New woes for ex-Y. gridder

PROVO — One of the former Brigham Young University football players charged with gang-raping a 17-year-old girl last year in Provo is now being investigated by Texas authorities who are probing a sexual assault there.

According to documents filed Thursday in Provo's 4th District Court, the Garland Police Department in Texas says it found evidence that could link B.J. Mathis to an apartment where a woman says she was assaulted on March 24.

The woman told police "a young African-American male forced her to perform oral sex upon him in her bedroom soon after she returned home," according to the documents.

The woman told police the man had broken into her apartment.

Garland police say that a dog tag with Mathis' name and Social Security number on it was found in the woman's bed. Semen found at the scene has been sent to the Texas crime lab for analysis, according to the documents.

Mathis' attorneys did not immediately return a phone call for comment.

The Garland police detective heading the investigation called the Utah County Attorney's Office on July 22 to alert prosecutors that he also had a pending sexual assault case on Mathis.

The Utah County Attorney's Office filed a motion Thursday asking Judge Samuel McVey to allow them to use the pending Texas investigation against Mathis as evidence in the upcoming trial.

"Here, the hauntingly similar patterns of behavior in the Texas crimes are highly relevant and properly admissible as circumstantial evidence," wrote Deputy Utah County Attorney Donna Kelley in the motion.

Mathis is one of four former BYU football players charged with raping a teenager last August at a Provo apartment. His trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 24.

Partly because of the media attention the trial has attracted, defense attorneys in June filed a change-of-venue motion. McVey hasn't yet made a decision on that motion.

Mathis, Karland Bennett, Ibrahim Rashada and William Turner Jr. — the four accused former players — have all denied the rape charges. However, Turner did say in a statement to police in December that the four had consensual sex with the girl.

In exchange for his cooperation, Turner is being tried as a juvenile.