Sex, lies, and polygraph tests are at the center of an investigation into a Georgia police officer.
A small trailer park in Luthersville, about an hour southwest of Atlanta, is ground zero for an alleged love triangle between maintenance man Bruce Coley, then-girlfriend Ashleigh Wilkinson, and Luthersville Police Sgt. Eric Mischel.
Mischel arrested Coley 18-months ago for theft, stalking, terroristic threats and other crimes, but now Coley is the free man and Mischel is waiting to learn if he’ll face charges for abusing his authority.
“I’ve been doing this 30 years and I can’t recall, I just cannot recall an incident like this one,” said Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Peter Skandalakis.
The story started Nov. 22, 2013, when records show Mischel arrested Coley for stealing a hot water heater and taking it to a scrap yard.
Once he was behind bars, Coley said Sgt. Mischel made a move on his former girlfriend, Ashleigh Wilkinson. “That very day, they actually went out and she ended up spending the night at his house,” Coley claimed.
Wilkinson backed up his story.
In the beginning, Wilkinson said, “There were text messages all the time, phone calls all the time, where (Mischel) was talking about what he wanted: a relationship, and (Coley) staying out of the picture. If (Coley) was in the picture it was hard for him to get anywhere near me or close to me at all.”
Mischel refused to talk to Channel 2 Action News about the accusations.
Phone call records obtained by Channel 2 showed more than a dozen phone calls between Wilkinson and Mischel in the days following Coley’s arrest.
Coley bonded out of jail three days after his arrest, but he was banned from going to his home. Wilkinson had filed a temporary protective order against him.
Coley needed a police officer to accompany him to get personal items out of his home. The officer who showed up: Mischel. And he had more questions for Coley.
“He says, ‘This is pure speculation, but I’ve got reports that you have been waving a gun at someone.’ And I said, ‘Eric, I don’t own a gun, don’t have a gun, don’t want one. Your information is incorrect, I did not do that.’”
“I said, ‘Eric by the way, since we’re asking each other questions, I heard that you have been sleeping with my girlfriend.’ He denied it and his face got real red. He got embarrassed and I think that’s kind of what stirred up the hornets’ nest if you will,” said Coley.
Mischel arrested Coley again a few weeks later. The new charges included stalking, terroristic threats and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. This time Coley was stuck in jail without bond.
“I had no one who could help me because it was me against him. And him being the police, I just knew that he, ultimately, was going to be seen as the person who was right,” Coley said.
The lies
While Mischel charged Coley with threatening a woman and her child with a gun in the trailer park, the police report showed the woman never actually identified Coley. The woman and her daughter have since left the trailer park and haven’t been located.
Wilkinson played a big part in Coley’s second arrest. In a statement to police, she said Coley confessed to her that he’d pulled a gun on a woman and her child. Mischel’s body camera was recording when Wilkinson gave her statement. Wilkinson can be heard telling Mischel, “He’s vicious and he’s dangerous.”
Wilkinson now says the recording was a performance and the statement was a lie. She claims Mischel told her to do it. “I was scared to death. He was the police — and here, I am, just me.”
“I was a methamphetamine user,” Wilkinson continued, “He said that he would get me on a sales case for distributing, which is a big time felony. I would have spent many years in prison.”
Wilkinson told Channel 2 she wears the shame of her lies every day. “I can’t take it back. All I can do is try to make it right.”
The polygraph
Coley finally bonded out of jail in March of 2014, three months after his arrest. But in the fall, a grand jury indicted him on the charges.
Realizing he was facing up to 85 years behind bars, Coley asked for a meeting with Mischel.
Mischel was wearing his body camera. “I’ll keep both of these on and just act normal,” Mischel said into his microphone right before the meeting.
During the conversation, Mischel denied sleeping with Wilkinson, or that his arrests of Coley had anything to do with personal motives. “I’ll take any polygraph necessary to prove everybody wrong on everything then, if that’s the way it’s going to be. I’m a straight officer and I don’t play (expletive) like that, I’m going to be honest with you.”
Shortly after that meeting, Coley went to the district attorney’s office for the Coweta circuit.
“He offered to take a lie detector test and we took him up on it”, said DA Skandalakis. He said Coley passed the test. So did former girlfriend Wilkinson. But Skandalakis would not comment when Channel 2 asked if Mischel agreed to take a polygraph.
Skandalakis dropped all the charges against Coley and called in the GBI after Coley and Wilkinson passed their polygraphs.
For more than a year, Coley fought the system. “I lost everyone when I went to jail,” Coley said. He says only two people stood by him — his mother and long-time friend (and now girlfriend) Tabitha Kennedy.
Mischel’s future is unclear. The GBI closed its investigation last month and sent it to the DA’s office. Skandalakis said his office should determine sometime in May whether Mischel will face any charges. He remains on paid leave pending the DA’s decision.
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