found the restaurant’s manager blocking
his path.Justin Leyvas had recognized the man’s face
from the television. He called up a photo
of Gonzales on his cellphone. “You’re the
notorious dine-and-dash dater?” he asked.
“That’s you, right?”“Yes?” said Gonzales, stunned. “Well I’m
not going to serve you,” said Leyvas firmly,
and chased a flustered Gonzales out of the
restaurant. Leyvas appeared at Meredith’s
table and showed her his phone. Her meal
was on the house, he said.A few days later, the telephone rang on the
desk of Detective Cass. He picked up. “He’s
struck again,” said his lieutenant. “It’s on
the news, go look. He hit Mercado.”Cass opened an internet browser and typed
“dine and dash” for the hundredth time.
Inside Edition had the scoop. “This man
needs to be stopped,” Carol Meredith said
into the camera. “God knows how many
other women he’ll attempt to do this to.”
Mercado was just nine blocks away. Cass
threw on his jacket. The television crew
had beaten him to the latest victim, but
Cass knew to interview everyone, not just
the manager. A server told him: “I also
work at Houston’s.... This guy struck there
two days ago.’”
Cass knew Houston’s had security cameras.
He raced there to score video of Gonzales
in action before the restaurant erased it at
the end of the week. He watched Gonzales
slipping out the front door, midmeal. “You
can see the time frame, everything was bril-
liant, great evidence,” Cass said. Back at his
office, Cass started to assemble his victims.
He saw that the women were from all back-
grounds, all races, and ages. Gonzales didn’t
seem to have a type, he just wanted three
courses and zero bill.On May 21, Cass tracked down Gonzales’
ex-wife, an aspiring Instagram influencer
who curates a food and fashion account.
Among the avocado crostinis and cucumber
margaritas, Cass recognized the two chil-
dren he had seen in photographs Gonzales
had sent victims. Over the phone she dished
up a brief history of her life with Gonzales:
They had fallen in love, married, and settled
down, but their relationship soured. She
told Cass that Gonzales had once enjoyed
high-paying jobs, but not anymore. She
didn’t know where he lived.Four days later, at a luxury apartment build-
ing in Pasadena, Cass pressed the buzzer to
the home of Gonzales’ mother. “We spoke
at length about Paul,” he told me. She is
a respected clinical social worker, he dis-
covered, and her other children are settledThe last word^37
and successful. She didn’t know where her
son was, either, and didn’t know about the
allegations. She told me Cass questioned
her more like a psychologist than a police-
man. “She said, ‘One thing I can tell you
is that he never forgave me for leaving his
dad when he was a kid,” recalled Cass.
He’s been making women pay ever since, he
thought. Literally.
On the evening of Aug. 25, 2018, Cass was
working overtime in Pasadena’s Old Town.
He had been tailing Gonzales for four
months and started to see Paul-alikes every-
where. Just after nine o’clock, he noticed
a street vendor strolling down the boule-
vard, hawking Lakers T-shirts to tourists.for 120 days and ordered to pay $240 in
restitution to two of his victims. There was
a party atmosphere outside the courthouse
after the judge handed down his sentence.
“I believe in karma,” laughed Meredith,
who had encouraged other victims to speak
to the media, and the police. “He doesn’t
have to worry about any meals now—he’s
gonna get three square meals a day!”G
ONZALES AGREED TO meet me in
April this year, in a Starbucks in
Santa Monica, but later changed
his mind about giving a full interview. He
claimed he was innocent. Gonzales insists
the whole thing was a conspiracy. It was
the women who “catfished” him by using
outdated photographs, he said. “I got tired
of paying for people who are scamming
me.” According to Gonzales, his dating
days are over. He says he’s in a healthy rela-
tionship with newborn twins at home. He
also boasted of a new, high-powered job for
Nike and the NFL, which I suspected was
another of his fabrications.
“The construction of the fantasy seems to
be an important part of his process,” said
Dr. Frank T. McAndrew, a professor of psy-
chology at Knox College. “The only thing
that makes sense here is that Gonzales gets
a rush from pulling off each new caper. The
planning of it, luring the victim in, and—at
least for the moment—being the center of a
desirable woman’s attention.”
McAndrew said he expected Gonzales to
strike again, “as the thrill of possibly get-
ting caught is probably part of the fun.” I
thought about that when I met Gonzales for
the last time at Starbucks, early one Sunday
morning. He placed a used coffee cup on
the counter and asked the server for a free
refill. After he bounced off to find a table, a
tired-looking manager appeared. “I’ve been
here since 4:30 this morning, and that man
has bought nothing,” she said flatly. “He’s
not getting a refill.” Out of embarrassment,
I quickly paid for his drink.
Not long ago, I spoke to Carol Meredith,
who told me that standing up for herself
on Inside Edition gave her acting career
a boost. She has since appeared in the
CBS cop drama S.W.A.T. and on General
Hospital. She is still looking for love and
has returned to online dating. Marjorie
Moon, who had sworn off restaurant dates,
eventually agreed to meet another hand-
some stranger from a dating app. She found
a babysitter and drove across town, but this
time her date picked up the check, she said,
speaking from their honeymoon in Hawaii.A version of this article originally appeared
in TheDailyBeast.com. Copyrighted 2019,
The Daily Beast Company LLC.Gonzales insists he’s the victim of a conspiracy.
Springing to action, he grabbed the man
and threw on the handcuffs. Cass recalled:
“My partner, he told me... ‘Man, Cass
is really cracking down these vendors!’”
But then he heard the detective make the
radio call: “This is footbeat three, we have
Paul Gonzales in custody...the Dine-and-
Dash Dater.”
Cass had a theory that Gonzales’ phone
would hold an “electronic shrine” of evi-
dence. Just as he expected, his suspect’s
phone was full of dating trophies—
photographs of hundreds of women. “I was
able to go back to at least 2013,” said Cass.
During his interrogation, he asked Gonzales
if he was a “demented, sick individual”
or if he was like “sex perverts that...get
some kind of perversion out of victimizing
people?” Or was he another type of person,
“somebody who deep down has a lot of
anger...because they were abandoned when
they were young by their mothers?”
Initially, Gonzales was charged with seven
felony counts of extortion, two felony
counts of attempted extortion, and one
felony count of grand theft. He ended up
pleading no contest to four misdemeanors:
three counts of defrauding an innkeeper by
nonpayment and one count of petty theft.
While it was not the 13-year sentence Cass
had hoped for, Gonzales was sent to jail
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