Outrage Over Duke E-Mail

The furor over the alleged rape of a black stripper by three white members of Duke University's highly-ranked lacrosse team intensified with the disclosure by authorities of an e-mail they say was sent by a member of the team that expresses a desire to kill and skin strippers.

CBS News legal consultant Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor, expressed outrage over the missive on The Early Show Thursday.

The e-mail is said to have been transmitted only hours after the alleged rape at an off-campus party March 13.

The team's co-captains deny that anyone was sexually assaulted at the party. Lawyers for the players do, too.

Duke lacrosse coach Mike Pressler quit Wednesday, and the school scrapped the rest of the team's season.

The stripper who says she was assaulted, a student at North Carolina Central University, just four miles away, has told police she was raped at the party by three men who choked her in a bathroom.

Investigators are awaiting the results of DNA tests on 46 of the 47 team members. The team's lone black member did not have to provide a sample.

The e-mail taking the sex scandal to a new level said: "I've decided to have some strippers over. … All are welcome. However, there will be no nudity. I plan on killing the b----es as soon as they walk in and proceeding to cut their skin off." The writer then describes in vile terms that he would find the act sexually satisfying.

Murphy bristled when speaking with co-anchor Harry Smith.

"Rage comes to mind, first," she said. "What this reflects, I think, is an unbelievable mindset of vitriol or hatred both toward this woman in particular and women in general, a sense of entitlement and celebration of what happened.

"This was an alleged gang rape, where a woman was strangled and brutalized. She suffered terribly. There's medical proof that she suffered terribly.

"And this was an e-mail written in the immediate aftermath of that incident, without any sense of remorse, or appreciation that what had happened was wrong. I mean, it's really very, very disturbing."

The lawyer for the players has said that the e-mail actually shows that no sexual assault occurred earlier that night.

"Yeah," Murphy said, "I understand that. But you know, it doesn't say that it didn't happen (either). And you know, to suggest that this is good for the defense because it doesn't confess that a rape occurred, I actually think what's most disturbing is that it indicates that whatever did happen sexually, they didn't think it was wrong. That's what I take from that e-mail."

Does the e-mail add to the possibility that the alleged rape could be prosecuted as a hate crime?

"I don't know that they were planning to kill anybody, let alone cut their skin off," Murphy responded. "But, in order to prove a hate crime in North Carolina, in order to show that this was an attack on this woman based on race, you have to show not only that she was black, but that there was extra vitriol, extra hatred directed at her during the commission of the crime. And, boy, there's a lot of hatred in that e-mail. It may well support the prosecution of this case as a hate crime."

As for Pressler's resignation, Murphy observed: "I guess what I really think is that they made him leave because there's something about his role in all of this that just didn't sit well with the university. Either he didn't tell them the whole truth about what happened, or he helped the guys cover up, or encouraged it. I think he did not resign. He was forced out."