Newly obtained messages from a Cornell University fraternity group chat are adding another layer to a criminal investigation that prosecutors have now reopened nearly two years after an alleged sexual assault.
CBS News New York obtained video showing part of a Snapchat conversation involving members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity on the night of October 19, 2024, when a former Cornell student says she was drugged and sexually assaulted at the fraternity house.
Among the newly reported messages is a brief exchange in which one participant asked, “Shop still open?” and another replied, “Yea.” Earlier in the conversation, another message used explicit language to suggest that a woman was available for sex.
The messages are now part of a much larger dispute over what happened that night, what Cornell and local police knew in 2024, and whether evidence that was available at the time was adequately investigated.
Seven former or current Chi Phi members are named as defendants in a civil lawsuit filed by the woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe. None of the seven has been criminally charged over the allegations.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said his office is reopening the criminal investigation and intends to consider the case before a grand jury.
What do the newly revealed messages show?
The latest evidence comes from a group Snapchat conversation involving fraternity members.
CBS News New York reported that at about 1:42 a.m. on the night of the alleged incident, a message was sent to the group suggesting that a woman was available for sex.
A later participant asked, “Shop still open?” and another responded, “Yea.”
The identities of the people responsible for those particular messages have not been publicly established in the reporting.
That is an important limitation.
The existence of the conversation does not, by itself, prove who was physically present in the room, who participated in sexual activity or what each person understood about the woman’s condition.
But the messages could be relevant to investigators because they provide a contemporaneous record of conversations among people associated with the fraternity during the period in which the alleged assault is said to have occurred.
The district attorney has said the Snapchat material can be presented to the grand jury as part of the reopened investigation.
What does Jane Doe’s lawsuit allege?
The former Cornell student says she was 20 when the incident occurred.
According to the civil lawsuit, she had been drinking with friends before going to the Chi Phi house to meet a male friend.
The complaint alleges that she was already visibly intoxicated when she arrived and was pressured into consuming ketamine. It also alleges that she used alcohol and marijuana and eventually became incapacitated.
The lawsuit claims that multiple men sexually assaulted her over several hours.
Seven Chi Phi members are named in the complaint: Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar.
The allegations are part of a civil case and have not been adjudicated.
The men have not been criminally charged in connection with the alleged assault, and several have publicly denied the accusations through their attorneys.
Another text exchange surfaced from days after the alleged incident
The new group-chat messages are not the only communications attracting attention.
CBS News New York also reported on a separate text exchange allegedly occurring two days after the incident between Jane Doe and one of the men named in the lawsuit.
In that exchange, the man apologized for “how things went down” and said he and another person had been too intoxicated to intervene before the situation became chaotic.
Jane Doe responded that her own memory was unclear and referred to the night as involving heavy intoxication.
She also wrote that the sexual activity was not illegal and later suggested meeting again, but without the other people or ketamine.
Those messages have become central to the opposing accounts of the case.
Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, confirmed to CBS that his client exchanged messages with the defendant, but said he could not confirm that the specific screenshots obtained by CBS were authentic.
Giuffra argued that his client was traumatized, intoxicated and trying to understand what had happened when those messages were exchanged. He said her behavior in the aftermath should not be interpreted in isolation from those circumstances.
Why prosecutors reopened the case
The new evidence comes after a sharp disagreement over the original investigation.
Jane Doe reported the incident to Cornell University Police in November 2024.
At the time, Tompkins County prosecutors did not file criminal charges.
Van Houten has said the decision was based on the woman’s original sworn statement, which he described as substantially different from the allegations contained in the 2026 civil lawsuit.
According to the district attorney, her 2024 account did not say that she had been drugged without her knowledge, physically incapacitated or subjected to nonconsensual sexual activity.
Van Houten has said that, based on the information presented to his office at the time, the evidence did not establish the elements required for criminal charges.
The later civil complaint changed the picture presented to prosecutors.
Van Houten has now said his office will examine whether additional evidence exists that was not available or known in November 2024 and whether that evidence changes the earlier assessment.
Prosecutors say the Snapchat messages can now be examined by a grand jury
Van Houten has acknowledged that a screenshot of the fraternity Snapchat conversation was not provided to his office during the original investigation, while Jane Doe’s attorney says the material was given to authorities in 2024.
That disagreement is potentially significant.
If investigators did not have the complete chat during the original review, the newly reported messages could provide evidence that was not part of the earlier prosecutorial assessment.
Van Houten told CBS News that the material could be presented to a grand jury along with testimony and other evidence.
The district attorney has said he wants the investigation to move quickly and expects a senior prosecutor experienced in sex-crime cases to prepare the matter for grand-jury consideration.
A grand jury’s role at this stage would be to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges. It would not determine guilt or innocence.
Jane Doe’s attorney says the original investigation was incomplete
Giuffra has strongly disputed the district attorney’s account of the original investigation.
He argues that investigators should have followed up with Jane Doe after her initial report and says she was never interviewed by a specially trained sex-crimes investigator or prosecutor.
His argument is that an initial statement made soon after a traumatic event should not necessarily be treated as a complete and final account without further investigation.
Giuffra also considers the fraternity group chat a critical piece of evidence and says the material should have prompted additional investigative steps.
Van Houten has defended the original police work, saying the officer who took the statement was an experienced investigator trained in trauma-informed sexual-assault cases. He has also said his office relied on the Cornell Police investigation rather than independently conducting its own investigation at that time.
The disagreement over how the first investigation was handled is now part of the broader scrutiny surrounding the case.
What do the defendants say?
The defendants have disputed the allegations.
Jeremy Saland, who represents Scott Kretzschmar, told CBS News that his client denies the accusations. Saland said Kretzschmar did enter the room where Jane Doe was located but stayed only briefly and did not engage in the conduct described in the lawsuit.
He also cited what he described as a hair-follicle test that he says showed no ketamine in Kretzschmar’s system. CBS News said it had not independently reviewed that test.
Andrew Miltenberg, an attorney for Gillio Lopes, said his client “unequivocally denies” the allegations and argued that accusations in a lawsuit should not be treated as proof.
Other defendants have also denied wrongdoing.
Their responses will now be evaluated alongside any additional evidence gathered during the reopened criminal investigation.
What Cornell says it did
Cornell University has conducted its own disciplinary investigation separate from the criminal process.
The university said its Office of Civil Rights and Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards investigated and adjudicated the allegations under university policies.
Cornell also confirmed that its Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus following the 2024 incident.
Because of federal student-privacy requirements, the university has said it cannot publicly disclose the specific disciplinary actions taken against individual students.
That means reports about who was suspended, expelled or otherwise sanctioned cannot all be independently confirmed through Cornell’s public statements.
The university has said it supports the district attorney’s decision to reopen the criminal investigation.
Why the new texts matter, and what they do not prove
The Snapchat messages are potentially significant because they were allegedly exchanged contemporaneously with the events under investigation.
That is different from a recollection recorded months or years later.
But contemporaneous evidence still requires interpretation.
Investigators must establish who authored each message, who received it, whether the messages refer to the woman involved in the lawsuit and whether the people communicating knew her condition or understood what was happening.
The messages also need to be considered alongside witness statements, physical evidence, digital records and the different accounts provided by Jane Doe and the defendants.
In other words, the chat is evidence to be examined.
It is not a verdict.
Consent is at the center of the dispute
The case has become particularly complicated because the parties disagree sharply about what Jane Doe communicated to police in 2024 and how that account should be interpreted.
Van Houten says her original statement described consensual participation in sexual activity and voluntary drug use and did not describe the elements she later alleged in the civil complaint.
Jane Doe’s attorney disputes that characterization and says her original report was materially consistent with the later lawsuit.
The distinction matters legally because prosecutors must determine whether the available evidence supports the elements of a criminal offense under New York law.
The renewed investigation will therefore have to examine not only what happened inside the fraternity house, but also what evidence can be established about capacity, consent, conduct and knowledge at each stage of the night.
The case is now heading toward a new legal test
The investigation is moving into a phase that could produce a criminal case, but that outcome is not guaranteed.
Van Houten has said prosecutors intend to present the evidence to a Tompkins County grand jury.
The jury could vote to indict one or more individuals, or it could decline to do so.
Before that happens, investigators can continue reviewing the civil complaint, the Snapchat evidence, the earlier police statement, the later text exchange and other available material.
The reopened investigation therefore does not mean the seven men have been charged.
It means prosecutors believe there is enough new or newly surfaced information to justify taking another look.
Why the Cornell case has attracted wider attention
The story has become larger than a single fraternity or university.
It has raised questions about how sexual-assault allegations are initially documented, how investigators interpret statements made after traumatic experiences and how universities balance student privacy with public accountability.
It has also highlighted the difference between criminal and civil proceedings.
The civil lawsuit seeks damages and makes allegations against multiple defendants.
The criminal investigation asks a narrower question: whether the evidence supports criminal charges under New York law.
Those processes can reach different conclusions because they operate under different standards and procedures.
For now, neither has produced a final finding of liability or criminal guilt.
What happens next?
Investigators are expected to review the newly reported messages alongside the original evidence.
The district attorney has said Jane Doe and her attorneys will be consulted and that new testimony can be presented to the grand jury.
The defense will have an opportunity to challenge the allegations and the reliability or interpretation of the new evidence.
The process could ultimately result in criminal charges, no charges or further investigation.
What is certain is that the evidentiary picture has changed since 2024.
The newly reported fraternity messages provide prosecutors with another piece of contemporaneous material to examine.
Whether they alter the legal outcome will depend on what investigators can establish from the evidence as a whole.
