His name was Eric Uller and from 1989 until 2018 he sexually abused more than 200 young boys between the ages of 8 and 15-years old in the city of Santa Monica. Despite being a kind of super-predator on the city’s kids and setting off alarm bells with many people over the years, Uller was able to maintain his status as a respected employee of the police department who volunteered his time at the Police Activities League (PAL) with underprivileged kids. The police even gave him an unmarked police car which he used to shuttle his victims around the city.

This week the city settled with Uller’s victims for $229 million which is a state record for a case involving a single abuser. Many people are wondering how this could have happened right under the noses of hundreds of police officers.

Uller, a Santa Monica police dispatcher from a wealthy medical family, joined PAL in 1989 as a mentor for troubled youth, records show. The launch of the police-sponsored group coincided with a massive surge in violent crime and the growth of gangs, and the program was an effort to thwart that influence in the impoverished parts of Santa Monica.

He almost immediately began targeting Latino boys between the ages of 12 and 15 from the Pico neighborhood, but some were as young as 8, said attorney Brian Claypool, who has represented more than 80 victims…

“He bribed me with money, baseball cards, Dodger tickets, lunch,” said John AM Doe, one of hundreds of former PAL youth who accused Uller of repeated rape and sexual abuse over two years and blamed the city for allowing a predator to stalk children.

Not everyone was completely asleep. In the early 90s a police sergeant named Michelle Cardiel who also worked at the Police Activities League noticed something was off. Uller was constantly in the company of young boys. And then she got a report from one of the boys that should have set off every alarm.

Cardiel told sheriff’s investigators that around 1995, a boy told her that Uller had offered to help “clean his penis because his father is a doctor.” Cardiel reported the incident to Santa Monica police Officer Jay Trisler, who was then assigned to the PAL program, and Trisler said he would investigate. She also told her PAL boss, Patty Loggins, who told Cardiel that she would be written up if she kept spreading workplace gossip, according to the sheriff’s report.

The following day, Cardiel said, Uller approached her and said the interaction he’d had with the boy had been inappropriate and begged her not to mention it again.

Investigators interviewed the boy and concluded that Uller had never actually touched him so that was the end of it. Nothing happened to Uller.

A female detective similarly became suspicious of Uller constantly being seen with young boys and reported her concerns to her superiors. They told her it was none of her business. But she kept an eye on Uller and noticed that he was taking weekend trips with some of the boys. She confronted him and told him to stop but says Uller ignored her and went right on doing whatever he wanted.

Uller had started out as a 911 dispatcher but over the years he moved up until he was the lead computer analyst for the entire 911 system and reporting directly to the chief of police. There were other signs that something was wrong but no matter what happened, nothing was ever done.

Retired Santa Monica police Lt. Greg Slaughter, who headed the department’s communications center where Uller was the lead systems analyst, said that one morning in the early 2000s, a supervisor turned on a computer for work and child pornography popped up on the screen. Slaughter said he immediately ordered an investigation, which led to Uller, but he was never interviewed regarding the allegations.

As late as 2015, Uller was being given awards by the Rotary Club for his outstanding community service. But finally in 2018, almost 30 years after he started working for the police, an anonymous tip led to an investigation. In late October, Uller was arrested on suspicious of molesting four boys. Days after his arrest, six more victims came forward.

In mid-November, Uller was scheduled to have his first court hearing on the charges. He didn’t show up. Police went to his house and found he’d killed himself. The Sheriff’s Department was asked to look into allegations that people inside the Santa Monica PD had known about the abuse and failed to report it but no one was ever charged.

All of the city’s police and detectives knew who this guy was and many of them knew he was constantly surrounded by young boys, buying them expensive gifts, taking weekend trips with them. And yet only a few officers seemed to have a sense something was wrong. And those few were told to shut up when they reported their concerns. So for 29 years, Uller just got away with it and not a single person has lost their job over this.