'Shop still open?': Snapchat, text exchange, other chilling details in Cornell University rape investigation emerge

New York state prosecutors have reopened an investigation into the alleged gang rape of a woman at Cornell University in 2024. Authorities reopened an investigation Monday as outrage built over a woman’s lawsuit filed September 16 against the Chi Phi fraternity, the university and the seven students she says assaulted her. In the civil lawsuit filed against the Ivy League university on September 16, the woman alleged she was drugged and assaulted at a fraternity house at the university.

Here's all you need to know about the case: 1. According to the Associated Press, the woman, identified only by the pseudonym Jane Doe in the lawsuit, filed a complaint on September 16, alleging she was sexually assaulted at the Chi Phi fraternity house after being pressured into snorting ketamine, smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. The civil lawsuit filed alleged that seven men, named as Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, assaulted her at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house.

2. She told police weeks after the incident that she could “say with 100% confidence I was raped,” according to a report by CBS New York, which said it obtained a transcript of her interview with investigators. The transcript, which has not been publicly released, raises new questions surrounding the local district attorney's decision not to prosecute anyone at the time. 3. The woman acknowledged she had been drinking alcohol and used drugs the night she visited the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024, and that she had gaps in her memory.

She also told police she was comfortable with an initial sexual encounter with two of the men, but not with what happened later, when other men began to enter the room. She became completely incapacitated while fraternity members were sexually assaulting her, she said. “And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard," she told police, according to the transcript. “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped," it said she told investigators, as per the reports.

4. The woman initially went to Cornell's campus police about three weeks after the alleged attack that began on October 19, 2024, then went back on November 14 and 15, 2024, to be interviewed. “Yes. It was coercion, yes,” she told a campus police officer, according to the transcript obtained by CBS. According to the report, she said she was “completely and totally incapacitated” before some of the sexual abuse. She told police in November 2024 that she was assaulted at the fraternity house the month before, and prosecutors decided at the time not to prosecute anyone.

5. In recent days, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten maintained the woman's first account to police didn't include allegations that she was drugged, incapacitated beyond the ability to consent, or forced into sex. Yet, he also said he had reopened the investigation based on new information in the woman's lawsuit, which was filed this month. He said his office did that in light of allegations that he said were “dramatically different” from those originally made by the alleged victim.

“Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped,” Van Houten was quoted by the Guardian as saying. “On the contrary, [her] statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual. My office obviously did not and could not have based our November 2024 decision on the allegations in a civil lawsuit that would not be filed until nearly two years later,” he added.

Cornell, meanwhile, has agreed to bring in outside lawyers to independently investigate how the university handled the woman's allegations, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday. 6. CBS also claimed to have a video of Snapchat messages exchanged on the night of the alleged assault by numerous members of a group called Chi Phi Actives. According to the suit, on the night in question at around 1:42 a.m., one fraternity member sent a crude message to a Chi Phi Snapchat group chat suggesting that a woman upstairs was available for sex.

The woman alleged more men entered the room and the assaults continued until 5:45 am. One of the messages, sent while the woman was in the since-closed fraternity house, allegedly stated there was “free p***y upstairs”. According to CBS, a later message sent by a group member asked: “Shop still open?” The response was, "Yea." 7. Attorney Thomas Giuffra, who represents the woman, confirmed to CBS that his client – named Jane Doe in court documents – exchanged text messages with one defendant after the alleged assault.

But Giuffra said he could not be certain the screenshots that CBS News saw were authentic. Screenshots of a separate text exchange, also reported exclusively by CBS News New York, show what a source describes as messages sent two days later between Jane Doe and one of the defendants now accused in the lawsuit. In one of the messages, screenshots of which were obtained by CBS New York, the unnamed male defendant appears to apologise to the woman for “how things went down” – and said his memory of events two nights previously was “kinda fuzzy”.

He said he and another male who was present regretted that they were too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand”. In reply, the woman, who was 20 at the time of the alleged assault, and has since left Cornell, said her memory was “super clouded too” and that they were all intoxicated. 8. Cornell University first publicly disclosed that it was investigating the woman's allegations on November 8, 2024, the same day she first went to police.

The school sent students an email warning them that a person had reported they had been sexually assaulted at a fraternity house and coerced into consuming drugs. Cornell suspended the Chi Phi fraternity the same day. In another public statement to students in late November 2024, Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff said campus police were investigating “deeply disturbing allegations of drug abuse and sexual violence” at the fraternity house.

Later, Cornell appointed a task force designed to address sexual assault on campus. But with the district attorney's decision not to pursue charges and the university's internal disciplinary investigation shielded from the public, attention on the matter waned. Cornell said in a statement this week that it supported the decision to reopen the criminal investigation, adding that its own investigation had led to some students being disciplined or expelled.

The Chi Phi chapter remains barred from campus, but the university has declined to release more information on discipline for individual students, citing privacy rules.