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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 di
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 said.
Inside the room, Doan covered the bed with crisp white sheets and asked Smith to take off her pants so he could see her scars."He sensed I thought it was weird," Smith says. "He said he had to do it there, because if the hospital found out he was helping me for free, he'd get in trouble. He was so nice and soft-spoken. I wasn't worried. He looked like if you pushed him, you'd break him."
As he pretended to examine Smith, Doan asked her if she'd dance for him. Smith said no. "He started his smooth-talking shit again, claiming it was just a joke."
Then, Smith says, Doan went down on her. Smith said she tried to wriggle away, but she was afraid that if she didn't cooperate, he wouldn't pay her.
Doan slowly pulled a dildo from underneath his clothes and began inserting it into her. She kicked him away, but he slapped her in the face with the latex phallus, pi
When it was over, he insisted that she shower.Then he drove her back to the hospital to get her car. On the way there, he suggested that they pick up her kids and get a bite to eat. Smith said no; she just wanted her money. He said he'd pay her later.
Smith never told her husband about the arrangement. In a panic, she called her ex-boyfriend, Maurice. Doan had promised him an extra two hundred dollars for setting them up. Maurice said he'd get her money.
Then Smith called a friend, who encouraged her to go to St. Thomas for a rape exam. She also contacted the police.
Doan was charged with rape. For the first time, he was placed in the Summit County Jail.
As the grand-jury hearing approached, Smith's story posed serious problems.
She admitted to sticking around after the rape, to allowing Doan to drive her back to her car. She confessed that Maurice had contacted Doan to seek payment.When the six thousand dollars never appeared, she went to police.
None of this would help prosecutors. But it left plenty of ammo for Doan's lawyer, Jonathan Si
Doan claimed that he offered Smith money for sex and that she consented; it was only when he didn't pay that she cried rape. He denied pretending to be a doctor. "But even if he does lie, if we locked up everyone who claimed to be a doctor to get laid, the jails would be overcrowded," Si
The grand jury reduced the indictment from rape to gross sexual imposition. "A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich," says Si
Throughout numerous hearings, Si
"It was like, oh, look at this poor little Vietnamese guy, and then look at this slut who'll grind on anyone for a buck," Smith says.
Si
Knowing that they couldn't get a conviction on Smith's story alone, the prosecution asked to submit additional evidence, hoping to unfold Doan's twenty-five-year history.
As he sat in jail, prosecutors and detectives scoured Doan's favorite pickup joints and strip clubs. They called women from old cases. But each story turned out to be as wobbly as Smith's, and two victims were already dead. Strippers and drug addicts don't make good witnesses.
But detectives never contacted their sturdiest witness, Renee. "If they'd have called, I would have been more than happy to testify," she says.
Finally, in July, prosecutors agreed to a deal. Doan pleaded guilty to assault and soliciting, both misdemeanors. He earned credit for time served and was released in August.
Within a week, Doan was back in the clubs, approaching dancers with his doctor routine, say detectives. "I'd have thought he'd move-or at least start pretending to be a lawyer or something," Smith says.
Though Doan doesn't frequent downtown joints anymore, he hasn't been forgotten. Jim West, operations manager for Flashdance, remembers once kicking Doan out. "I never liked the look of him,"West says. "He looks like a squirrel, which is what I call the pervs that come in here and mess with the girls."