Akron’s Eric Paull case: Sergeant gets prison for stalking ex-girlfriend

a desperate Ohio couple plans with a 9-1-1 operator police hope well me and my friend we've been having some issues with somebody stalking us but the very person threatening their life right now well basically he's armed and dangerous he's sitting out in front of the house is the same one sworn to protect them [Music] yeah trust safety security basic needs that young single mom Alexis did Kenny was lacking in her life I don't think mr. Keeney had the best childhood and upbringing I think as a result of some of her experiences she had post-traumatic stress disorder in some mental health issues that she was dealing with then at the age of 27 she decided to take control of her destiny enrolling at the University of Akron Ohio to study of all things criminal justice during your studies at the University you met a professor I didn't Erik Paul talked to me about about him as a person he seemed like a very intelligent great guy a good teacher I enjoyed the class someone that you trusted yes in addition to being an adjunct professor at the university he was a decorated police sergeant with 20 years of stellar service he was very celebrated he did a lot of work for the department they depended on him for grant writing and from outside looking in he's what any Police Department would want and after a while he was what Alexis thought she wanted to of course at the time he was her professor and a married man the two became good friends and some time after Alexis completed his class they became even more everything just came really naturally he was helpful with college things different things I needed or had questions about in school and I just felt safe at first with him he decides that he's going to get a divorce right he has been with his wife since he was 18 years old correct he has two daughters he's leaving his wife why because he loves you so much he said that I was the only woman he'd ever loved ever and did you believe him yeah I did in Eric Alexis felt like she'd finally found the safety and stability she'd been craving but sergeant Eric Paul was hiding some dark secrets the kind that escaped in the bottom of a bottle and how often was he drinking daily eventually I realized it was daily it was a very functional alcoholic we had text messages between us where he would say you know in my career and rock-solid and no one knows who I really am before long the one scarying cop started exerting more and more control over his girlfriend's life he wanted to know all of my vulnerabilities I wanted to know everything everything about my past everything I was doing every day he would text me between I guess the average was 2 and 500 times a day true and 500 times a day yeah what else could he have been doing during that time and things only got more disturbing from there our relationship was done very up and down it would be really great and then he would get heavily intoxicated and then would maybe threaten in my life or his on I would say almost weekly at one point he would told me if I tried to leave him he was gonna kill himself Alexis felt trapped but then out of nowhere Eric left her I was relieved when he ended it and you didn't feel sadness at the time maybe a little but I think that my gut told me you know this is a good thing this is a good thing it had been what two years about a year and a half a year and a half at that point a year and a half of extreme dysfunction both Alexis and Erik seemed eager to move on Eric began seeing someone else and why Alexis wasn't so quick to trust again she did eventually allow another man in September of 2014 I finally I had met someone 3rd church and we kind of began casually dating and you know I did you tell him well I got up the courage my text m1 when he text me one day I said Eric it's not appropriate anymore that you messaged me I met someone and he was not happy about 2:00 a.m. that night I wake up to what sounds like someone trying to smash in my bedroom window it was him he had wrote this great out of my bedroom window and was trying to break in and that's when most people would have called the police but Eric Paul was the police what happened after that he's texting me saying I will not leave until you come out I can wait here all night and so I went outside and he puts the gun to my head and so he put the gun to your head that night yes did you think that you were going to die hmm everything inside of a Lexus screamed run away but mortal fear can be a powerful motivator he pointed the gun at himself and said I can't live without you you're the only woman I love I need you I broke up with my girlfriend tonight I want to be with you staring at the barrel of Eric's service weapon Alexis felt she had no choice but to tell him they could work things out anything to get him to leave but for the bad cop there was still the matter of the other man she was dating they're not following day he called me and he said that he had ran the background report on the guy and he said I will kill him and I will kill you you need to stop talking to him and so he dead but if she thought that would make things better between her and Eric she was dead wrong Thanksgiving 2014 hmm what happens on that day they started out okay we went to my family house and he went to his family's house and you're still together at this point yeah we're still together and I get a phone call and he's like hey you know I want to come over and watch a movie or hang out I said okay so I put my son to bed and when he arrived I realized he was pretty heavily intoxicated Alexis feels uneasy but doesn't want to do anything to set him off after the movie was over we were laying there and he he just started getting really violent for really aggressive shouting yelling to an extreme that I had never seen and I was immediately very very very afraid and she had every reason to be he began to get aggressive and yelling and pulling my hair shoving me and threw me down on the couch and began put his hands around my neck and he and a strangle me I couldn't breathe I was grasping at my neck trying to get his hands off and I cut it and then with her vision fading this was the last thing Alexis says she could recall he flipped me over and pulled on me yes and just you know started raping me and that's last thing I remember and yet somehow it was just the beginning to protect and serve the sworn oath of every police officer but when it came to his girlfriend Alexis Ohio police sergeant Eric Paul operated by a different code Thanksgiving night in a heavily intoxicated rage eric begins to strangle his girlfriend the last thing she remembers before passing out she alleges is being raped by the man she once trusted when I woke up I was so facedown and my son was at the bottom of the stairs and Eric was like God got off me I was like go get your son [ __ ] you don't know at this point exactly what your son saw yep but he was definitely in there when you woke up mm-hmm after that Eric left and Alexis felt helpless too afraid to call police also known as Eric's employers everything Eric day or said he showed me that he was untouchable he knew everyone people he introduced me to he would tell me he could kill me and get away with it but all the time and so Alexis didn't file a report instead she takes her own evidence photos and files them away for future use the next day Eric and Alexis have the following text exchange Eric writes quote I've never hurt someone before I'm actually getting worse Alexis responds quote you crushed my throat I felt all the pressure behind my eyes and ears ringing Eric goes on to apologize for the assault though he never says anything about the rape what happens after that with your relationship with him I just try to distance myself as much as possible I was in that cycle you know and I I thought I could slowly distance myself and he would leave me alone looking back that was definitely not the case instead her life became a living hell constant tax messages written in the snow Eric refused to leave Alexis alone but then she made a new friend just a friend but a good one talk to me about how you met Alexis we had some mutual friends on social media kind of just evolved from there like Alexis Brandon had kids and for Alexis it didn't hurt having someone around who could look out for her but for Eric Brandon looked like victim number two talked to me about the first time you met Eric Paul what was that like so my initial contact with mr. Paul was wasn't a very good one accident was location emergency call them beating on my door Allison trying to break in there on the window I've got my own children here was the night in December when we were at Alexis house with our children and he attempted to force his way inside his two daughters were over the girls got really scared they're like what's going on dad like I don't understand I mean it started getting more fierce and fierce and fierce and going to different windows and the front door the back door I was concerned not only for our safety but our children's safety I'm still trying to get in yes okay Clinton get the kids up there and go ahead and shut the door what you doing getting room for the next several minutes Brandon Alexis and the kids huddled in the bedroom waiting for police to arrive even though in a sick way they were already there officer I was upstairs the police show up and they come inside and Brandon says of them I know who was trying to get in and they said who and he said well it's an Akram police start doing and he said they're too whole look on their face changed and they said we need to know who and he said Eric Paul and the me and the sergeant was like oh then instead of taking a report Alexis says the officer took out a cell phone to call Erin come to find out it was a friend of his ex-partner of his that was the one that showed up at the residence before they even leave my house began getting threats from Eric I know what you've done Alexis tried to get responding officers to take a report but she says they refused I said you know he's gonna kill me like he's crazy sauce that's mine he's sick I need your help he's like I'm not making a right for it I'll handle this and they drove off abandoned she felt by the very agency with any power to do something and things were only about to get worse so Brandon leaves and Eric calls me and says if you don't come to my house right now I'm gonna come and put a bullet in your son's head and kill you too so I went and what happened I arrived at his house and he said that he had taken a bunch of ativan and he was holding his gun he tried to talk to me you know how much I love you and just all these controlling manipulative statements and I just was appeasing him as a cat I'm sorry you know I'm terrified can you see it at that point how bad things were yes but I was just in survival mode you're in survived that meant I was still in survival mode after that Alexis says she tried to keep her distance making it clear she didn't want to see Eric again but he didn't stay away and then April 6 everything finally came to a head concern for his friend Brandon told Alexis she could hide out at his house the next town over so I went and I hid it my friend Brandon's house and pulled into the garage turned my phone off I was worried that there was some sort of tracking device on my phone and so Brandon said go ahead and use my phone if you want I get on my Facebook and what I found it was completely crazy he said he was going to every guy's house I'd ever dated he was taking pictures of himself outside of these guys houses he can send me pictures of his gun you know he's like if you you can come at any time and I'll stop but I'm not gonna stop if you don't show up but Alexis had no intention of leaving the safety of her hideout unfortunately she couldn't stay hidden for long finally he messages me he says I figured it out you took your dog to your mom's house and you're hiding at Brandon's you coward gripped by fear Alexis feels stuck and a merciless nightmare that just won't it was a nightmare for which she couldn't wake up Alexis de cannae brutally raped she claims then stopped by the police sergeant she once called her boyfriend then April 6th Alexis hides out at a friend Brandon's house in a town outside of the sergeant's jurisdiction just not far enough he then sends me a picture of himself outside of Brandon's house like a selfie and he says I can see him in there laying on the couch I can see him I'm going in I'm gonna shoot him the person on the couch was actually Brandon's elderly father both Alexis and Brandon are out of the house of the time and Alexis drives straight to the local police department I demanded to see the supervising like the head next person up they kept telling me no so finally I called Brandon I said commenting on they mandatorily have to send a cruiser to the address if you comment on one well me and my friend we've been having some issues with somebody walking off and menacing are sending a threatening emails and text messages well basically he's armed and dangerous he's sitting out in front of the house i called 9-1-1 from the truck I didn't know why I just didn't want to go home you know what am I gonna do walk walk into a gunfight kinda night you know walk into just be getting everyone killed okay she's still here at the police department so nobody's actually seen this car outside of the house I don't know right now I'm going telling me and my Jack elderly 65 67 years old basically you can find a medical equipment I don't need something going down yeah yeah for sure and you're sure that your dad is home at that address yeah finally police do send a cruiser to the scene and find an armed and loaded Eric Paul the next street over I literally think fell to my knees in relief and I was like hell at least get a get a DUI stop she's drunk he's wasted if nothing else and they never even Dennis field sobriety check they let him go they pink slipped him a pink slip means that they have him evaluated by a psychiatrist certain colleges they take him to the psych unit and what were the results he was out after a few hours he was messaging me and threatening me from the psych unit he still had his phone thankfully Alexis finally gets a judge to issue a temporary protection order though getting anyone to enforce it may not be so easy he pretty much immediately began trying to contact me via email when I read it and I found it I immediately called and said this is what he did he violated my protection order you know and she's like okay good to know how many times did he violate that protection for four times what happened on the fourth time that really got everyone's attention I text the detective which had I got smart and I said well if I if I have a written document that I am informing her I and I said this is the fourth time he has violated my protection order is it irrelevant does it not matter and what did she say nothing and then he was arrested that day brought in by his own brothers in blue city versus Eric Cole why do you think it was so difficult for Alexis to get the proper attention from law enforcement in this case because it's so hard to believe we are trained to respect authority and we do expect our law enforcement officers to be good people and when an allegation such as this so outrageous of conduct from an officer surfaces it is a very hard pill to understand a swallow but it turns out one of the hardest pills to swallow was still to come I received a phone call from one of the detectives I remember as she said I'm gonna need you to sit down for what I'm about to tell you and she said there are hundreds of other rector's hundreds while crime watch daily couldnt verify if the number of victims was actually in the hundreds there is no doubt that Eric Paul did prey on scores of other women we really take a deep look into the rabbit hole and we call the mine of Eric Paul here and you find out how demented and sick he was he he had a penchant for adult in female entertainers I was informed that he was at a strip club at least five times a week that he was following other women around that he was harassing them he actually went into what's called Oleg which is a gateway that we have in the state of Ohio what enables them to do is find out basic information what we found with him is that on televisions and dozens and dozens of times he was going in using that for his own his own purpose nothing to do with law enforcement a felony in the state of Ohio so we charged him and he pled guilty to three separate counts of misuse and what we call Oleg this gateway and really abusing abusing the trust that every police officer had sure in addition to those charges Erik Paul pled guilty to one count of menacing by stalking and another for violating a protection order against Alexis but on the most serious allegation that brutal Thanksgiving Day rape and strangulation she never filed any complaints or said anything to anyone about that incident when it originally occurred I think that ultimately led to that charge being reduced or amended down to an and aggravated assault mr. Paul has always disputed that that there was any kind of a sexual assault and I would note that there was never any type of sexual assault charges ever filed against mr. Paul in connection with this case the rape was never indicted so the message that's being sent to her is that it's your fault somehow someway that you were brutally raped though the Ohio Attorney General's Office asked for the maximum of nine years Erich Paul was sentenced to four years on six counts eligible for judicial release in just six months if he's not released he will serve the entire four years but that's cold comfort to Alexis and her team the level of torment I had to experience an endure the length of the sentence is certainly inadequate for rape what we would like to see happen is the department take ownership and accept responsibility and say hey we have done wrong by you and we're now going to protect and serve you and try to rebuild and restore trust in you that is what we would like to see though we reached out to Akron Police for comment they have yet to return our calls however things shake out Erik Paul will never again be allowed to wear police match before Alexis de Connie it's a small trade for the pain she's endure do you fear for your safety right now yeah yes right this minute even though he's locked up in solitary confinement so if you fear for your safety now what happens when he gets out it's very scary at sentencing Paul who is also the father to two teenage girls apologized to Alexis his family and the Akron Police Department

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 1,797,976

Keywords: Akron police officer Eric Paull, Eric Paull, Alexis DeKany, Crime Watch Daily, True Crime Daily

Id: -SvKq6NV9mA

Length: 22min 49sec (1369 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020