Matthew Ingalls, one of the seven Cornell fraternity members accused in an alleged gang rape, told the accuser in a recorded phone call that she had claimed to be sober the night of the incident.
The audio, captured Nov. 7, 2024, shows Ingalls, who invited the woman to the fraternity house, pushing back as she sought answers about what happened. Jane Doe, then 20, called Ingalls the day before she reported the alleged assault to Cornell campus police. She told him the incident had caused “damage on my body and brain” that sent her to the emergency room and therapy in the days after the Oct. 19 party.
“The only way for me to heal is to know what happened. That’s why I’m trying to just piece it together, I’m just confused,” Doe said in the recording.
Ingalls responded by questioning her memory of the night. “You did tell me you were sober, by the way,” he said. “You did, you said you hadn’t been anywhere.”
Doe fired back that she was “100% sure” she had told him she was at a bar earlier for a sorority event and that she “never” lies. She then pressed him on how the alleged threesome began.
Ingalls described a casual progression. “So you come in, say hi,” he said. “We start dancing for like maybe three to five minutes, and then I pop the question. You say yes. Then I remember, like, we didn’t know who else to bring, so I go up to [redacted] who was on the dance floor, too, and I pop the question, and he’s like, ‘Yo,’ and then we go upstairs.”
Doe asked who else was in the room during the alleged incident. At that point, Ingalls appeared to cast doubt on whether anything happened at all. “It’s possible that both of us, like, remember this, and it’s not true,” he said. Doe insisted she recalled “too many people” present. Ingalls countered that the party was “crowded” and people drifted into the bedroom simply “because there was nowhere else to go.”
The phone call came weeks after Ingalls had posted Doe’s photo in a fraternity Snapchat group chat and told other members they could “walk in and whip it out,” according to reports. He later told campus police that he himself was too intoxicated to consent that night, suggesting he was the victim of sexual assault, school records showed.
The original campus police investigation led to Ingalls and one other fraternity brother being expelled from Cornell, with two others suspended. No criminal charges were filed against any of the students at that time. Campus police turned the case over to the Tompkins County district attorney, bypassing Ithaca city police, and neither Cornell authorities nor the DA’s office spoke with the accused fraternity brothers.
The case exploded into national headlines when Doe filed a civil lawsuit with what she called new information, naming all seven alleged male students. Local DA Matthew Van Houten announced he would reopen the probe, citing new details in the woman’s lawsuit.
Three of the accused fraternity brothers have since spoken out publicly about the allegations. The civil suit also exposed fraternity members’ alleged “damage control” efforts after the incident, with text messages showing coordinated responses.
Ingalls had invited Doe to the fraternity house the night of the alleged assault after the sorority bar event where she said she consumed alcohol. The lawsuit alleges seven fraternity members sexually assaulted her during the party.
No details for a lawyer representing Ingalls have been released, and none of the seven students have faced criminal charges to date.