Messages and statements made by Matthew Ingalls, one of the accused Chi Phi fraternity brothers at the center of the Cornell University case, appear to paint a strikingly different picture of the alleged encounter.
During conversations with campus cops, Matthew flipped the script and claimed he was the victim of the ill-fated night of October 19, 2024.
Highlights
- Matthew Ingalls reportedly told Cornell police that he was too intoxicated to consent and claimed he was the victim.
- He was identified as the frat brother who reportedly propositioned the idea of a threes**e to the alleged victim, identified as Jane Doe.
- Jane was heard asking Matthew what happened on the ill-fated night during a phone call she recorded.
- “You did tell me you were sober, by the way,” Matthew was heard telling Jane during the call.
Cornell students even claimed that the Chi Phi brothers tried to do some “damage” control to make sure the victim, identified as Jane Doe, was “not upset about the situation.”
Matthew Ingalls, one of the accused “Cornell 7,” appeared to paint a strikingly different picture of the alleged encounter
Trigger Warning: This article contains sensitive content that may be distressing for some readers.
Matthew Ingalls, one of the former Cornell University frat brothers accused of ga*g r*pe, attempted to cast himself as the victim while speaking to university police in 2024.
Police records revealed that Matthew was the one who invited Jane Doe, then 20 years old, to the Chi Phi fraternity house for a party.
Claiming he was too intoxicated to consent, Matthew flipped the script and said he was the victim
As per Jane’s lawsuit, Matthew had propositioned a threes**e that she reportedly consented to. But it allegedly escalated to include numerous other frat brothers coming into the bedroom and engaging in s**ual acts with her, while she was plied with booze and illicit substances.
When Matthew was later questioned by Cornell University police, he claimed he was the one who was too intoxicated to consent.
He also suggested that Jane was the one who as**ulted him, as per school records obtained by ABC News.
As per Jane’s account, she had been drinking with her Delta Delta Delta sorority house sisters before she “stumbled alone” to meet her friend Matthew that night.
Matthew allegedly asked Jane if she wanted to have a threes**e with him and fellow Chi Phi member Jonathan Newell.
During a later phone call that Jane recorded, Matthew was heard recounting the events that transpired before the alleged s**ual as**ult in the bedroom.
Jane recorded a phone call with Matthew, asking him what he remembered from the night
“So you, you, you come in, say hi. We start dancing for like maybe three to five minutes, and then I pop the question. You say yes,” he was heard saying.
Matthew then said he went up to another buddy who was also on the dance floor to “pop the question.”
“He's like ‘Yo,’ and then we go upstairs,” he said.
Elsewhere in the call, Jane was heard saying, “If I wanted to take this somewhere, what y'all did would be classified as ga*g r*pe.”
She was also heard asking Matthew for help in identifying the other frat brothers who later joined them in the bedroom.
Wondering how all the extra guys ended up in the room, Jane recalled seeing other men in the room and four men in the bed with her.
“Do you remember how any of these guys walked in?” she asked Matthew, who replied, “The door was just unlocked…the party was sort of like crowded… there was nowhere else to go.”
Jane told Matthew she remembered looking up and thinking there were “too many” men around her during the encounter
At one point during the call, Matthew attempted to refute Jane’s claims of as**ult by saying, “It's possible that both of us like remember this and it's not true.”
“I don't think that that's true,” she replied. “No, no, because I remember looking up and being like that is too many people.”
The phone call began with Jane asking Matthew what he remembers from the night so that she could piece together what happened to her.
“If I just know what happened, then I can feel a little bit better and move on and maybe be able to stay at this school,” she said.
Nowhere in the phone call did Matthew mention that he sent Snapchat messages egging other fraternity brothers to come and join them in the bedroom.
Matthew was allegedly the one who egged fellow members to join them in the bedroom and “come whip it out”
After Matthew proposed a threes**me, it is believed he moved to the bedroom with Jane and fellow member Jonathan.
According to Jane’s lawsuit, Jonathan had blasted out a text on Snapchat to the rest of the frat members, saying: “free p**sy” in the bedroom.
Matthew then joined the Snapchat conversation, asking fellow members to “come whip it out.”
“Like you can walk in and whip it out,” he wrote in the Snapchat group that had almost 60 people. “Boys come whip it out.”
Also during the call, Matthew and Jane made contradictory statements about whether she was inebriated or not.
“You did tell me you were sober, by the way,” Matthew was heard saying. “You did, you said you hadn’t been anywhere.”
“That is not true. I never would have said that,” Jane retorted.
She claimed he “already knew” she was “10 shots deep” even before she arrived at the frat house’s doorstep.
Text messages exchanged between Jane and Matthew revealed that she was “p*ssed” about rumors spreading
Text messages exchanged between Jane and Matthew in the days following the incident also came to light, where the alleged victim’s claims have also been contradictory.
She originally assured Matthew over texts that everything that happened was consensual.
However, her tone shifted in later weeks as she reportedly kept thinking about what happened and after rumors began spreading on campus.
In one text, Jane said she was “p*ssed cause this many people shouldn’t know” about what happened.
“I will also say this is f***ing RUINING my life temporarily. My reputation is destroyed and I’m utterly ashamed,” she wrote in one text. “I feel like I know who some of the rats in the room were.”
One of Jane’s friends also claimed the frat brothers allegedly tried to cover up the incident.
“From the beginning, after it happened [she] started telling me that it was not consensual from the beginning,” the friend told campus investigators shortly after the incident.
The friend claimed Matthew sent her messages asking her to believe his version of the story.
“He wants to convince me that she is lying and he tried to convince me in other messages like this one that she was lying and he said that, ‘You know that she's lying And you know that we would never do this,’” she recalled.
One of Jane’s friends claimed Matthew sent her messages asking her to believe his version of the story
When Jane first spoke to Cornell University police, she said she had gaps in her memory about what took place.
“I was super drunk when I got there... But I was pretty okay with all of this,” she said while talking about engaging in intimacy with two of the frat brothers.
She said more frat members later joined them, and things got out of control.
“I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard,” she added.
However, the incident was closed at the time with no charges pressed against Matthew or any of the fellow “Cornell 7” members: Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar.
There was “insufficient evidence to support criminal charges” at the time, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten.
The case was reopened in September this year after Jane filed a civil lawsuit against the seven former frat brothers.
Houten said Jane’s claims in the recently filed civil lawsuit are “dramatically different” from the statements she gave cops in 2024.
He also defended the decision of not pressing charges against the men in 2024, claiming she “did not allege that she was dr*gged against her will or ga*g r*ped” and described her actions as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
Netizens had strong reactions, asking, “Did his lawyer tell him that won’t work as a defense?”
