RIVERDALE — Serah Harrison and Cynthia Hayes hope other women will not fall prey to the man they each thought was their husband.
Harrison, of Riverdale, and Cynthia Hayes, who lives in California, learned in March they both were married at the same time to the same man — Victor DeiWayne Hayes. They also learned that there was a third woman who had been married to the Los Angeles man for at least 19 years.
Victor Hayes was sentenced Tuesday to serve 90 days in Davis County Jail. Second District Judge Glen C. Dawson also sentenced the 51-year-old man to serve three years’ probation and undergo a mental evaluation.
Hayes had entered a guilty plea to bigamy charges, a third-degree felony, July 17. Layton police filed the charge with the Davis County Attorney’s Office in May.
“I don’t want the attention,” Harrison said. “I just want to stop him.”
Harrison, 39, said she met Victor Hayes five years ago on PlentyofFish.com when she lived in California. The two got engaged, but then broke up. She moved to Minnesota and he showed up for two weeks. They got engaged again, but again broke up.
Harrison then moved to Utah to help her mother, who had health problems.
Victor Hayes found her, they were engaged again and exchanged wedding vows on Jan. 8, 2011, at the Mountain View Baptist Church in Layton.
It was when Victor Hayes told Harrison he needed to go back to California to sell his home that things began to unravel.
He accused Harrison of having an affair and “he was acting crazy. So I thought he was covering something up,” Harrison said.
After she dropped him off at the airport, she headed straight to the Davis County clerk’s office and asked to see their wedding license application.
Harrison used Google to check the address Victor Hayes listed on the form and it turned out to be bogus — a combination of addresses he shared with the other two women in California.
Harrison said she knew about Cynthia Hayes, but believed Victor Hayes had divorced her. She also was aware of one other woman in California because Victor Hayes had told her about two sons he had.
Her mother did an Internet search and found that Victor Hayes had married several women, but “there were no divorces,” Harrison said.
She went to Layton police and asked them to investigate whether the man she thought was her husband had more than one wife.
What Harrison learned was that the man who claimed to play professional baseball in reality traveled to spend time with different women and was the father of at least 11 children, several of whom are now adults.
“I have nothing at stake in this,” Harrison said. “Victor had no less than two wives at a time, and sometimes (there has been) as many as three or four women.”
She learned he had been married to a woman in Arizona at one time, and a woman in Nevada as well.
Harrison said her friends teased her about moving to Utah and marrying a man who already had had two wives.
“That’s the whole joke about me moving to Utah and ‘wanting to fit in,’ ” Harrison said. “We’re not Mormons.”
Cynthia Hayes, in a telephone interview, said Victor Hayes was “kind and considerate. He took care of me and our home and our daughter.” She met Victor Hayes in August 2008 and they married in May 2009.
“It was instant love,” Cynthia Hayes said.
She said she still loves him, but does not want him back in her life.
“I’m struggling right now,” Cynthia Hayes said. “Was it all a lie? All fake? Did he just want to live off me?”
Harrison said Victor Hayes chose women who were articulate, had college degrees, careers and were independent. Harrison said Victor Hayes was also good to her and treated her well, until he accused her of having an affair.
She is worried other women will fall for Victor Hayes’ lines.
She said a woman posted his $2,500 bail in July. According to the court website, a woman with a California address did post the bail.
Harrison said someone has been paying for the airline tickets for Victor Hayes so he could travel to and from California for his court hearings.
“Women have been allowing him to get away with this for so long,” Cynthia Hayes said.
Cynthia Hayes recently confronted her husband about his marriages. She showed up one Sunday at a baseball game he was playing and saw another woman at the game cheering for Hayes.
“It’s been an emotional week for me, what with that and the sentencing hearing,” Cynthia Hayes said.
Hayes said she plans to have her marriage annulled.
Harrison paid for a divorce because an annulment would have taken longer and cost more.
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