Ashley Biden’s secret lover revealed: A ‘barely educated’ violent junkie who spent six years in Florida prisons and died from a three-drug overdose – but she thought he was ‘calming’ and ‘a great kisser
Ashley Biden had a torrid affair with a violent junkie who terrorized his family and stole from friends before succumbing to a fatal drug overdose, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.
The President’s daughter, 42, who turned up at a Delaware court Monday to support her half-brother Hunter – praised Eric Dengler’s ‘style and swag’ after falling for him during a stint in rehab – writing in her diary: ‘He is a great kisser. And he is calming + sweet.
Ashley recalls in the diary how she was always ‘boy crazy’ and how she had ‘sex with friends @ a young age’. She wrote of affairs with two men when she was in rehab.
‘I don’t know if I even need to kiss a guy – just come over and f*** me – sober,’ she writes at one point.
One of the men she hooked up with was Dengler. ‘He is a surfer – not highly educated – barely knows his grammar/ but he does know how to love,’ she wrote.
But the 6ft 6in con’s former victims remember him as a brazen criminal who spent a total of six years in Florida prisons for robbery, drug trafficking and theft.
Ashley Biden turned up at a Delaware court Tuesday in support of her half-brother Hunter as his trial on federal gun charges began
Eric Dengler in the photo used for his online obituary in 2019 (left) and in a 2015 mugshot after he was arrested for a series of thefts. He was known as a violent junkie but Ashley thought he was ‘calming’ and ‘sweet’
Ashley said she was having serious trouble in her marriage to surgeon Howard Krein, saying they had little in common. They married in an interfaith Catholic-Jewish ceremony in 2012
‘All he cared about was surfing and getting wasted,’ scoffed one former acquaintance. ‘That guy was a danger to himself and others.’
Dengler’s lifestyle caught up with him in April last year when he was found dead at age 39 after overdosing on a cocktail of fentanyl, oxycodone and morphine.
Dengler was one of two lovers Ashley wrote about in the diary.
The other is a wealthy, married businessman who she identifies as ‘Kevin’.
Ashley hooked up with the men while she was undergoing treatment for drug and sex addiction in 2019 in a rehab in Boca Raton, Florida.
The First Daughter detailed the flings in a diary that was later stolen from a house in Florida where she was staying and has been published online.
Ashley – the only child from Joe and Jill Biden’s marriage – has confirmed in a court filing that the tell-all tome is authentic.
Dengler, who lived in Stuart, Florida, was only 21 when he was first sent to prison in 2004, serving a four-year stretch for trafficking in illegal drugs.
Three months after his November 2008 release, he turned up at his sister Julie’s house in Orlando demanding money to buy drugs.
When her boyfriend kicked him out, Dengler got into his car and sped towards the house, only slamming on the brakes at the last second.
Eric Dengler, a 6ft 6in ‘barely educated’ surfer dude, died of a drug overdose at age 39
‘Started hanging out with a new guy, Eric, who has been through a lot and is clean + sober these days,’ Ashley wrote on February 4, 2019. He died four years later from a drug overdose
Ashley complained about the state of her marriage to Howard Krein in her diary, saying they had little in common. Krein is seen on Saturday joking with two Secret Service agents outside the couple’s Philadelphia home
Ashley wrote in her diary that she took showers with her father adding ‘probably not appropriate’. She is pictured with her father aged six in 1987
Dengler was charged for stealing and pawning his girlfriend’s jewelry in 2013
‘I kicked him out of the house because I’d had enough of his crap. That’s when things got crazy,’ Julie’s ex recalled in an interview with DailyMail.com.
‘He got in the car, jumped the curb and drove straight at me. I didn’t move because there was so much adrenaline in my system I didn’t think about the consequences.
‘He was only a few inches away from slamming into the front door when he stopped. It was real close.’
The terrifying stunt saw Dengler charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a law enforcement officer for resisting arrest.
The ex, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Rafael, said he would typically show up and threaten his sister when he needed money for a fix.
‘He was always f****d up on heroin or molly. I never saw him sober. The guy was a bum, he never had a job,’ Rafael said. ‘
He had anger issues also. The cops would get called because he was screaming and hollering at his sister. It was pure hell to be around it all.’
The fracas earned Dengler 15 months behind bars. Weeks later the tattooed felon was charged again over a separate battery and robbery incident, bringing the total to 18 months.
Dengler was found dead in his Delray Beach apartment on April 6 last year wearing nothing but a pair of red socks and with a syringe clutched in his hand, according to an autopsy report obtained by DailyMail.com.
His girlfriend Gianna Correia told cops he was a heroin user and had survived two previous overdoses in March 2016.
Between dozens of arrests and various prison stints, Dengler set up a car and boat detailing business but the venture appeared to be short lived.
By 2013 he had violated his probation and was sent back to jail for rifling through a roommate’s jewelry collection and callously pawning her diamond charm and antique gold bracelet.
But to former social worker Ashley Biden, Dengler was ‘refreshing’ and ‘calming’.
‘Started hanging out with a new guy, Eric, who has been through a lot and is clean + sober these days,’ she wrote on February 4.
‘He lives in Florida. And he is so cute… has his own style and swag. It’s been refreshing to be able to kiss another man – he is a great kisser. And he is calming + sweet.
‘I can tell we both could fall for one another – and that’s a little scary but taking it day by day b/c ya never know what the future holds.’
The diary goes on to hint that Ashley was contemplating a future with Dengler when she moved to Florida around that time, although she admonishes herself by declaring: ‘Don’t move for a man.’
She also wondered if her father’s impending Presidential run would scupper the fledgling romance, writing: ‘If Dad runs it truly messes up everything with homeboy.’
At another point she said of Dengler: ‘I so wish I could see him tonight – just lay with him but it will be too late + I need to prepare myself for him abruptly walking away.’
Dengler’s mother, Carol Price, who moved to Lubbock, Texas, after her son’s death, refused to discuss his life, telling a DailyMail.com reporter: ‘You cannot speak of my son any longer. He is deceased.’
Asked if she knew if he had had a relationship with the President’s daughter, she added: ‘I have no comment on that.’
Ashley wrote about sex and drug addiction, cheating on her husband, and childhood trauma – including ‘showers with my dad’ – in the diary which covers a period from January to September 2019.
She wrote about her unhealthy relationship with sex and how she believed it stemmed from traumatic incidents in her childhood’.
‘I have always been boy crazy,’ she wrote. ‘Hyper-sexualized @ a young age. What is this due to? Was I molested. I think so – I can’t remember specifics but I do remember trauma.
‘I remember having sex with friends @ a young age; showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate).’
Ashley devoted several pages of the diary to her affair with the second man, Kevin, describing an ‘instant yet unattainable attraction’ to him, an initial flirtatious text conversation, then a secret meeting with ‘magic’ kissing and ‘mind blowing sex’.
But Kevin’s commitments encroached on the budding love affair, Ashley wrote.
Ashley wrote that she went to a rehab in Boca Raton, Florida in early 2019 for drug and sex addiction, but got frustrated with ‘relapsing over and over’
Ashley Biden, the only child of Joe Biden’s marriage to First Lady Jill Biden, left her private journal behind at a home in Palm Beach, Florida after she moved to Philadelphia in June 2020
Ashley and her husband Howard Krein accompanied then-Second Lady Jill Biden to the Taj Mahal – the monument to love – during a 2013 trip to India
‘Towards the end your wife called and you rushed to kick me out of the car,’ the diary entry said. ‘I smoked a cigarette while you sat in the car talking to her – and I remember thinking this is a disaster.’
Ashley wrote that she ‘didn’t want to be a mistress + honestly didn’t want to be ‘that’ woman to your wife,’ but revealed they continued ‘sending each other pictures’ and ‘sexting at 5am’.
As they both battled with feelings of guilt, they both relapsed. Ashley wrote she ‘broke down + numbed my feelings in cocaine’ and she wrote that Kevin texted her ‘you haven’t left my mind. I relapsed.’
He is a surfer – not highly educated – barely knows his grammar/ but he does know how to love
Ashley wrote that Kevin was ‘like a drug’ and ‘sex was incredible for the first time in a long time’, but that she was ‘feeling used, an innocent victim in your twisted/wicked games’.
Several pages later, she wrote a list weighing up the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of a ‘continued relationship with Kevin’, including pros of ‘insane/deep sex’ and cons of his ‘wife, child’, ‘not sober’, ‘no romance or real intimacy’ and ‘long distance’.
Later, on February 8, she chastises herself for telling too many people about their relationship.
‘I spoke to too many people about my situation with Kevin,’ she wrote.
I asked for too many opinions and tried to get validation that I am good enough, sexy enough, hot enough, etc…And for that I am sorry.’
Ashley’s diary entries paint a picture of her severely fraying marriage, behind closed doors.
She listed ‘cons’ of her husband Howard, writing that they ‘Don’t share similar interests. Guns vs. fashion. No sense of adventure. Content @ Tracy Shore every weekend w/ family. No language of love. Casual user. Lying (white). No intimacy. Don’t kiss. Built up resentments. Don’t like friends/can’t hang out.’
On February 22 2019 she had a meeting with her husband and wrote she was considering that ‘Maybe I do try + make this marriage work’.
But two days later she said it was finished.
‘My marriage is over + it breaks my heart in two. There are no feelings of ‘I need to be with him.’ – ‘I need to see him.’ – ‘I need to kiss him.’. I am chalking this up to an [illegible] and moving on from here.’
However, the couple may have later patched things up. Five years on they have yet to publicly file for divorce.
Ashley appeared to hold some resentment against her doctor husband for his involvement in her brother Beau’s treatment towards the end of his life.
‘All of the affection – all the trust – went out the window the day that Howard went ahead with the feeding tube,’ she wrote. ‘I have forgiven – but don’t think that I am able to get it back.’
Joe and Ashley Biden kiss on stage during a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC in 2023
Ashley wrote that she was ‘hyper-sexualized’ and that she remembered having sex with friends ‘at a young age’. Her father carried her in his arms when he was sworn in as a senator in 1985 as her half brothers Beau and Hunter held the bible
Aimee Harris stole the diary while staying at Ashley Biden’s Delray Beach, Florida, residence in 2020. She sold it to right wing group Project Veritas for $20,000 and was sentenced to one month in prison
Ashley wrote down the pros and cons oof staying with her lover a Long Island businessman called ‘Kevin’. In the plus column was ‘Insane/deep sex’ but among the minuses was ‘daughter resents me’
The President’s daughter struggled to stay on the straight and narrow from as early as her college years.
She was arrested in 1999 for possession of marijuana.
The then-18-year-old student at Tulane University in New Orleans was released on a $1,000 bond, and the local district attorney declined to prosecute.
Two years later she was arrested again for underage drinking in Howard County, Maryland. She was issued a bench warrant after she failed to show up to a hearing for the charge.
She later pleaded guilty and was fined $125.
She had a third run-in with the law in August 2002, when she was arrested for allegedly obstructing officers trying to break up a bar fight in Chicago.
She reportedly ‘blocked the officer’s path and made intimidating statements’ after one of the assailants threw a bottle at the police.
According to federal prosecutors, Ashley left the diary behind when she moved out of a friend’s Delray Beach house in 2020 and it was found by a woman named Aimee Harris.
Harris admitted selling it for $20,000 to right wing activists from Project Veritas and in April was sentenced to a month in jail and three years of supervised release.
