TACOMA, Wash. — Here’s a recipe for trouble:
A woman you left three years ago but remain married to gets a Facebook recommendation to "friend" a woman she doesn’t know. Unbeknown to her, you married the mystery woman after changing your name.
Wife No. 1 clicks on the link. The mystery woman’s profile photo shows you and her in nice clothes standing next to a wedding cake.
Wife No. 1 calls your mom.
Oh, boy.
It allegedly happened to a corrections officer now on unpaid leave after prosecutors charged him with bigamy on Thursday.
Alan O’Neill, 41, has been summoned to court March 22 to answer the felony charge.
O’Neill, previously known as Alan Fulk, has worked as a Pierce County corrections officer for five years, sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.
Efforts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.
Fulk married his first wife in 2001. He reportedly moved out eight years later, but neither filed for divorce, court documents say.
In December he changed his last name to O’Neill, the documents state. Then he married his second wife.
Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said Wife No. 1 recently found out about No. 2 when Facebook, thinking the two woman might want to share a friendship because of their connection to O’Neill, recommended she "friend" her.
Wife No. 1 then placed her call to the defendant’s mother, Lindquist said.
"An hour later the defendant arrived at (Wife No. 1’s) apartment, and she asked him if they were divorced," court records show. "The defendant said no."
O’Neill then allegedly told Wife No. 1 not to tell anyone about his dual marriages, that he would fix it, the documents state.
Not fixed.
Wife No. 1 apparently alerted authorities.
(adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service)
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