SEATTLE – Facebook's
automatic efforts to connect users through "friends" they may know
recently led two Washington women to find out they were married to the
same man, at the same time.
That led to the man, corrections officer Alan L. O'Neill, being slapped with bigamy charges.
According to charging
documents filed Thursday, O'Neill married a woman in 2001, moved out in
2009, changed his name and remarried without divorcing her. The first
wife first noticed O'Neill had moved on to another woman when Facebook
suggested the friendship connection to wife No. 2 under the "People You
May Know" feature.
"Wife No. 1 went to wife No.
2's page and saw a picture of her and her husband with a wedding cake,"
Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist told The Associated Press.
Wife No. 1 then called the defendant's mother.
"An hour later the defendant
arrived at (Wife No. 1's) apartment, and she asked him several times if
they were divorced," court records show. "The defendant said, 'No, we
are still married.'"
Neither O'Neill nor his first
wife had filed for divorce, according to charging documents. The name
change came in December, and later that month he married his second
wife.
O'Neill allegedly told Wife
No. 1 not to tell anybody about his dual marriages, that he would fix
it, the documents state. But wife No. 1 alerted authorities.
"Facebook is now a place where
people discover things about each other they end up reporting to law
enforcement," Lindquist said.
O'Neill, 41, was previously
known as Alan Fulk. He has worked as a Pierce County corrections officer
for five years, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.
He was placed on administrative leave after prosecutors charged him Thursday. He could face up to a year in jail if convicted.
O'Neill and his first wife had
issues that went back to 2009. In 2010, his first wife was arrested
after an altercation with the woman who later became the second wife.
A Facebook message to wife No.
1 was not immediately returned. There was no immediate phone number
available for O'Neill and his second wife.
Lindquist said it's unclear why O'Neill and wife No. 1 didn't go through the divorce.
"Every few years we see one of these (bigamy) cases," he added.
O'Neill is free, but due in court later this month, which is standard procedure for non-violent crimes, Lindquist said.
"About the only danger he would pose is marrying a third woman," he said
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/09/facebook-friend-offer-exposes-mans-other-wife/#ixzz1oi9ffJ00
No comments:
Post a Comment