Bigamy

A former Los Angeles County probation department clerk who fled the country earlier this year after she was charged with bigamy and insurance fraud was captured in Mexico over the weekend, authorities said Monday. Damaris Ninet Amesquita, 30, was found Saturday by a bail bonds agent in Mexicali, said Los Angeles County district attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

The state Supreme Court upheld the 2003 bigamy conviction of a former Hildale police officer, ruling that a law banning polygamy is not unconstitutional. The court said that religious protections of the U.S. and Utah constitutions "do not shield [Rodney] Holm's polygamous practices from state prosecution." Holm was convicted of felony bigamy and two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. He had argued that the state's bigamy statute violated his right to practice his religion.

A grand jury indicted another three members of a polygamist sect that was the focus of a massive raid during the spring. The grand jury in Schleicher County has now charged 12 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, including sect leader Warren Jeffs. Most charges involve sexual abuse and bigamy.

A man who lived in Rancho Santa Margarita and is serving a sentence for embezzlement is scheduled to be arraigned today on charges that he married two women who did not know about each other and then stole from them, authorities said Thursday. Craig Stevens, 49, was sentenced to one year and four months in state prison last October for stealing $147,000 from his Costa Mesa employer. He is accused of marrying an Illinois resident in August 2007 without his first wife's knowledge. Prosecutors say he used his first wife's property inheritance to pay the restitution he was ordered to pay in the theft case.

Abandoned by his family, faith and community, Gideon Barlow arrived here an orphan from another world. At first, he played the tough guy, aloof and hard. But when no one was watching, he would cry. The freckle-faced 17-year-old said he was left to fend for himself last year after being forced out of Colorado City, Ariz., a town about 40 miles east of here, just over the state line. "I couldn't see how my mom would let them do what they did to me," he said.

The Utah Supreme Court on Friday denied a jailhouse appeal from a polygamist who had argued that the state's laws against bigamy violated his 1st Amendment right to religious freedom. Tom Green, 55, lived with five wives and 31 children in a cluster of trailer homes in the remote West Desert, 126 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. He was convicted of bigamy in 2001. In 2002, he was convicted of child rape of Linda Kunz, who was 13 when she married Green, then 37, in 1986.

An Arleta woman convicted of running a pyramid scheme that bilked investors out of millions of dollars is scheduled to be arraigned today on a new charge of bigamy, authorities said. Mercedes Navarrete, 55, is accused of marrying Felix Navarrete in March 2000 without divorcing Richard Beebe, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Kraut. She is expected to be sentenced Friday for her October conviction on counts of grand theft, securities fraud and tax evasion.

An Arleta woman convicted of running a pyramid scheme that bilked investors out of millions of dollars pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a new charge of bigamy. Mercedes Navarrete, 55, who also used the last names Bolivar and Frederick, is accused of marrying Felix Navarrete in March 2000 without divorcing Richard Beebe, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Kraut. She is due back in court Feb. 27 for a pretrial hearing.

With his head hung low before a Municipal Court judge, a Simi Valley man pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of bigamy for being married to three women at the same time. Lloyd Wetzel, 29, faces up to a year in County Jail for the crime, which his attorney blamed in part on a lingering mental disorder stemming from his childhood. "He is a little slow mentally," Deputy Public Defender Christina Briles said outside the courtroom after Wetzel entered his guilty plea.

A Glendale man accused of marrying four women without divorcing any of them said he'll plead guilty to bigamy charges because "basically, I have no case." Vernon Pierce said this week that he'll change his plea when he goes to court in Arizona on Friday. He pleaded innocent Jan. 11 in Maricopa County Superior Court to two charges of bigamy. "I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by putting up some mock defense," Pierce said.