UTAH – A 43-year old man is arrested for being secretly married to 17 different women across United States. He was arrested this morning in what the police calls “one of the worst case of polygamy in the history”.
Mr. Smith, the 43-year-old man is accused of being secretly married to a total of 17 different women across the states of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. According to the police, Mr. Smith even has a total of 29 children with his numerous wives.
Surprisingly, he have been able to maintain his web of lies and illusions for more than 15 years, marrying more women along the way, without any of his wives or children being aware of the situation.
Mr. Smith could probably have continued his fraud, if he hadn’t married 26-year old Jane Wilson, last month. The young lawyer turned out to be a lot more skeptical and investigative than his other partners, and she rapidly discovered the truth about his secret lives.
Ms. Wilson began to have some doubts about the stories Mr. Smith told her, after their honeymoon. She says that she felt that he was hiding something from her, and it seems that she was right.
“When the investigator that I had hired showed me the pictures of all these women and kids, I almost fainted” says the young woman. “I knew that he had a secret, but I never would have expected something this big. This man is a psychopath and he deserves to be jailed!”
According to the prosecutor, Mr. Smith used false identities, which allowed him to marry a large number of women without the authorities noticing. The search of his vehicle and of a storage space that he rented, revealed hundreds of legal documents and cards, including social security numbers, birth certificates, driver’s licenses and credit cards, linked to a total of 27 distinct identities.
Unemployed since 2003, Mr Smith told his multiple wives that he was either a corporate executive, a trucker, or even a secret agent, to justify his many absences. Instead of working, he was actually spending most of time visiting his various families and was living mostly by stealing his wives’ money.
Mr. Smith now faces a total of 33 criminal charges before the Utah State court, including polygamy, fraud, forgery, theft and felony. If found guilty, he could be condemned to a maximum of 93 years in jail.
