Crisp bills lay on the Ping-Pong table. But the players crowded around weren’t using paddles.

The game that Monday night in November was high-stakes “beer pong,” a drinking game in which players lob Ping-Pong balls into plastic cups.

Michael Phelps was betting big - and losing.

“I saw Phelps pull out a roll, a bank-wrapped $2,000,” said Michael Whitworth, who had been invited to a house near Five Points after his band played a show at 5 Points Pub (now Sudworks Taphouse).

“He said, ‘I’ll match the $2,000,’” Whitworth continued, referring to Phelps. “Good ol’ Phelpsie lost it, too.”

Some in the house that night knew Phelps, but most of the people were drop-ins checking out what was called “The Michael Phelps Party.” Besides Whitworth, two people told The State they saw Phelps betting money while playing beer pong.

The two asked for anonymity out of fear they would be caught up in Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott’s investigation into Phelps’ marijuana use that night.

Well after midnight, a female USC student said she saw a young woman she did not know snap a cellphone photo of Phelps smoking from a bong, a marijuana water pipe.

Was that the photo the British tabloid News of the World published Feb. 1, denting the Olympic hero’s public image and putting tens of millions of dollars in endorsement deals in jeopardy?

That might never be known.

The photo that got Phelps, 23, in trouble could have been taken by any of the dozens of partyers at the house that night - or on other nights when Phelps was in Columbia the first week of November.

A student at Ole Miss, for example, wrote on an Internet message board that a friend of his took the photo and “is real upset about the whole thing because he swears he didn’t sell it.” That friend - USC student Cason Milner - first denied, then told a reporter from The State he took a photo of Phelps at that house on his iPhone.

But he insists it wasn’t the photo that ran in the tabloid because, he said, he lost his phone with the photo.

Even if the mystery of who took the photo, and who sold it, is never solved, one thing is clear: Friends tried to protect Phelps, but he made little effort to hide his behavior those nights in Columbia.

HOUSE ON A HILL

The notorious photo of the champion Olympic swimmer appears to have been taken at the house at 2201 Blossom St., where five witnesses interviewed by The State say Phelps partied.

The house, which sits on a hill, has a wraparound porch that early last week was littered with pizza boxes, broken beer bottles and a keg. Pictures of scantily clad women were taped to the front door.

Two security cameras guard the porch, sending a live stream to a flat-screen television just inside the front door.

When Whitworth, a guitarist in Atlanta-based band Holiday Parade, arrived at the house shortly after midnight Nov. 4, two men asked him not to take pictures of Phelps.

“They were pretty strict about it at the door,” he said. “They were just asking people to be courteous.”

The front room was clogged with people - and marijuana smoke. A bong was being passed around the room, which held 15 to 20 people, Whitworth said.

“It was the aroma of the evening,” he said. “The scent of it filled the entire house.”

Whitworth said Phelps was in an adjacent room playing beer pong. He said he didn’t see Phelps smoking pot.

The room seen in the photo has pink and white striped wallpaper. When shown an enlarged copy of the photo last week, a former owner of the house recognized the wallpaper she said she hung, but did not recognize the window shutter on the left side of the photo.

The current owner of the house, identified in county property records, has a Mount Pleasant address. Efforts to reach him Thursday and Friday by voice mail were unsuccessful.

EASY ACCESS

Phelps had spent time in Columbia before.

His coach, Bob Bowman, is from nearby Irmo. One of Phelps’ closest friends played soccer at USC, and his ex-girlfriend attends USC.

Witnesses say as many as 30 to 50 people were at the Monday-night house party on Blossom Street. But the night began a few blocks away.

A female USC student said a group of friends were with Phelps at Village Idiot Pizza & Pub. The Devine Street restaurant buzzed as onlookers tried to get photos of Phelps.

As he stood between the bar and the kitchen, two Village Idiot employees attempted to limit access to Phelps, the female student said.

Earlier that afternoon, as Phelps ate at Mellow Mushroom in the Vista, employees kept a watchful eye on anyone who inquired about him.

But at the house party, anyone who wanted to chat up Phelps had easy access.

Tyson Sellers, a USC student who was at the Blossom Street house later in the week, wanted to take a photo of Phelps.

The Olympian declined, saying he couldn’t be photographed while drinking. But Phelps did agree to speak to Sellers’ mother - a big fan of his - on the phone.

When Sellers was at the house, he said, he didn’t see any marijuana smoking, but said Phelps had “a lot of girls around him.”

One female USC student, who said she has hung out with Phelps in Columbia several times, said it was another young woman who took the photo in question.

“She took her iPhone out of her pocket” and took the picture, she said. “I just thought, that’s (messed) up.”

But she doesn’t know the identity of the photographer, one of many people at the “The Michael Phelps Party.”

“I don’t think you’ll ever find out who took it,” she said. “It could’ve been anyone.”

Story written by Otis R Taylor and Adam Beam, photo by C. Aluka Berry

Republished courtesy of The State

Also see:

Michael Phelps: Hits from the Bong

Michael Phelps: Hits from the Bong, Pt. 2

The Phelps Backlash