How Jets' Cromartie fathered nine kids with eight women over six states
Last Updated: 11:29 AM, October 10, 2010
Posted: 2:04 AM, October 10, 2010
This Jet cornerback may be better at conceptions than interceptions.
Antonio Cromartie has nine children with eight women in six states.
That's one more kid than the eight he haltingly listed last month when asked to name his children on HBO's reality show "Hard Knocks."
Maybe the oversight is because his pressures as a pro football player pale against the soap opera of his life off the field. He juggles daddy duties for a 6-month-old girl with his wife, model Terricka Cason, plus eight kids up to age 5 from women he knocked up.
At only 26, Cromartie's conquests range from a then-17-year-old girl in his hometown Tallahassee to a lawyer and beauty queen.
The 6-foot-2, 210-pound former San Diego Charger has left a nationwide trail of paternity suits, visitation agreements and child-support orders totaling tens of thousands of dollars a month. Last March, the Jets fronted him $500,000 of his salary to pay at least $25,000 in arrears and other custody-related costs. He's in the final year of a five-year, $12.5 million contract.
"All that glitters really isn't gold," ex-fiancée Rhonda Patterson, a corporate lawyer and former Miss Black North Carolina, said of the charismatic Cromartie, who fathered her 2-year-old daughter, London.
"It's easy to get wrapped up in the lifestyle that came with being engaged to someone in the NFL -- first-class flights, shopping on Rodeo Drive, living in his Atlanta mansion. It made it easier to overlook the red flags."
Cromartie canceled their wedding a week before it was to take place and tossed her from his San Diego home when she was six months pregnant. He has spent just a couple of hours with their toddler in two years, she said.
Speaking out for the first time, Patterson and two other Cromartie baby mamas -- several of the women stay in touch -- describe a man with ample charm who seduced and betrayed them with equal ease.
Some of the women stay cordial or at least civil with "Cro" for their kids, who travel to see their dad at games and communicate via Skype, the Internet phone service.
But he has a volatile relationship with Rosemita Pierre, the mother of his eldest child, Alonzo. This year, he wrested primary custody of their 5-year-old son after Cromartie's sister, Cheaquita, testified that Pierre was a pot-smoking prostitute. Rosemita denied the accusations.
Alonzo was ordered to live in New Jersey with Cromartie, his wife, their baby girl and his wife's daughter from a prior relationship. He visited his mom this summer, when Cromartie laced into Pierre because she didn't rent a car to pick up the boy at the Atlanta airport.
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