Alan Mason, Person Of Interest In Texas Rape Case, Says Police Made Him 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent'

A Texas man who authorities labeled a "person of interest" in the hunt for a serial rapist believes that police dragged his name through the mud over a crime he had no connection to.

Alan Mason, 29, says that he first learned of a series of nine rapes in Fair Park when Dallas police took him into custody and interrogated him for information about the criminal activity, NBC DFW reports.

“I don’t know how people are going to react to me,” Mason, still in jail, told the Dallas Morning News. “A co-worker of mine, she came to see me yesterday and she said she Googled my name and that’s the first thing that popped up.”

On Monday, investigators named another man,Van Dralan Dixon, 38, a suspect in the ongoing sexual assault investigation.

Mason claims that police disseminated his mugshot in connection to the crime without even naming him as a suspect. He says he's now "guilty until proven innocent."

"They don't have to call me a suspect," Mason told WFAA. "Just by putting my picture by that type of, you know, those crimes, I'm automatically a suspect in the public's eye ... They didn't call me a suspect, no. But they put my picture up. If I'm not a suspect, why did you put my picture up like that?"

Mason, who holds a master's degree in criminal justice, says he works in the insurance industry and has an 8-year-old daughter, according to NBC DFW. He remains in Dallas County Jail for violating his probation on a DWI conviction, not in connection with the rapes.

Mason has no other convictions on his record, according to CBS DFW.