The next part is less specific, but based on interviews, the sheriff managed to put together a likely list of your activities. At some point, you dropped by the Red & Black offices to deliver your story on UGA’s attempt to privatize meal services. You returned to the student center and played a game of pool with a boy named Ezekiel Mann. You sat on the tweed couches in the lounge with another boy named David Conford. He told you that he’d heard Michael Stipe, the lead singer of REM, would be at the Manhattan Cafe that night. Friends in the vicinity claim that Conford asked you to go with him, but he insists that he did not ask you out on a date.
“We were just friends,” he said in his statement. The deputy who interviewed him made a note that the boy had obviously wanted to be more. (Witnesses place both Mann and Conford in the student center later that evening.)
On or around 4:30 p.m. that afternoon, you left the Tate. You walked home, leaving your bike outside the student center, likely because it was getting colder and you didn’t want to freeze going down Baxter Hill. (Two weeks later, your bike was found chained to the rack outside the center.)
According to the desk monitor, by 5:00 p.m., you were back in your dorm room. Your roommate Nancy recalls your excitement when you told her that Michael Stipe was going to be at the Manhattan. You both decided you would get a group together and go later that night. You were all underage, but you knew John MacCallister, a townie who worked the front door, from high school. Nancy made several calls to friends. A meeting time of 9:30 p.m. was arranged.
Since your psych professor had scheduled an exam before Spring Break, you and Nancy went to the North library to study. Around 8:30 p.m., you were both seen at the Taco Stand, a restaurant catty-corner from the black iron arch that stands at the main campus entrance. You took the food back to Lipscomb Hall. You entered through the back door, which was propped open, so the night desk monitor, a woman named Beth Tindall, did not record your entry.
Upstairs, both you and Nancy showered and dressed for the evening. You were wearing saddle loafers, black jeans, a man’s white button-up shirt, and an embroidered silver and gold vest. You had silver bangles on your wrist and a locket that belonged to your sister around your neck.
Later, Nancy could not recall whether or not you brought back from the communal showers the wire basket you kept your toiletries in (they were not found in your dorm room). Nancy mentions in one of her statements that abandoned items in the bathrooms were generally either stolen or thrown away.
At 9:30 p.m., you met your friends at the Manhattan Cafe, where you were told that the Michael Stipe rumor was false. Someone mentioned that the band was touring in Asia. Someone else said they were in California.
There was an overall sense of disappointment, but it was agreed that you all might as well stay for drinks. It was Monday night. Everyone but you had classes the next day, a fact that later worked to your disadvantage, because Nancy assumed you had gone home to finish your laundry and we assumed that you were at school.
The first round was Pabst Blue Ribbon, which the Manhattan served for a dollar each. At some point later, you were seen holding a Moscow Mule, a cocktail that sold for four dollars fifty and featured vodka, Blenheim ginger ale, and lime. Nancy Griggs indicated that a man must have purchased the drink because all the girls had a habit of asking for the expensive cocktail whenever a man was paying.
A song you liked came on the jukebox. You started dancing. Someone said the song was by C+C Music Factory. Others said it was Lisa Lisa. Regardless, your enthusiasm was contagious. Soon, what little floor space there was in the club was taken up with dancers.
That night, there was no particular boy you seemed to favor. All of your friends told the sheriff that you danced because you loved dancing, not because you were trying to attract men. (So, you weren’t an evil temptress, though the sheriff tried his best to make that part of your story.)
At exactly 10:38 p.m., you told Nancy that you had a headache and were going to return to the dorm. She