Web of abuse: Several women say Utah police, courts have failed to stop an alleged serial abuser

The following story was reported by the Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with KSL.com. The reporting was funded with support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

SALT LAKE CITY — He was very charismatic in the beginning. He told the women he was a pilot, a marine biologist or a singer-songwriter. Other times, he said he worked for the U.S. government, was in the military or owned a coffee brand. He said he couldn't have children and was a God-fearing man.

Many of the women met him at the Westerner Bar in West Valley City or on a dating app. The names he gave them varied — Andrekus, Andrekeos, Inky, Andy.

They said he was pushy, often pressuring them to bend their boundaries to accommodate him. But he also told many of the women things they wanted to hear. Sometimes, he showered them with gifts and attention.

For some of the women, the facade lasted months. For others, barely any time passed before they say Andrekus Rowe's behavior took a dark turn. They say they discovered most of the things he told them were lies and that he was a master at manipulating their vulnerabilities.

Removing him from their lives proved difficult. Doing so often involved a deluge of calls and messages, many of those nasty or threatening, from an array of different numbers. For one woman, the calls came to her work every day for a year around 1 p.m. Another said the number of calls in a single day — 87 — has stuck in her head long after other details of her interaction with Rowe faded. He'd use items they'd left at his place, or vice versa, as an excuse to keep in contact with them, sometimes even calling the police to report the items as stolen.

All of the women said when Rowe allegedly became abusive it escalated quickly.

Celeste Myers married Rowe in the fall of 2019. About six months later, Rowe choked her, according to court documents.

"After I told him that I was pregnant, that was when it was like he did a full, 180 flip and his true colors truly came out," she said.

Myers said the abuse went from small digs, constant accusations of cheating and shutting off her phone service to physical violence, stalking, threatening her with a gun and swerving his car into hers.

Myers began planning her exit — gathering evidence that she hoped would convince a court of the threat Rowe posed. Her plans changed, however, when she said Rowe choked her, took her phone and deleted all the photos, videos and screenshots she had collected.

"I didn't have a choice or an option. I was like, 'I have to run and I have to get out,'" she recalled. "I genuinely believed and still believe that if I stayed, I would not be living."

An investigation by the Utah Investigative Journalism Project uncovered an array of allegations against Rowe ranging from harassment to rape and assault from at least 17 women.

Court documents, interviews with eight accusers and over 60 police reports from law enforcement agencies across the state document a pattern of domestic violence and a knack for manipulating both his victims and the systems meant to protect them.

All of the women interviewed expressed concern about how police and courts have responded to Rowe's pattern of behavior and what he may be capable of.

"I worry about every girl I see him with because I just know how it's going to end up — and it terrifies me because he's so ... scary," said Elisha Paiz, who was married to Rowe and shares a daughter with him. "So many women have contacted me and said that they were a victim of his. … From when I've known him, when he first moved here, until now, it's been nonstop."

• In 2017, Rowe was accused of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another. Police reports place the attacks about a month and a half apart. No charges were filed.
• In 2019, Rowe was arrested for detaining a woman in a bathroom for nearly an hour until she agreed to obey his "rules" for the relationship, according to a police report.
• In 2020, Rowe was arrested after allegedly pulling a woman into a car by force and refusing to let her leave. She later told police he threatened to kill her and brandished a gun magazine.
• In 2021, Rowe raped a woman, according to court documents. When she ran outside, he demanded she get in his car and prevented her multiple attempts to get out of the car. Police arrested Rowe that same day during a welfare check on the woman, but charges for rape, kidnapping, sexual battery and forcible sexual abuse weren't filed until three years later.

Those are just a handful of the incidents victims have reported over the years. The reports triggered multiple arrests, restraining orders against Rowe from four different women, one guilty plea in abeyance for aggravated assault and pending felony charges.

It wasn't until 2025 — almost nine years after police first responded to Rowe and Paiz's home for domestic violence — that Rowe was sentenced to almost a year in jail after violating a plea agreement in Myers' case.

Rowe declined an interview with the Utah Investigative Journalism Project and referred any questions to his lawyers. One lawyer declined to comment and another did not respond. However, Rowe asked the judge for leniency before the sentencing, saying his time in the military, mental health struggles and an absence of family support contributed to his decisions.

"I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest remorse for all my actions and the harm that I've caused," he said in a recording of the hearing. "I know that change takes time and effort and I'm ready to put in the work."

Myers doesn't think the sentence is commensurate with the crime, but she's relieved Rowe is behind bars.

"Anytime I go back to my habits of making sure you're not being followed or making sure that a parking lot is empty and I don't see him or his vehicle … I get to remind myself that, hey, I'm safe," she said. "It feels freeing, in a sense."

Manipulating the justice system

One woman had met Rowe only briefly at the Westerner bar, she told police. In fact, his name initially didn't ring any bells when an officer showed up at her door to conduct a welfare check at the request of a "friend." She was visibly alarmed when the officer explained he had gotten her address from Rowe, according to a police report.

Hannah Cunneen was caught off guard when police called her saying Rowe reported that she was harassing him. She said he had blocked her and refused to pay her gas money after she drove from Park City to Utah County to pick up a motorcycle part for him while the two were briefly dating. She said he eventually unblocked her to ask for a hookup. When she said no, he offered to pay her the gas money for sex. When she refused, he allegedly threatened to send her family explicit videos he had taken of her without her knowing.

"I've never been in trouble before, so it was very intimidating," she said of the police call. "I just gave up at that point because it definitely was not that serious that I needed to get a police report involved. I was trying to fight for myself and this money he owed me, but it just wasn't worth it."

Another woman was tired and freaked out when a police officer showed up at her home for a welfare check. The night before was her first time hanging out with Rowe after meeting him on a dating app. She fell asleep during the movie they were watching and woke up to him sexually assaulting her, she reported to police. She left when he fell asleep and she blocked his number, but he continued texting her from other numbers, the report states.

McKayla Carter believed Rowe when he told her he had connections because of his time in the military. She was scared that if she angered him, he could use that supposed power and his knowledge of her legal issues in California to get her in trouble with the police. It is part of the reason, she said she never reported when he allegedly sexually assaulted her.

South Jordan Police Sgt. Josh Whatcott seemed to have reached his limit with Rowe's frequent complaints. He and an officer pushed back against Rowe's claims that Myers stole from him while police were present. Rowe became angry, cussing at Whatcott and claiming he was being treated unfairly.

When Rowe asked how to get a hold of the sergeant when he arrived to make a statement, the sergeant responded, "You call dispatch enough you probably have the number. … 801-840-4000," according to a letter responding to Rowe's complaint that the sergeant had mishandled the incident.

Multiple victims say Rowe used police as a control tactic.

"If we got in any argument, like if I was just confronting him about stuff I was finding, he'd call the police on me and say that there was a domestic violence situation," Paiz said. "And his end game was basically him telling me he was doing that so that he would get my kids taken away, even though nothing was happening."

Previous reporting by the journalism project has shown that domestic violence training of Utah police cadets leaves out a common type of abuse: coercive control.

Usually hidden in plain sight, coercive control refers to a pattern of controlling behaviors that erode a victim's self-esteem and freedom. It can include gaslighting; limiting a partner's access to finances, their phone or other resources; making threats; and manipulating a partner into unwanted sexual activity.

Justin Boardman, a police consultant and former West Valley detective, said this type of abuse can extend to using police as a tool for coercion.

"You start looking at why these people are using the police, it's an extension of their power and control," he said. "Since they are losing control over the person and they're not able to get them to do what they want to do, they're trying to get somebody else to use their power and control."

Police reports show Rowe contacted police about Paiz at least two dozen times in five years.

"I think I was just afraid. I had never been in a situation like this before, so I didn't say anything. And then things just progressively would get worse," Paiz said. "None of it was serious on their end (in West Jordan). It was almost like, 'Oh, we're being bothered with this again.' But you should also look at if somebody's constantly calling like that. I mean, that's a form of manipulation as well. You need to be trained better to just look at the whole situation."

The majority of the calls were about custody. But a handful were for domestic violence situations in which Rowe appears to have been the primary aggressor, said Boardman, who reviewed dozens of police reports involving Rowe that were obtained by the Utah Investigative Journalism Project.

In one incident, police determined there was no victim. In another, they charged both Rowe and Paiz. Rowe was cited for assault for pushing Paiz and causing her to fall and hit her head on a dresser; while Paiz was cited for interrupting a communication device for grabbing Rowe's phone when he threatened to call police.

"As far back as I can remember, best practice is determining the predominant aggressor. What you're doing when you cite both parties is you're arresting one of the victims," Boardman said.

He added that while police have done fairly well documenting Rowe's interactions with law enforcement, there have been multiple missed opportunities to charge Rowe. Because domestic violence charges come with enhancements for subsequent offenses, Boardman said there is a good chance Rowe would have gone to jail much earlier and many of the current allegations wouldn't exist had the police taken those opportunities starting back in 2016.

"The police are missing the charges that could be there. They're not doing the extensive background work that may need to be done for this type of individual," he said. "It's not specifically lazy police work, it's more police work that they haven't learned yet. … It's an issue we're beginning to be more aware of."

Boardman said police officers are often poorly set up to address the nuances of domestic violence. State and local police academies offered recruits an average of 15 hours of training on domestic violence during basic training, according to a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. (The average length of basic training was 833 hours.)

"I made the same mistake, it's, 'I want to know what happened today. I don't give a crap what happened yesterday or three months ago,'" he said. "So we put these blinders on. Domestic violence and sexual assault are not a single incident crime; they're a multi-incident crime."

Gaps in the system

All of the women who reported to police expressed frustration about how their cases were handled. One had difficulty obtaining a copy of her report (and found it wasn't accurate when she did receive one), one was told it was her word against Rowe's and another was told not to report an earlier instance of physical violence.

"Not only was it, in my opinion, mishandled by the police, it wasn't handled at all. There was no phone calls, no questions and no guidance," said Ann Howard, who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym to protect her identity and her child's.

Howard didn't report to police that Rowe raped her until after her child was born due to concern that Rowe might one day push for custody or parental rights. She said she has not disclosed the child's existence to Rowe out of fear for the child's safety.

Although Howard and other women have concerns about their individual cases, each also questioned why there hasn't been more communication across jurisdictions.

"There are enough people and departments that know," Howard said. "I personally don't see any reason as to why he's still on dating sites, as to why he is still walking around with normal people."

Former Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank said the current patchwork of databases and information systems across the state does not lend itself to seeing patterns across jurisdictions.

"Unless a smart detective or an ambitious street cop starts to put things together … they get too easily categorized into individual incidents and don't get cross-referenced, which is how people like that slip through and continue to perpetrate crime," Burbank said.

Although large databases like the National Crime Information Center will often include serious crimes like sexual assault, lower-level crimes like harassment are not entered into those systems.

Burbank advocated unsuccessfully for a shared statewide records management system. Such a system, he believes, would allow law enforcement to more easily access information from other areas and help them identify patterns across jurisdictions. Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill agreed.

"Intimate partner violence is something that is a very unique kind of thing. Perpetrators move from one partner to another partner, so that pattern is often repeated with multiple victims," Gill said. "So I think generating a centralized repository would be really great to do."

He added only three cases involving Rowe came to his office: Myers' two cases and a rape allegation, which he said his office declined to prosecute because of lack of evidence.

"I have like 23 different law enforcement agencies in Salt Lake County. When they work their cases, they bring them to us when they finish. Sometimes we never see them," he said. "This guy may or may not have some similar patterns, but somebody has to put those things together for us to look at so we can review them and screen them."

Both Gill and Burbank said a statewide database would require legislative action but attempts to push legislation haven't gone anywhere.

Barriers to pressing charges

Whether or not to press charges has been a tricky question for Howard.

"If I felt like pressing charges and going through all of that would end with him in prison, I absolutely would 100% do it — every day, every time, no questions asked," she said. "The hesitation comes from the way that all of these cases have been handled, and the judges or commissioners that are continuing to allow him to do what he's doing and not be brought to justice."

Myers was frustrated by the long court process, which took over four years, especially since she was willing to testify but didn't get the opportunity.

"They didn't notify me when his hearing was, they didn't notify me of what was going on. They told me after the fact. I wanted to be there in that courtroom," she said. "Where do I get a say in this? He did this to me, and I get zero input."

Myers' case originally ended with a plea agreement that gave Rowe three years of probation and the opportunity to reduce his felony conviction to a misdemeanor if he complied with the terms of his probation.

"It's sometimes a hammer to keep over somebody," Gill said, adding that pleas in abeyance can ensure at least a lesser conviction rather than a dismissal. "We like to get a conviction generally, because convictions can have subsequent collateral impact, for example, to purchase a gun."

Gill's office revisited Myers' case in 2024 after Rowe was charged with harassing a male employee at a car dealership he purchased from. The state later added Rowe's failure to complete treatment and a violation of a protective order in October to its argument.

"I do find it to be frustrating that a man reported him for doing that and they actually took it into account," Meyers said.

In a separate case, Rowe was charged with violating Myers' protective order against him when he allegedly filed a false complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration against Myers' family business. The charges were eventually dropped, Gill said, because of evidentiary issues.

"It's like, 'Do you guys do anything to help us or protect us when it comes to being a woman?' I don't think you do," Myers said.

Paiz has been similarly frustrated by the courts' approach to Rowe, who she said has unsupervised visitation rights to their daughter and who, according to court documents, has over $15,500 in unpaid child support. Arrearages over $10,000 are considered a third-degree felony in Utah.

Gill said he understands survivors' frustrations with the often inexpedient nature of the justice system, as well as prosecutors' decisions to decline some cases. He encouraged survivors to report promptly and proactively meet with law enforcement and prosecutors.

"We believe you, but there's also a difference between me believing and acknowledging what happened and then the objective reality of going into court and saying, 'What evidence are we going to be able to marshal out? Who's going to testify? How am I going to get this evidence?'" he said. "Don't take no for an answer. Sometimes we decline cases, but we have about three or four different layers of appeal. We can also get it wrong, you know. We're fallible individuals, too."

He added that the due process of law generally doesn't allow past behavior to be used as evidence of current behavior. In rare cases, however, prosecutors can use previous incidents to establish a pattern of behavior.

Gill pointed to a 2012 case where his team recognized the defendant's name a few times and started building a case despite some of the cases initially being closed. The man was accused of raping or sexually abusing five women and was facing 26 charges when he committed suicide.

"When you have one person, it's 'he said, she said.' If you have two people, it's an interesting coincidence. If you have three people, you're starting to see the emergence of a pattern," Gill said. "We were able to stitch that together, but it was quite laborious to get there."

The Grand County Attorney's Office, which is pursuing rape, sexual battery and forcible sexual abuse charges against Rowe, did not respond to comment. Rowe has pleaded not guilty and the case is scheduled for trial this summer.

The road to healing

The path to healing has looked different for each of the women; most are still finding their way.

Mckayla Carter has tried to block out most of her experience with Rowe.

"I remember just staring at the window for forever after because I already have past problems with sexual abuse and stuff, so that just really made me feel small again," she said, adding that she still struggles to define the experience since it didn't align with the violence that rape is usually portrayed with. "I guess as a woman, I always think of rape like in an alleyway or something out of nowhere and you don't know those people either."

Howard initially struggled with guilt after the alleged rape. But a positive pregnancy test meant ignoring what had happened was no longer an option.

"For a long time, even now still, I'm more comfortable with the word assault. I didn't feel like I could call what happened to me rape because I had the notion of everything is forced, everything is violent, and what happened to me was definitely forced but not violent. I struggled to really come to grips with the idea that I was a rape victim," she said. "Rape is rape. If you say no, you say no. Being coerced is still not consent."

Her child has been a source of light as she's processed the ordeal.

"Something very wonderful happened from something very horrible, and I don't want (their) importance in my life or my feelings and my love for (them) to be diminished by how (they) got here," she said. "And I feel like being ashamed of that is being ashamed of (them), and I'm not."

For a long time, Myers felt her anger toward Rowe eating away at her.

"He tried to take my life. He tried to take my son. I am not about to let him take who I am, and by having and holding this anger against him, he was taking who I was," she said. "Unfortunately, after four years, I still have that look-behind-your-shoulder kind of thing because as much as I have fought back, I'm still very aware that he's still a threat and a danger."

Strength in numbers

It had been years since Howard had seen or heard from Rowe when her friend sent a Facebook post about him from a group for women dating in Utah to warn each other about abusive or cheating men. By the time Howard got off work, she said there were over 100 comments.

"I was horrified at the amount of women that had similar or even the same experiences with just one person," Howard said.

She began messaging women and asking them to share their stories. Eventually, she connected with Myers, who created a group for Rowe's victims to connect.

They come from all walks of life but with one vile thread tying them together. Some are single mothers, one is studying to get a real estate license, one advocates for criminal justice reform, one grew up on a sheep farm and another recently opened her own esthetics studio.

Over a dozen women who experienced or witnessed Rowe's alleged abuse attended Myers' hearing for a permanent restraining order against Rowe, she said.

"He looked right at me … and I legitimately do not think he had a clue in the world who I was. As happy as that makes me, it's also really disgusting that that one person could have such an impact on somebody else's life and not even know who they are," Howard said. "I think that he does this so often and to so many women, that if you line us all up, I don't think he'd even be able to tell you who or when."

Paiz hopes more women will come forward and share their stories.

"All of our stories are similar, we've all gone through several of the same things and none of us knew each other. That says a lot right there," she said. "Some women won't come forward because they're afraid, which I understand, but I've told the whole group, there's power in numbers, and nothing will stop unless people say something."

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