‘Snapped: Behind Bars’: Crystal Mangum Insists She Didn’t Kill Her Boyfriend [Exclusive Clip]
Did a biased jury get it wrong?
Crystal Mangum is currently behind bars after being convicted of murdering her then-boyfriend, Reginald Daye. But she says she’s being punished for a crime she didn’t commit. In this exclusive clip from the Sept. 8 episode of Oxygen’s true crime series Snapped: Behind Bars, Mangum shares her side of the story.
Crystal Mangum shares her side of the story in ‘Snapped: Behind Bars’
Mangum, a former exotic dancer, is currently behind bars at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. She’s serving a minimum of 14 years after being convicted in 2013 of killing Daye, her live-in boyfriend, in 2011. But in a December 2023 jailhouse interview, Mangum insisted she was innocent.
“I decided to do this interview because I want people to know the truth about Reginald Daye’s death,” Mangum says in the clip from Snapped: Behind Bars, a new series that revisits crimes featured on Oxygen’s long-running series Snapped.
“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,” she added.
Mangum says she killed Reginald Daye in self-defense
Mangum might insist that the crime of which she was found guilty didn’t happen, but police and prosecutors say otherwise.
In April 2011, Daye, a 46-year-old tradesman from Durham, North Carolina, showed up at his neighbor and nephew’s home with a deep stab wound to his chest. Daye was taken to the hospital, and doctors initially expected him to survive. But 10 days later he died. However, before his death, he said Mangum was the person who stabbed him.
Mangum was eventually arrested and found guilty of second-degree murder. The case was later featured on an episode of Snapped that aired in October 2018. At her trial, Mangum claimed she killed Daye in self-defense after he flew into a jealous rage, WRAL reported at the time.
Crystal Mangum was already notorious because of the Duke lacrosse rape case
Daye’s murder was heavily covered by the media in part because of his accused killer’s identity. Mangum had become notorious several years earlier after she falsely accused three Duke University lacrosse players of rape.
Mangum’s attorney felt that the jury was unfairly prejudiced against her client because of the 2006 rape scandal.
“I feel like the verdict wasn’t based on the evidence presented. It’s based on what is perceived to be her past indiscretions,” Jackie Wagstaff told WRAL.
The prosecutor disagreed.
“Whatever happened as far as Duke lacrosse or anything else, it was not about that. It was not about ‘THE Crystal Mangum.’ It was about Reginald Daye and what occurred April 3, 2011,” Durham County Assistant District Attorney Charlene Franks.
Now, more than a decade after her conviction, a therapist says Mangum has not come to terms with the role she played in Daye’s death.
“Even after all these years of being in prison, with all that Crystal has been through, she’s at a place now where it’s hard for her to accept responsibility for any of her actions,” LaToya Smith says in the upcoming episode of Snapped: Behind Bars. “She is set to be released soon, and this is not the end of her story. It’s still being written.”
Snapped: Behind Bars airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET on Oxygen.
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