Police are investigating Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin for allegedly having sex with underage girls during drug-fueled parties he hosted for fellow law enforcement officers and other adult men in the early nineties.

A 41-year-old woman first detailed the claims during several hours of in-person interviews with AL.com in May, during which she alleged that Entrekin had sex with her four times in the late summer of 1992, when he was 29 and she was 15 years old. In Alabama, the age of consent is 16.

An Oneonta Police Department incident report filed later in May classified the woman's claims against Entrekin as alleging second-degree rape.

Entrekin denied the allegations in a telephone interview Friday.

"I've never had sex with any 15-year-old girl or had drugs around or anything. I have never done drugs in my life," he said. "That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard of. Never, ever has anything like that happened before."

Mary Elizabeth Cross, who grew up in Attalla but currently lives in Tuscaloosa, says that she did not attempt to refuse Entrekin's advances, but that she also personally watched him rape another underage girl who repeatedly said no. Entrekin denied ever knowing Cross, who also goes by the name Elizabeth Williams and was born Mary Elizabeth Buckner, names he also said he did not recognize.

The encounters allegedly took place in a camper on a piece of property Entrekin still owns in Rainbow City, where Cross says he also provided her and other young girls with alcohol, cocaine and cash on multiple occasions.

Cross, who is now 41, alleges that Entrekin knew she was underage when he had sex with her on four separate occasions over the course of two months while she was a student at Etowah High School. Entrekin was commander of the Etowah County Sheriff's Office's drug task force at the time.

Entrekin gained a degree of national notoriety in March, when AL.com exposed that over the past three years he personally kept more than $750,000 in public funds allocated to feed inmates in the county jail he oversees. In September, Entrekin purchased a $740,000 beach house in Orange Beach, earning him the nickname "beach house sheriff."

AL.com is reporting on Cross's allegations for the first time following a two-month investigation. She described the alleged encounters to an AL.com reporter during hours-long drives across multiple Alabama counties in Oneonta Police Chief Charles Clifton's SUV on May 22 and 24, during which Clifton also questioned her in his capacity as a law enforcement official.

The interviews were arranged within days of Clifton notifying an AL.com reporter that he had been made aware of a woman who said that Entrekin had sex with her when she was a minor.

Clifton pursued the claims after the Rainbow City Police Department declined to do so, and he recorded the allegations in the Oneonta Police Department incident report, which he filed on May 29. Cross has also handwritten an official statement detailing her claims for the Oneonta Police. AL.com has obtained copies of both documents, neither of which have been released to the public.

On Friday, after AL.com interviewed Entrekin about Cross's allegations, Donald Rhea, a Gadsden attorney representing Entrekin, wrote a letter to Etowah County District Attorney Jody Willoughby. The letter, which Rhea emailed to AL.com, called for a state agency to investigate the claims.

"Sheriff Entrekin has instructed me to convey to you his request that this matter be immediately forwarded to the State Bureau of Investigation or to the appropriate investigatory entity so that the things and matters alleged to have occurred be thoroughly and immediately investigated by an independent agency," the letter says.

Rhea also called for an investigation into the emergence of Cross's claims decades after the alleged incidents took place.

"It is also requested that the circumstances surrounding the initiation of this complaint in 2018, for events alleged to have occurred in the early 1990's also be thoroughly and completely investigated. Sheriff Entrekin and I stand ready to cooperate with the appropriate investigatory agency."

Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin speaks during a news conference Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. (William Thornton | wthornton@al.com)

Cross alleges that she also had sex with three other adult men while she was a minor: two longtime Etowah County law enforcement officers who no longer work in the county, and another local man who did not work in law enforcement.

Until charges are filed, AL.com is naming Entrekin, who is an elected official and Etowah County's top law enforcement officer, but not the other men Cross says had sex with her.

While statutes of limitations shield the perpetrators of some crimes from prosecution, no such laws apply to the crimes alleged by Cross. Alabama state code states that "[t]here is no limitation of time within which a prosecution must be commenced for ... [a]ny sex offense involving a victim under 16 years of age, regardless of whether it involves force or serious physical injury or death," if the crime was committed after Jan. 7, 1985.

'I was 15'

Entrekin and several male friends were drinking together after listening to a local high school football game on the radio when Cross says she arrived at Entrekin's property on the summer night in 1992 when she alleges he first had sex with her. The men had been hanging out on the pontoon-style boat Entrekin kept docked on the water at the end of his property in Rainbow City and at some point the party moved on to his camper.

"I had shown up after the game, but that's what they had been doing. They had all been drinking, hanging out on the boat and all that," she said. "There was drugs [cocaine], but [Entrekin] was just having sex, he was drinking and having sex."

Cross - who says she was addicted to drugs and alcohol for much of her adult life but is currently clean - says she remembers the intimate details of that night, and specifically recalls that she was underage at the time of the encounter.

"I was 15. It was right before my sixteenth birthday and I remember telling everyone I couldn't wait to turn 16 so I could drive," she said. "We ended up at the lake house that night, and that's where I had sex with Entrekin."

In the early nineties, Entrekin would often host wild parties in a camper - referred to by him and his friends as "the lake house" - on a piece of waterfront land he owns on Charada Lake Road in Rainbow City, according to Cross and a female friend of hers who was also a minor at the time of the alleged incidents.

During an in-person interview with AL.com last month, Cross's friend corroborated the general circumstances that led to Cross being in a position to have sex with adult law enforcement officers while she was underage.

The friend declined to discuss any sexual encounters she or Cross allegedly had with Entrekin or any of the other men, saying that she has tried for years to put those times behind her.

But she confirmed that Cross hung out with law enforcement officers as a minor teen, that she "partied" and did drugs with them until the early morning on multiple occasions, and that Cross told her at the time that she was "hooking up" with some of the officers.

Facing the past

Cross - who wears thick, black-rimmed glasses and typically pulls her reddish hair back into a ponytail - stands just over five feet tall, but she speaks with a determined confidence that she says is informed by her drive to expose her alleged abusers.

She says she only came to see herself as a victim of abuse long after Entrekin and the three other men allegedly had sex with her while she was underage. For years, Cross believed that young women commonly had sexual encounters with older men, and that the sex she had as a minor teen was consensual because she did not say no or put up a fight.

She says her newfound determination to face her past and expose the men who allegedly wronged her developed last year amid the emergence of the #MeToo movement, which has resulted in a series of high-profile men losing their careers over allegations of sexual impropriety.

As she was coming to terms with her own alleged abuse last year, the political aspirations of Etowah County's own Roy Moore were derailed by allegations that he had sexually abused teenage girls.

Cross says that though the #MeToo movement has been an inspiration, she only made the decision to tell her story after hearing Entrekin's campaign rhetoric this spring, in which he pitched himself to voters as a family man and moral authority.

Cross initially brought her rape allegations to Rainbow City Police Chief Jonathon Horton, Entrekin's challenger in the Republican primary for Etowah County sheriff, which Horton won June 5 in a landslide.

Horton told AL.com that he spoke briefly with Cross about the allegations in April but decided not to investigate them or make them public. He instead put Cross in touch with Clifton. Horton said he did not want to pursue the claims himself, as he wanted to avoid being perceived as personally attacking Entrekin during the campaign.

Clifton served in various law enforcement roles in Etowah and Cherokee counties for 22 years before he accepted the police chief job last year in Oneonta, which is just over the Etowah County line in Blount County. Because Clifton no longer works or lives in Etowah County and is not a politician there, Horton felt that he had less of a conflict of interest, and could pursue Cross's allegations as an outside observer.

'She is telling the truth'

On May 22, an AL.com reporter and Clifton picked up Cross in Tuscaloosa in Clifton's SUV and jointly interviewed her for over four hours as Clifton drove through Jefferson and Blount counties to Etowah County, where Cross pointed out two places where she said she had been raped in the early nineties.

An AL.com reporter and Clifton again interviewed her for over two hours on May 24 in Blount and Etowah counties, and AL.com interviewed her repeatedly over the past eight weeks via telephone and Facebook Messenger.

At the conclusion of the May 24 interview, Clifton recorded audio in an AL.com reporter's presence of Cross answering more than 20 yes-or-no questions about her allegations.

The audio recording was later uploaded onto a computer and subjected to voice stress analysis, a digital lie detection technique that has been used in numerous criminal cases but is considered a controversial and potentially unreliable method for detecting deception.

The software suggested that Cross's answers were consistent with a high degree of truthfulness, except for her responses to two inquiries about one of the former Etowah County law enforcement officers who she said had sex with her while she was a minor. She had previously stated that she could remember few details about that man, including his name or job title, so she would be unable to provide reliable responses to the two questions about him.

"According to the examiner who administered the test to Mary Elizabeth Cross, she is telling the truth on all accounts other than the name of yet to be identified [former law enforcement officer]," Clifton wrote in the May 29 incident report. To him, the results of the stress test represented meaningful proof that Cross was telling the truth about the allegations.

Clifton also used interview techniques aimed at determining if a person is lying during the conversations he and an AL.com reporter had with Cross in Clifton's SUV on May 22 and May 24. For instance, he asked her to describe the layout and interior design of an old firehouse that served as the headquarters of the Gadsden Police Department's drug unit in the early nineties, to which she responded with detailed information that Clifton said was accurate. Cross alleges that she had sex with multiple former law enforcement officers in the bathroom of that building, and that they often gave her drugs there.

"That's where I would get my drugs and that's where a lot of times I would have sex - in that building," she said during the May 22 interview. "I had sex in the bathroom upstairs there a lot."

Clifton also asked Cross to give him directions to the building - which Clifton said was a covert space of which few people knew the location - and she did so.

He then asked her to show him how to get to a Gadsden house once occupied by one of the two former Etowah County law enforcement officers she alleges had sex with her while she was a minor. She did so without hesitation, and Clifton confirmed that he did in fact live on that street in the early nineties. Cross alleges that the former officer raped her in the house on multiple occasions.

And Clifton asked Cross trick questions that she did not fall for. For instance, he asked about a specific car driven by one of the former Etowah County officers she says had sex with her when she was underage, but did not tell her that he knew the former officer never owned that model of vehicle. She immediately responded that she never saw him driving such a car.

'It was drugs'

Alcohol and cocaine were abundant at the parties in Entrekin's camper, which were frequented by multiple Etowah County law enforcement officers, according to Cross. She says that Entrekin rarely, if ever, used drugs, but that he did give her cocaine on several occasions.

On the night she says she first had sex with Entrekin, Cross says she snuck out of her parents' home to hang out with one of the other former Etowah County law enforcement officers she alleges had sex with her while she was underage.

"So by this time I'm now almost 16 years old, and I would go to the Gadsden Mall and my momma would be thinking that I was going to the Gadsden Mall or to the public library, but he would come get me," she said.

The Gadsden Mall figured into the Moore scandal last year, when women who worked at the mall alleged that the former Alabama Supreme Court chief repeatedly hit on teenage girls there.

In the late summer of 1992, on one of the nights when she left her house to spend time with the former law enforcement officer, Cross says he took her to Entrekin's Rainbow City property for the first time.

She says that she quickly developed an understanding of the relationship between the young girls who attended the parties at "the lake house" and Entrekin and his adult male friends. She alleges that during parties there the girls were given drugs - and sometimes cash - and were often expected to have sex with the men. She and the other girls felt pressured to have sex with Entrekin and his friends because of their generosity, Cross said.

"It was drugs, you know what I'm saying? It was free drugs for us. We never had to pay for drugs, so for us sex just became a payment for it," she said.

"[Entrekin] always provided the boat, the drinking - the deal was always that he provided stuff, the extravagant living. He always had money on him, he was always OK with everybody bringing drugs, he always knew that it was there. He always made me feel good, he always made me feel like I was important."

On another night at the Rainbow City "lake house," several weeks after her first alleged sexual encounter with Entrekin, Cross alleges that he and the local man who did not work in law enforcement had sex with a minor teenage friend of hers who repeatedly said no. Cross alleges that she watched as Entrekin held her friend down while the other man raped her, then they switched roles and Entrekin raped her while the other man held her down.

"They forced themselves on her. That's kind of hard for me to verbally talk about, it makes me so upset," Cross said.

"That happened at the lake house, right in the middle, on the floor ... We were there 'til it was, like, midnight. I got in trouble with my mom for coming home so late."

'God's work'

For over two decades Cross was a heavy drinker and drug addict - a "doper" in Etowah County law enforcement parlance - and she spent years of her life addicted to heroin and crystal meth.

According to court records, Cross had not previously been charged with a crime in Alabama, but in April she turned herself in to Tuscaloosa County authorities on a warrant for stealing her brother's car, camera and other property in October 2014. She was jailed for a little over a month on charges of theft of property and possession of a forged instrument and is currently out on bond.

But Cross says that she kicked her heroin addiction over a year ago and no longer uses drugs or alcohol, and that she has recently come to terms with the extent of her alleged abuse. She has participated in various rehabilitative programs and become more involved in Christianity, which she says has helped her to face her demons and confront the extent of what she says was done to her as a teen and the far-reaching negative impacts she says it has had on her adult life.

Cross says she is attempting to better herself and cleanse herself of the "sin" of keeping quiet about her alleged abuse - a desire that she says was also behind her decision to turn herself in to the authorities in Tuscaloosa County in April - so that she can overcome her troubled past and begin to "do God's work."

She also says she wants to expose what was done to her in the hope that her alleged abusers will be brought to justice.

"I want to tell all this because I don't know how many girls there were after me," she said. "I really want this off my back as well."

More than 25 years after she alleges she was repeatedly victimized, Cross says she is still trying to wrap her head around the ways that those experiences may have contributed to the tragedies and troubles that have defined much of her life.

"I tried to commit suicide when I was a teenager, too. Everything was just out of control with my life," she said. "I tried to commit suicide twice. I took 18 aspirin and I'm allergic to aspirin so I thought if I took 18 aspirin it would kill me but, no, it just ended up with them flushing my stomach out. I was just a stupid teenager, didn't know how to do it."

'There were other girls'

Clifton explained in a June 5 letter on Oneonta Police Department letterhead that he chose to look into Cross's claims "in an effort to find an investigative body who will investigate" them. The letter, which is not addressed to a specific recipient, has not been released to the public.

"Based on a general inquiry into the allegations this officer believes that enough information exists to carry this case forward with an extended criminal investigation," he wrote.

Clifton says that though he is currently investigating the allegations, he hopes they will draw the attention of a larger agency like the state attorney general's office, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency or the FBI, which would likely have more resources to dedicate to an investigation than he has available as a small-town police chief.

After the May 24 interview with Cross, Clifton told AL.com that he believed that she appeared to be telling the truth. On May 29 he drafted the official Oneonta Police Department incident report detailing her allegations.

"Ms. Cross further stated that she and other young women of her age group were attending parties at a river lot in Rainbow City, AL where they were having sex with adult police officers and where they were provided alcohol and cocaine. According to Ms. Cross, the river lot was owned by Todd Entrekin," the report states.

"Ms. Cross indicated that Todd and other officers were there having sex with underaged (sic) girls and providing them with cocaine and alcohol."

The incident report that classifies the crime allegedly committed by Entrekin as second-degree rape also details Cross's allegations that Entrekin and the local man who was not in law enforcement had sex with her friend against her will.

"During the party where cocaine and alcohol was being consumed, she observed Todd Entrekin and [the local man] ... forcibly raped (sic) [Cross's friend]," the report states. "Cross said that once the two were finished with [her friend] one of them slapped her on the butt and asked her if she enjoyed it."

Clifton hopes to interview Cross's friend, but he has not yet done so. It is unclear whether Clifton will be able to move forward with an investigation of the allegations that Cross's friend was raped if she does not discuss them with police.

Clifton also wrote in the incident report that one of Cross's family members provided additional corroboration of the general nature of her claims.

The family member "had not been made aware of the exact nature of what [Cross] had been involved in as it pertained to" Entrekin and the two former Etowah County law enforcement officers, the report states. But the report explains that the family member told Clifton that "prior to [Cross's mother] dying, she had [said that Cross] had been involved in some bad things with members of law enforcement and a (sic) Etowah County deputy."

Entrekin said Friday that Cross's allegations against him are "bogus." It is unclear what will come of his attorney's request for a state agency to investigate the claims.

Cross's handwritten statement reiterates much of what she told AL.com in May.

"When I arrived at the party at the lake there was Todd Entrekin ... There I had sexual relations with Todd Entrekin. He also allowed me to have cocaine and cash to leave with," Cross wrote. "This would not be the only night. A few weeks later I would be invited again and brought a friend."

Cross's statement proceeds to recount the details of what she alleges happened to her underage friend on a summer night in 1992.

"My friend was raped and asked to not be touched. She said no several times. Finally the drugs took over and as she became high my friend was raped by Todd Entrekin and [the local man who was not in law enforcement]," Cross wrote.

"I watched as they laid her back, forcefully on the floor and [the local man] held her hands back and Todd did the same. They acted as if it was 'OK' and afterwards slapped her on the behind and asked if she enjoyed it."

One line in her statement raises a question that haunts Cross to this day:

"There were other girls but I never knew who they were."

MX-3501N_20180713_160420 by Connor Sheets on Scribd

MX-3501N_20180716_135412 by Connor Sheets on Scribd