Neither an Officer, Nor a Gentleman

ByABC News
May 12, 2005, 4:53 PM

May 13, 2005 — -- He charged into their lives like a knight in shining armor, claiming to be a Navy officer, an F-14 fighter pilot with a business degree, and with big plans for their futures. Women found his charms -- and uniform -- irresistible.

Like Richard Gere's character from "An Officer and a Gentleman," Eric Cooper seemed like every woman's dream. And in fact, over a 10-year period at least nine women from the Houston area were married or engaged to him. Each woman says she was oblivious to his past relationships, and each woman was convinced she was his one true love.

Krystal Weber, 21, was in her last year of nursing school when Cooper, then 28, swept her off her feet on their very first date.

"He was telling me all about what he did and how he has all the money he inherited from his mom when she died, a trust fund he inherited," she said. Weber said Cooper also told her he was a Navy pilot who was second-in-command in Houston and had an MBA degree.

The young woman's parents, Jack and Lynn Weber, also thought Cooper was a special young man.

"I was very impressed. He was very well-mannered, very clean-cut. He made a little speech saying that his life up to that point had been incomplete and that Krystal completed his whole life. That she was the final piece of his puzzle," Lynn Weber recalled.

The relationship progressed rapidly, as Cooper pressed Weber to marry him, she says. The couple married during a weekend trip to Las Vegas, shocking Weber's parents.

But Weber and her family didn't know Cooper had a lot of practice getting women to say "Yes." He had been married to at least six women before her.

Brandy Lloyd said "yes" to Cooper three years earlier. Lloyd, who was 17 at the time, had been dating Cooper for just six weeks when he proposed to her in front of her family on Christmas Eve.

Lloyd says she was still in high school when Cooper began pressing her to have a baby. "He wanted me to get pregnant quite early because his grandfather was going to pass away and he wanted him to see some grandchildren. So of course I went along with it," Lloyd said.