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Bigamist 'forgot' drunken 1978 wedding
By Aislinn Simpson
Last Updated: 10:23AM BST 26/06/2008
A newly-wed husband has discovered he is in fact a bigamist after authorities found evidence that he married 30 years earlier while on drink-fuelled holiday in the United States.
The revelation came after the unnamed 67-year-old wed his long-term Hawaiian girlfriend and applied to move from Sydney, Australia, back to her birthplace.
American immigration officials scanned his records and contacted the couple to inform them that he was already married.
They produced a marriage certificate showing that he had tied the knot with an American women in Arizona in 1978.
The shame-faced groom confessed he had been on a 28-day drinking binge there while on leave from his job on an oil rig, but insisted he only vaguely remembered "a nice blonde woman".
He said "the sky fell in" when he was shown a copy of the marriage certificate.
"I looked at the signature and thought it could have been mine or it could not have been," he said.
However, when attempts to trace his estranged Arizona wife failed, the marriage was annulled and the man was told he could proceed with his plans.
He's the latest in a series of bigamists to have their past inconveniently resurrected.
A Norfolk man who wed a woman 33 years his junior while still married to his first wife was caught out by a guest he had invited to both weddings. Randolf Edge, 54, was spared jail after a court heard both his "wives" had now forgiven him.
Another man was unmasked as a bigamist after he mentioned an impending second wedding on the Friends Reunited website.
Carl Wallace, a 45-year-old maintenance supervisor from Oldham, Greater Manchester, nicknamed "Wally" at school, was caught out after a former school friend noticed the entry and contacted Anne, his wife of 22 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... dding.html
By Aislinn Simpson
Last Updated: 10:23AM BST 26/06/2008
A newly-wed husband has discovered he is in fact a bigamist after authorities found evidence that he married 30 years earlier while on drink-fuelled holiday in the United States.
The revelation came after the unnamed 67-year-old wed his long-term Hawaiian girlfriend and applied to move from Sydney, Australia, back to her birthplace.
American immigration officials scanned his records and contacted the couple to inform them that he was already married.
They produced a marriage certificate showing that he had tied the knot with an American women in Arizona in 1978.
The shame-faced groom confessed he had been on a 28-day drinking binge there while on leave from his job on an oil rig, but insisted he only vaguely remembered "a nice blonde woman".
He said "the sky fell in" when he was shown a copy of the marriage certificate.
"I looked at the signature and thought it could have been mine or it could not have been," he said.
However, when attempts to trace his estranged Arizona wife failed, the marriage was annulled and the man was told he could proceed with his plans.
He's the latest in a series of bigamists to have their past inconveniently resurrected.
A Norfolk man who wed a woman 33 years his junior while still married to his first wife was caught out by a guest he had invited to both weddings. Randolf Edge, 54, was spared jail after a court heard both his "wives" had now forgiven him.
Another man was unmasked as a bigamist after he mentioned an impending second wedding on the Friends Reunited website.
Carl Wallace, a 45-year-old maintenance supervisor from Oldham, Greater Manchester, nicknamed "Wally" at school, was caught out after a former school friend noticed the entry and contacted Anne, his wife of 22 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... dding.html