Duke lacross player Collin Finnerty at his preliminary hearing at the Durham County Judicial Building Tuesday morning, April 18. (Photo: Jeff Sineer/Charlotte Observer/KRT)

Newsweek reported in an April 10 story on their website that District Attorney Mike Nifong hinted to the magazine that a blood and urine test of the N.C. Central University student who was allegedly raped by three members of the Duke Lacrosse team, would reveal the presence of a date-rape drug.

Sophomores Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J. and Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y. turned themselves in to Durham police on the morning of April 18.

Seligmann and Finnerty will will appear in court on charges of first-degree rape, sexual offense and kidnapping, May 15.

In North Carolina, each offense carries a sentence of 12-30 years for offenders with no previous criminal record. The two players were booked and released on a $400,000 bail after an NCCU student said she was raped, beaten and sodomized at a party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd, March 13.

A third player remains under investigation and charges could follow, Nifong said in written statement.

“Investigation into the identity of the third assailant will continue in the hope that he can also be identified with certainty,” the statement said.

The 27-year-old student, former navy enlistee and mother of two, was hired through an escort company to dance at the party with another woman now identified as Kim Roberts.

“I was there from the beginning to the end,” Roberts told The Associated Press on April 20, in her first on-the-record interview. “The only thing I did not see was the rape because I was not in the bathroom at that particular moment.”

In the Newsweek story Roberts is reported as saying that she and the accuser were given mixed drinks at the party. She said she did not drink hers, but the accuser did after knocking over her own drink.

Defense attorneys said Roberts told a member of the defense team that she did not believe the student was raped, and now she’s changing her story to gain favorable treatment in a criminal case against her.

Roberts, 31, was arrested eight days after the party on a probations violation from a 2001 conviction for embezzling $25,000 from a photofinishing company in Durham where she was a payroll specialist, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

Roberts supported the accuser’s version of events that the women first left the party after one of the players taunted them about sodomizing them with a broomstick while they were dancing.

She supported the accuser’s account that they returned to the party after one of the men apologized and asked then to return. And she supported the accuser’s version that they were then separated in the party.

“In all honesty, I think they’re guilty,” she said. “And I can’t say which ones are guilty. Somebody did something besides underage drinking. That’s my honest-to-God impression.”

Roberts said the student was sober when they arrived at the party, but that when the party was over the student was incoherent.

Roberts also confirmed that she was the woman who called 911 at 12:53 a.m. reporting racial slurs.

“Don’t forget that they called me a damn nigger,” she said. “She (the student) was passed out in the car. She doesn’t know what she was called. I was called that. I can never forget that.”

The defense lawyers maintain that no sex occurred at any time.

Seligmann’s attorney said that his client has evidence he had left the party when the student says the alleged rape took place.

Seligmann called for a taxi at 12:14 a.m. and was gone five minutes later. The defense said if the dancers performed around midnight, their client could not have participated in the assault alleged to have lasted 30-minutes.

The cab driver, Moez Mostafa, said he drove Seligmann to an automated teller machine, the Cook Out restaurant, and then to his dorm on the West Campus.

Mostafa said he then received another call to the same Buchanan address.

This time he said men were outside and an angry woman walked to her car.

“She looked ... like ... mad,” he said. “In her face, the way she walked, the way she talked, she looked mad.”

He said he also overhead someone say, “She’s just a stripper. She’s going to call the police.”

Defense attorneys say the photographs taken at the party show the student was already injured and impaired when she arrived.

One photo, with a time stamp at 12:30 a.m., shows the student on the back porch with a wide grin on her face smiling at the camera.

Another picture stamped at 12:37 a.m. showed the student lying on her side on the stoop with her ankle bleeding, her elbow scraped and blood on her thigh.

Duke President Richard H. Brodhead released a statement on April 18 saying, “The emerging story has taken new twists and turns virtually everyday.”

He also wrote that he has “emphasized the importance of not rushing to judgment and allowing the legal system to establish the truth.”

After the contents of an e-mail written by lacrosse team member Ryan McFadyen were released, Duke University suspended the student, cancelled the team’s season and the team’s coach, Mike Pressler, resigned.

In the e-mail sent at 1:58 a.m. on March 14, McFadyen wrote that he wanted to invite