecutor's offices, most DA's, they're going to look at certain crimes, but they're not going to look at certain cases. And that's, that's what I think was needed here. You need someone to say, okay, well, what's the follow-up to it? Like the DA is making the ultimate decision here to make the ultimate decision. It seems you need all the facts, not just this one written statement. Right. And, and we'll see what happens. You know, the, the DA has said that he is going to, or they're planning to bring this to a grand jury. As they're reinvestigating this case, you know, certainly a lot of questions for the DA and the police, and we'll see what happens. Um, as this investigation of the so-called Cornell seven continues on Vinnie Palatine host of VPI, you can go catch it over on the court TV, YouTube page. Always good to have you Vinnie on the show. Great to see you. Thanks. Now, three of the seven men named in the lawsuits have issued statements in the wake of the allegations. An attorney for Helio Lopez told people magazine that his client denies sexually assaulting Jane Doe. Cornell, previously conducted an extensive investigation into this matter and developed a substantial factual record. The public narrative now being advanced is incomplete and in important respects, inconsistent with the record developed during the Cornell process. And that attorney goes on to say prior statements, contemporaneous communications, and other evidence provide important context that is absent from the current public account, those differences and the evidence bearing on them will be tested through discovery and addressed in the litigation. Now, the attorney for Scott Kretzmar said, quote, Scott never sexually assaulted or even touched the plaintiff in any way, period. We look forward to confronting the plaintiff in a court of law for her selfishly false claims with both the evidence and her own words. And Scott Norris said through an attorney that he did not engage in any criminal activity saying, quote, I did not participate in any sexual activity or drug use. I was not found responsible for any sexual activity or drug use. I was not found responsible by Cornell for any of the accusations involving sexual activity and drug use for which others received serious consequences. I thoughtlessly engaged in Snapchat and briefly stopped in the room where misconduct happened, but not when it happened. Now, Cornell University also released a statement of their own saying, quote, Cornell University supports the decision of the Tompkins County District Attorney to provide an opportunity for the victim's story in the 2024 Chi Phi Fraternity sexual assault case to be heard by a criminal grand jury. Cornell also conducted a thorough Title IX investigation, which is separate from a criminal proceeding over the course of several months. During that investigation, temporary suspensions and other restrictive measures were used after investigation and pursuant to federal law. The matter was sent to a hearing where a panel of trained faculty. The Best Holiday Fund. These signs aren't always the ones you went looking for. At Ross, discover unexpected gifts, fashion, decor, and plenty of reasons to keep looking. Right. You know what? Give it a try at Mint Mobile.com. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. And staff heard evidence over multiple days. The complainant and respondents had the opportunity to testify and present evidence. At its conclusion, the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell. None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement. In addition, the involved fraternity was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus. Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false. A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will prevent the continuation of the false narrative. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Chris Stewart. We'll see you next time.