Facebook nails bigamous man
Source: Agencies |
March 11, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FACEBOOK'S automatic efforts to connect users through "friends" they may know recently led two women in the US state of Washington 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 papers, 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 said.
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. The name change came in December, and later that month he married his second wife.
"Facebook is now a place where people discover things about each other they end up reporting to law enforcement," Lindquist said.
That led to the man, corrections officer Alan L O'Neill, being slapped with bigamy charges.
According to charging papers, 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 said.
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. The name change came in December, and later that month he married his second wife.
"Facebook is now a place where people discover things about each other they end up reporting to law enforcement," Lindquist said.
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