Ex-Officer Denies Link to Prostitution : Suspect: Dennis Hartman says that if the employees of his wife’s massage parlor were selling sex, he was unaware of it.

In his first interview since being named a criminal suspect in a prostitution operation at a La Mesa massage parlor, former San Diego County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Hartman said Thursday that although he frequently visited the business to run errands, he had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

Speaking to The Times outside the County Administration Center, where he had just come from signing his retirement papers, the 23-year sheriff’s veteran said he was simply trying to help his paraplegic wife, Sandy, who owned the operation but was in no physical condition to visit it.

“I wasn’t running the place,” said the 55-year-old Hartman. “I was Sandy’s legs. I was just doing her a favor here and there. If I had known there was prostitution going on there, I would have called the cops myself. I am a cop.”

La Mesa police say they have evidence that Hartman operated the massage parlor, but have not yet arrested him because they are still making inquiries that might make their case stronger.

To Hartman, the case is much simpler.

“It all comes down to a love story, really,” he said, lighting his third cigarette in 30 minutes.

If it started as a love story, it ended ruefully at rock bottom. It caused Hartman to end his career with the Sheriff’s Department.

It resulted in Hartman being placed in handcuffs at his home last week for four hours as law enforcement officials picked apart his home.

And, in the near future, it most probably will end with Hartman’s formal arrest and criminal charges associated with pimping for a prostitution operation.

But to Hartman, who spent half an hour Thursday with county retirement officials to calculate the benefits he will receive, the accusations are false.

He does not deny that he spent time at Yung Accupressure in La Mesa, owned by his new wife, Unyong (Sandy) Hall. After all, he said, Hall accidentally slipped under her moving car in July and is paralyzed from the waist down. Hartman watched the accident and was helpless to stop it. He vowed to help her.

“I promised Sandy that I’d take care of her forever and I have,” said Hartman, a man with thinning white hair, a walrus mustache and pasty white skin who wore blue jeans to discuss his retirement Thursday.

For the past six months, Hartman has been caring for Hall, whom he married Dec. 27. He divorced Barbara Hartman, a secretary for the Sheriff’s Department’s community relations director, in early December.

Part of his activities included stopping by Yung Accupressure four or five times a week to run errands, such as collecting money from the cash register, gathering receipts and bringing by laundry detergent and other items.

Inside the business, one woman worked as a massage technician. Undercover officers said she offered sex for money. Another woman was the receptionist. Officials said she acted as a pimp. Both were arrested.

Hartman and his wife are furious. If the charges are true, that men entered the business, were shown to back rooms, and given the opportunity to have sex, “then they destroyed her business,” he said. “They certainly have destroyed my life.

“These so-called friends come in to help their poor little Sandy when she’s hurting and they use the place like that?” he said.

Even if Hartman spent no more than a few minutes each day at the La Mesa massage parlor, the basic question being asked in law enforcement circles is this: How could a seasoned officer, with a total of 31 years as a cop, not recognize that the business was involved in illegal activity?

“How would I know?” he responded indignantly. “Even if I come in for 10 minutes and a customer comes in and they go to wherever they go and get a massage, I’d have no way of knowing prostitution was going on unless I was in the room. And I wasn’t in those rooms!”

Hartman was well-trained. He worked for the past two years in criminal intelligence, which involves much undercover work. But he also spent years as a homicide detective and at patrol stations in Imperial Beach, Santee, Alpine and the Las Colinas jail.

His evaluations have been stellar. A week after Hartman was named a suspect in the massage parlor investigation, colleagues are just now recovering from the shock. And everything he gained, particularly his reputation, seems to have been lost.

Retirement was always in the cards, he said. In fact, he scheduled a conference with retirement officials weeks ago and was to leave anyway in March. The investigation hastened his departure. Trying to work in the department as a criminal suspect would have been a waste of time, he said.

“What a way to retire,” he said. “What an end to a glorious career. Never let it be said that Dennis Hartman didn’t go out with a bang.”

Hartman said he has been given no information about the case, other than what he reads in newspapers.

“Newspapers said there was a cop running a massage parlor,” he said. “Newspapers said police checked into it and they found me going in and out and then found out that I’m living with the licensee of the place, so they tie me in with running the place. I guess that’s what they are basing their assumptions on.”

Four days into retirement, Hartman still spends 18 hours a day helping Hall in and out of the car, in and out of bed, with rehabilitation. There is no massage parlor to help run, now that the district attorney’s office has taken it over.

“I haven’t even been near the business,” he said. “I won’t even look at it when I drive by now. I’m afraid someone will see me looking at it.”