Cornell Jane Doe’s car was broken into the same day she was allegedly gang-raped at campus party

The woman who accused seven members of a now defunct fraternity at Cornell University of gang rape had her car broken into earlier in the night.

The accuser, only identified in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed she was coerced into taking drugs and sexually assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity  at a Hawaiian-themed party on October 19, 2024.

Just hours earlier someone broke into her car and stole her wallet, she told campus police in a statement obtained by NBC News. 

By the time she returned to her sorority house after reporting the break-in, Doe said her Delta Delta Delta sisters had already started drinking.

Doe was originally supposed to be a ‘sober monitor’ for the party that night, she later recounted to police, but other members assigned someone else. At that point, Doe said, she started taking shots of vodka to catch up with her already inebriated sisters.

From there, Doe said she and her friends went to a bar near campus. 

She was already at ‘about a six out of 10 level of intoxication’ when she arrived at Moonies Bar and Nightclub in downtown Ithaca, New York at around 8.30pm, Doe said in her six-page written statement.

Bar staff then marked her hand to signify she was under the age of 21, but Doe claimed she was still able to order a mixed drink with approximately two shots of alcohol. The bar has since denied any wrongdoing. 

Doe told police she then stopped briefly at another bar with a friend, before heading over to the Chi Phi house after 11pm when she said she was ‘about a five out of 10 level of intoxication.’

It was there that she said she started dancing with Matthew Ingalls, one of the defendants she now accuses of rape, sometime after midnight, at which point she said he proposed they have a threesome. 

Doe said she accepted because she was attracted to him.

At that point, Doe alleged that Ingalls led her to a room, where defendant Jonathan Newell was sitting. Together, she said, they took ketamine, smoked marijuana and drank liquor before engaging in intercourse.

But the interaction then spiraled as more fraternity members, the other five listed in her civil complaint, entered the room.

By 1.42am, Newell allegedly posted in a fraternity Snapchat group that there was ‘free p***y’ upstairs.

In the aftermath, Doe said she recalled two other men entering the room, grabbing and kissing her, with one of the men then also engaging in another threesome with Doe and another man.

She described in her written statement to police how she felt ‘super isolated’ and like she ‘didn’t matter as a person to these men.’ 

She even eventually confided in Ingalls, ‘I don’t know who any of these people are,’ but claimed he simply laughed off her concerns and asked if she wanted to do more ketamine. 

‘I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out and so my thought was, “If I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out,”‘ Doe confided in her written statement, according to NBC News.

‘My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.’ 

Meanwhile, at around 2.30am, more members of the fraternity’s group chat started to ask about what was happening in the room – to which Ingalls reportedly replied: ‘Boys, come whip it out.’ 

Back inside the bedroom, Doe said men started snorting drugs off of her body while she was ‘feeling extremely tired’ and covering her face with her hands.

Later, she said, one man who lived in the bedroom with another man entered and said ‘something like “OK we’re shutting down whatever the f**k this is”‘ after which ‘the group of men all began to scatter.’

Still, she said, two of the men ushered Doe upstairs to what she said she thought was the fraternity president’s office and the three took ketamine and Doe said she felt ‘extremely high’ as the two men ‘were asking me to have sex so many times that I finally gave in.’ 

‘To me, that felt like coercion,’ she told police. ‘Also, I felt like due to my intoxication, they should have known how intoxicated I was based on how I was slurring my words.’

The sexual encounter was said to have lasted until roughly 5.45am, when Doe went to sleep in one of the rooms at the fraternity house.

When she woke up the next morning, she said she found Ingalls hovering over her, saying he wanted her to give him oral sex.

Doe said she refused him, at which point Ingalls moved away from her.

The alleged victim then returned to her sorority house to find her sorority sisters asking what happened to her at the party, to which Doe said she simply replied ‘ketamine.’

But later that day, Doe said in her statement, she learned that what had happened to her the night before was common knowledge as members of Chi Phi bragged about having an ‘eightsome’ with her.

‘It was now obvious that everyone knew it was me that this had happened to,’ Doe recounted in her written statement.

In the aftermath, she said she went to Cornell Health to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

At that appointment, she told her doctor she contracted a UTI in a ‘traumatic fashion.’ 

Meanwhile, Doe apparently downplayed the interaction in text messages to Newell and Ingalls.

‘At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal, and honestly i really liked being w u and matt,’ she wrote in one message to Newell.

‘I don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf,’ she wrote. 

In a separate message to Ingalls, she suggested that people were speaking out about the incident because they were jealous.

‘But also like everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex and s**t is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common,’ she wrote, before telling Ingalls: ‘I luv u king.’

Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, however, told the Daily Mail that the messages do not suggest that the sexual intercourse was consensual.  

He instead argued that Jane Doe was showing ‘classic symptoms of delayed recognition’ about the gravity of the incident, meaning it took some time for her to realize that she had been the victim of an alleged crime. 

‘This is a well-known phenomenon which is widely reported in medical and psychological literature,’ the attorney said. ‘Most rape survivors do not immediately identify what happened to them as rape.’

Cornell officials wound up launching a monthslong probe into Jane Doe’s allegations. At least 12 formal hearings were held from January to May 2025 and saw faculty and staff review the evidence. 

In the end, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten decided not to file charges against any of the seven men. 

Instead, Ingalls and his frat brother Jonathan Newell were both expelled from campus, Jane Doe’s legal filing stated. 

Two others were suspended and placed on disciplinary probation, while a third who had graduated from the school by the time punishments were handed out was barred from campus.

The final two men were ordered to take sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention courses. They were also told to write ‘reflection papers,’ according to the lawsuit. 

Both of them said they were only in the room with Jane Doe for five minutes, but the alleged victim said that they snorted ketamine off her body, per the suit.

Although the case was closed over a year ago, it has since been reopened after Jane Doe took legal action against the school, Chi Phi, the seven men, and others in September. 

The Tompkins County District Attorney’s office announced that it is looking into the case again, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul has tapped Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in it. 

Since the lawsuit, uproar over the case has erupted across campus and the country. 

Several protesters who support Jane Doe have demanded change as they walk around campus, in Washington, DC, New York City, and other places nationwide. 

Students have become outraged over the details of the alleged assault and have demanded that the prestigious school reexamine its previous decision. 

On Friday, the Cornell Concert Commission, a student-run organization, announced that it has canceled its annual homecoming concert amid the controversy.