for a long time, and we are a small community.'
Still, amid her denials, Nicole was able to confirm that Doan graduated from the University of Akron in the early 1980s. He then moved to DeKalb, Illinois, where he earned a Ph.D. in math at Northern Illinois University. 'He's not a stupid guy,' Nicole says. 'He has tutored manyVietnamese in math.There's just a lot of stupid people who say stupid things about him.'
Despite his academic achievements, Doan returned to Akron only to work a string of low-wage restaurant jobs while tutoring math on the side. Though he refers to himself as a full-time University of Akron tutor, the school has no record of his employment. But former employees of various Akron restaurants remember him.
In the late nineties, Greg Madonia worked at Papa Joe's, an Italian place popular with the elderly. Doan worked the salad-and-dessert line. He told Madonia he had a Ph.D. in math, but couldn't find work in the United States, which was why he was dressing lettuce for six bucks an hour. His much younger coworkers referred to him as 'Mr. Hy.' Madonia never noticed anything unusual about him.
Tom Feltner, who washed dishes with Doan at the Mustard Seed, an upscale health-food market and restaurant in Montrose, recalls a slightly more offbeat Mr. Hy.
'He was a weird guy,' Feltner says. 'He didn't say much, but he'd fly off the handle a lot.'
Feltner, sixteen at the time, was under the impression that Doan didn't speak much English. He also remembers Doan boasting of his math credentials and marveled at Doan's dishwashing skills.'He could do the work of two people,' Feltner says.
'He was like the kung fu master of dishwashing,' says the restaurant's owner, Philip Neighbors.
Coworkers pegged Doan for a harmless oddball. Little did they know they were in the presence of Akron 's best sex thief.
After the jury let D oan off the hook in 1980, Renee would see him around town.
He'd show up at McDonald's, stand in a corner, and watch her for hours. She told a security guard, who warned Doan to get lost.
But Akron isn't a big town. Once, while waiting at a red light, Doan crossed in front of her car. 'If I knew what I know now, I would have run him over,' Renee says.
After all, less than a year after her case, Doan was standing trial for attempted rape.
Nineteen-year-old Lauren Crouser said that she went to a college house party with several friends, according to the police report. She claimed Doan dragged her into a bedroom, choked her, and told her he'd kill her if she didn't do what he wanted. He tried to take her pants off, but she broke away and ran to a nearby Holiday Inn.
Once again, however, the jury apparently didn't buy the victim's story, though records from that time are too sparse to explain why. Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove, then a notoriously tough prosecutor, handled both cases. She doesn't remember either.
Yet Cosgrove understands how a man could escape two seemingly straightforward rape cases in less than a year, especially in such he-said, she-said situations, in which victims can be easily discredited. 'Sometimes people are good at picking their victims,' she says.
Shortly after the trial, Doan disappeared. Renee thought he'd finally been deported, but he'd actually gone to DeKalb, Illinois. It would be fifteen years before police encountered him again.
In 1996, Doan was back in Akron and up to his old tricks.This time, he'd added a new twist to his hunt for women.
Though records are scarce, Fairlawn Sergeant Richard Moneypenny has little trouble remembering July 31 of that year. He was called to the front desk to deal with a trio of oddballs- Doan and two exotic dancers. 'We'd already gotten a call earlier that morning from a hotel clerk who said an unusual Oriental man checked into a room with two girls,' Moneypenny says.
But this time, Doan was the one demanding to file a report.
He said he met the two women at the downtown Akron Hilton. They asked him for a ride to a less expensive hotel. He took them to the Days Inn in Fairlawn, according to the police report.
Somehow, Doan ended up in their room, where the women tried to blackmail him: Hand over four thousand dollars, or they'd claim they were raped. He said he'd take them to an ATM. Instead, he delivered them to police.
Yet Moneypenny soon uncovered the fiction in Doan's tale. Earlier that day, Doan phoned an escort service, requesting two dates. He met Taryn Chojnowski and Teresa Richard at the Days Inn bar.
He told the women he was a doctor and offered them four thousand dollars for a private dance.The women agreed. Doan got a room.
Afterward, Doan said he had to go to the ATM at Akron General Hospital -where he claimed to work-to get their money. He drove toward Market Street, passing numerous cash machines on the way. Chojnowski and Richard never seemed suspicious.
When they got to the hospital, the women waited in the car as Doan disappeared into the building.
When he returned, he claimed the ATM wasn't working; he'd pay them later.Then he drove the women back to the Days Inn.
At the front desk, the three argued over payment. Chojnowski and Richard threatened to say that Doan had raped them if they didn't get their money. The hotel clerk told them to settle it with Fairlawn police.
Doan's claims of extortion and the dancers' accusations of rape were dismissed as nothing more than a failure-to-pay case. 'The girls he preys on aren't exactly in a legal line of work,' Moneypenny says. 'I'd say he's safe.'
That was the end of it, as far as Fairlawn police were concerned. For Doan, however, it was the beginning of something big. He seemed to realize that his rich-doctor shtick worked on women- and that his claims of extortion got him off with cops.
All Doan had to do was con women in shady occupations into having sex with him, then skip out on the bill. Even if they cried rape, their backgrounds would discredit their allegations. And he was right.
In 2000, Doan went for a late-night snack at the Eat 'n Park on Cuyahoga Falls Avenue. There he noticed eighteen-year-old Colleen Imes.
'By the state's standards, she was an adult, but really, she was still a kid,' says Summit County Detective Patrick Hunt. 'She was so petite, she couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds wet.'
Imes was just Doan's type-tiny and troubled. He approached her with a polite bow and offered to buy her food. Imes agreed.
Doan claimed to be a Dr. Chang. He said he worked at Akron City Hospital.
She told him that she was a dancer at Lisa's Cabaret, a strip joint on Exchange Street. She'd had a troubled childhood, she revealed, and recently moved out of her mom's place.
Doan made her an offer she couldn't refuse, she later told police: He'd pay her six thousand dollars to be his date to various professional dinners and events. No sex, just companionship, he promised. Imes accepted.
Maybe it was his rotten teeth or his too-good-to-be-true offer, but something told Imes to be leery. She had three friends follow her on their first date.
Imes met Doan for drinks before he drove her to Steve's Motel, a by-the-hour roadhouse in Green.
As Imes sat on the bed watching TV, Doan excused himself to go to the restroom. When he returned, his pants were down to his ankles, his penis erect. Imes told him to pull his pants up.
At first, Doan complied, saying it was just a joke. But within minutes, he pushed her onto the bed and raped her, she said.
Imes would've done better to flee at first chance. Instead, she stayed by Doan's side, pressing him for payment.
He drove her to the Fifth Third Bank on Tallmadge Road. But when he couldn't get cash from the ATM, Imes's friends surrounded him. Doan called 911 and claimed he was being robbed.
When police arrived, Imes cried rape. Detective Hunt investigated, but prosecutors ultimately told him to drop the case. Imes died in a car crash less than a year later.
'It was the saddest sight,' he said. 'She was a cute girl with the lowest self-esteem. She was just desperate. He picked a perfect victim.'
It's the same way Summit County Detective Mike Coghenour speaks of Amanda Stamps. She was twenty-one, 'ninety pounds soaking wet,' he says, a troubled single mother into drugs and dangerous men.
In 2002, Stamps said, a friend set her up with Doan on a blind date. He was a doctor, she was told, willing to pay as much as six thousand dollars for a nonsexual escort.
Stamps met Doan for dinner. After a few drinks, Stamps claims she slipped into unconsciousness. She believed Doan slipped her a roofie.
She briefly awoke to find herself in a motel room with Doan on top of her. When she finally regained consciousness, Stamps was in Doan's car in the parking lot of Akron General, waiting for her money.
Once again, Doan said the ATM wasn't working. Stamps headed to St. Thomas Hospital for a rape exam.
By the time Coghenour got the case, the Summit County Sheriff's Department was becoming all too familiar with Doan- 'aka Dr. Chang, aka Dr. Kitano.' But once again, there were problems. 'Like the rest of the cases, she waited around for her money, which looked bad,' Coghenour says. 'It looked like she was trying to turn a trick. It threw a wrench right in her story.'
No charges were filed. Shortly after the case was closed, Stamps died of a heroin overdose.
Angela Smith curls up on a loveseat in her Tallmadge condo. Surrounded by photos of her husband and children, Smith clutches the same black-and-white mug shot of Doan that Renee held weeks earlier. She's thirty years old, but her light brown pony-tail and button nose make her appear barely legal.
She lets out an ironic chuckle.'He told me I was unique,' Smith says.
She met Doan in March at Club 1245, a strip joint just blocks from her home. Smith sat at the bar with her ex-boyfriend, Maurice. They were waiting for their friend, a dancer, to get off work.
As she smoked and sipped beer, Doan approached Maurice and asked if he was with Smith.When he said no, Doan gave Maurice his phone number to pass along.
As Doan left the bar, he bowed in Smith's direction. Later that day, Smith called Doan to ask what he wanted. 'He laid it on thick,' she says.
He said he was a Japanese neurosurgeon at Akron General. He gave her a name, not Doan, but something Smith couldn't pronounce. She decided to call him 'Wu.'
Smith had had hip-replacement surgery a few years earlier at Akron General. She asked Doan if he knew her surgeon,
Dr. Weiner. 'Dr. Weiner! I just bought a house next door to Dr. Weiner!' he said.
Doan finally asked Smith if she'd accept six thousand dollars to be his date. 'You've got the wrong idea,' she said.'I'm not a stripper, and I don't have sex for money.'
'No, no! I don't pay for sex,' he said. 'Only for companionship.'
He explained that eighteen-hour days at the hospital made it hard for him to meet women. He was worried that his colleagues thought he was gay, because he always came to hospital functions alone. He'd pay her six thousand dollars to accompany him. 'He knew I had two kids and I could use the money,' she says.'He said I could use the six thousand dollars to buy a computer for my son.'
Smith accepted.The next morning, Doan called.'Can you meet me?' he asked.
Smith met Doan at a gas station. He said he'd just been paged and had to go to work, and asked Smith to follow him to the hospital. He went into the building, while Smith waited in her car.
When he came out, he said he found someone to cover for him. 'Would you like to go to dinner?' he asked. 'We take my car.'
Smith got into Doan's blue Honda. In the back seat were medical books and a lab coat. He began talking about medicine, using terminology Smith had never heard. 'I totally believed he was a doctor. I had no reason not to,' she says. 'He like studies this shit, just so he can go out and do this.'
They didn't go to a restaurant. Instead, Doan drove them to the Office Motel in Springfield Township. Smith had no idea where she was.'I don't make a habit out of going to hotels that charge by the hour,' she says.'And I never leave my side of town.'
Doan told her he wanted to take a look at the scars from her hip replacement and caesarean section, which she'd mentioned on the phone. He could fix them with advanced laser surgery, he
