Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [139]
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 ponytail 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 said.
Inside the room, Doan covered the bed with crisp white sheets and asked Smith to take off her pants so he could see