The case will be presented to a grand jury next week. Watch video
In late August, the Rutgers University football team was making last-minute preparations for a fall campaign.
Huddled four miles away in a conference room on Kirkpatrick Street, a team of prosecutors and investigators was also getting ready. They had boxes of coffee to fuel their all-nighters. A PowerPoint presentation helped them keep on task. And on the wall were not X's and O's, but a sprawling chart with lengths of red yarn, connecting suspects to a series of violent crimes on and around the state university's flagship campus.
On Friday, Aug. 28, the two teams met in the football locker room in Piscataway. The investigators had search warrants in their hunt for additional clues.
In the weeks that followed, six current players, three former players and three Rutgers students would be arrested, some charged with aggravated assault, others charged in a series of unrelated home invasions. The team finished last month with a 1-7 record in the Big Ten, and, tainted by the arrests and other scandals, the coach and athletic director were fired.
The season may be over, but the saga has barely begun. Prosecutors will present some of the cases against the players and students to a grand jury next week. And prosecutors say their investigation into the robberies is "active and continuing," indicating that more charges and even more defendants are possible.
Investigations continue
One clue about the status of the case may be the incomplete criminal complaints that didn't include the names of the victims, potentially to avoid jeopardizing an investigation that could continue to damage the reputation of a university that calls itself the birthplace of college football.
The investigation has already brought to light one revelation: One of the ex-football players told his interrogators he'd failed several drug tests. If it's found to be true, why was he allowed to play? Rutgers has hired an outside legal firm to review the football program.
A single fingerprint cracked the case.
It was found in the aftermath of a crime on April 26 that prosecutors say helped send "a degree of fear and terror into the student body of Rutgers University."
Five Rutgers students were in their upstairs bedrooms in a home on Prosper Street when they heard the doorbell ring twice around 11:45 p.m., followed by a knock. When one of the students opened the door, he found three men in ski masks. One had a wooden baseball bat, another a small revolver, authorities said.
They forced their way in and told the resident to stay downstairs.
Another resident, hearing the commotion, poked his head out of his bedroom door, police say. He saw a man in a ski mask coming upstairs and locked himself inside.
The robber holding the bat, police say, entered another bedroom and told the occupants to hand over their cellphones, likely to prevent victims from calling the police. The third assailant went into the last bedroom, police said.
Searching for 'weed'
"Where's the weed?" he allegedly asked.
The victim told the masked intruder -- identified by police as Andre Boggs, who was slated to be a starting cornerback on the team in 2015 -- that he didn't have any, and handed over $70.
As the three assailants left, one of them dropped a victim's cellphone, police say. A fingerprint found on the phone was a match for Tejay Johnson, a former player described as a "mentor" to Boggs, authorities say. His information was in the system after a previous brush with the law.
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When police arrived at the Prosper Street crime scene, a report notes, they detected "a strong odor of marijuana."
The three other robberies had a similar pattern: late nights, the threat of violence, and the violation of a sense of security in one's home. Or in some cases, dorm rooms.
In December of 2014, authorities allege, former player Jamil Pollard and Lloyd Terry are accused of forcing their way into a Davidson Hall dorm room in Piscataway and stealing drugs and cash from a victim.
On April 27, a day after the Prosper Street robbery that left behind the incriminating fingerprint, Boggs and Johnson are accused of robbing a Hartwell Street home armed with a hammer and a knife.
And on May 6, Johnson and Boggs are accused of trying to force their way into a dorm room on the Piscataway campus.
"Unfortunately for Mr. Boggs and Mr. Johnson, there happened to be someone a little bit bigger than them on the other side of the door," said Christopher Kuberiet, the assistant Middlesex County prosecutor handling the case, in a September court hearing. "They resisted. During the course of that struggle, Mr. Boggs was cut."
Prosecutors say these victims were targeted because the thieves thought they'd never call the cops -- often, the robbers were after drugs, police say.
In an Aug. 28 search of a Hamilton Street home, police found a 93 grams of marijuana, $35,000 in alleged drug proceeds and a stun gun, and subsequently arrested Jianan Chen for possession with intent to distribute. Chen, 19, is accused of helping plan the robberies.
Can victims be trusted?
Some of the defense attorneys are likely to exploit the presence of drugs everywhere in the case -- arguing that neither the co-defendants nor the victims, from whom a large amount of marijuana was allegedly stolen, can be trusted.
"When you lay down with dogs, you wind up with fleas," said Jim Donohue, who is representing Boggs.
In open court, Donohue accused another co-defendant, 19-year-old Rutgers student Dylan Mastriana, of being a drug dealer who picked out the victims because they were his competition. Mastriana was also charged with robbery for his alleged role in planning the crimes.
Everyone in the case, defendants and victims alike, shared one thing in common: They were Rutgers students, past and present.
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Prosecutors say that the chance of conviction is "extremely" likely because of the physical evidence and testimony from both defendants and victims. Some of the defendants "sang like canaries," a judge said, and after the robberies, prosecutors say the robbers sent pictures of the stolen cash and drugs to each other.
If convicted, those charged in the robberies could face decades in prison.
Three of the defendants in the unrelated Delafield assault will be able to apply for pre-trial intervention, which will require guilty pleas but would leave them with clean records if they stayed out of trouble for a few years. Two others -- one accused of throwing the punch and the one who was arrested again in October -- will be unlikely to get approval for the probationary program.
"These young men have been given the opportunity to study, first, and then play for this great state," said Superior Court Judge Dennis Nieves at a recent bail-reduction hearing. "And now they find themselves involved in this case."
Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Brian Amaral may be reached at bamaral@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44. Find NJ.com on Facebook.