A Draper prosecutor won’t file charges against Utah influencer Taylor Frankie Paul or her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, after telling investigators that the two were not “credible witnesses.”
The city prosecutor “determined that there is insufficient corroborating evidence to support filing criminal charges against either party,” Draper officials announced in a news release Thursday.
Draper police released a batch of records associated with the case on Thursday.
The records include photos of Mortensen with scratches and a bloody nose, and Paul with a yellowing bruise on her forehead, another on the back of her neck and one on her elbow. There is also body camera footage and screenshots of text messages the on-and-off-again couple exchanged.
Draper prosecutors had apparent doubts about both Paul and Mortensen’s accounts.
On March 20, a city prosecutor told a police officer that “neither Taylor or Dakota are credible witnesses,” that both of their statements were “fraught with inconsistencies,” and that “both parties are misrepresenting their behavior,” according to a police report.
The allegations related to a Feb. 23 fight, just weeks before Paul, the star of the reality TV show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” was set to see her season of “The Bachelorette” air on ABC.
Mortensen claims Paul threw a drink at him and assaulted him, Paul’s lawyer has said. But Paul said that Mortensen grabbed her head, slammed it into the dashboard and struck her knee and elbow with his fist, according to her attorney.
After the fight, one of Mortensen’s friends called the police because Mortensen was “apprehensive” about reporting Paul due to her public profile, according to an officer’s report.
But “with pressure” from his friend, Mortensen told police that “Taylor has been abusive to him for some time and [Mortensen] expressed vague concerns that she may be verbally and possibly physically abusive to her two children from a previous marriage and to their shared child,” police records state.
However, Paul’s statement said that “Dakota has a history of creating these situations and there is a pattern of him trying to sabotage anything big or exciting that is happening with my life. Things like a new season coming out, or in this case the trailers of the Bachelorette starting to run always seem to set him off.”
Screenshots of text messages show Mortensen telling Paul he is “not doing well” and that he feels “unworthy of love.”
“And now I have to watch you fall in love with the rest of the world and give every guy a side of you I’ve craved everyday,” Mortensen wrote. “I can’t.”
The Draper police investigation ultimately led to Paul’s season of “The Bachelorette” being canceled, as well as a pause in filming for the fifth season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
Much of the evidence released Thursday was mentioned at a hearing in Utah’s 3rd District Court earlier this month, when a commissioner ruled that Paul must be supervised when visiting their 2-year-old son because he had concerns about the reality TV star’s “volatile behavior.”
The couple will return to the Utah court on April 30, when a commissioner will reconsider the visitation issue and a pair of dueling requests for protective orders.
The decision from the Draper prosecutor followed a Tuesday announcement from the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office that it had also declined to file charges against Paul.

Palak Jayswal