DURHAM, N.C. (AP) – Duke University’s lacrosse coach resigned Wednesday and the school canceled the rest of the season amid a burgeoning scandal involving allegations that three players raped a stripper at an off-campus party.

Mike Pressler spent 16 seasons at Duke and won three Atlantic Coast Conference championships. Last year, his team appeared in the national championship game.

“Coach Pressler offered me his resignation earlier this afternoon, and I accepted it,” said Duke athletic director Joe Alleva. “I believe this is in the best interests of the program, the department of athletics and the university.”

The rape allegations have roiled the campus and the city, raised racial tensions, and heightened the long-standing antagonism between the privileged students at the elite university and the poorer people of Durham.

The stripper is black and said her attackers were white. Investigators and witnesses have said the lacrosse players taunted her with racial slurs and insults.

Students and townspeople have marched on campus and off, angry over the school’s handling of the allegations and the team members’ refusal to cooperate with police. Investigators said the athletes are sticking together and keeping silent. No one has been charged.

Earlier Wednesday, authorities unsealed documents stating that hours after the alleged rape, a player apparently sent an e-mail saying he wanted to invite more strippers to his dorm room, kill them and skin them. It was not clear whether the message was serious or a joke.

“The court released today a previously sealed warrant, whose contents are sickening and repulsive,” said Duke President Richard Brodhead said in announcing the cancellation of the rest of the season.

The stripper, a student at a nearby university, 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.

Investigators did not immediately return calls or e-mails seeking comment about the nature of the e-mail. But a lawyer for the player who purportedly wrote it said the content suggests his client is innocent.

“While the language of the e-mail is vile, the e-mail itself is perfectly consistent with the boys’ unequivocal assertion that no sexual assault took place that evening,” said attorney Robert Ekstrand. The e-mail “demonstrates that its writer is completely unaware that any act or event remotely similar to what has been alleged ever occurred.”