Loves Labour Lost

Some men are just born romantics .... but most know when to draw the line, and only ever get married once or twice and certainly not at the same time. There are some who just can't seem to stop themselves .... 

William Allen Jordan - Bigamist - Conman - Swindler

Maybe its the wedding day, the thrill of the chase or even the fact that its doing something illegal that spurs them on, but in any case, these men just are serial marry merchants. They of course split into three camps.

 

1) The serial, but legally married men:

• Perhaps best exemplified by the actor Mickey Rooney, who despite his diminutive size (he was said to be 'too old for juvenile roles but too short to be an adult movie star'), was a serial woman chaser .... and actually got married eight times, perhaps most famously to Ava Gardner.
• and Henry the Eighth of England, who also married a number of women (although partly out of need, after killing three of them). He had six wives in all. 

2) Religious groups who accept polygamy despite it being illegal in the West:

• The Mormons in the USA (which is legal in Utah), and 
• The Muslims in the West .... in the UK 'Nikka' marriages (religious marriages), which are not recorded as official marriages in the UK (but which many Muslims recognise as marriages under Islam) are a comparatively rare, but not unknown device by which a man may have his cake and eat it. Monogamy is the norm in Pakistan, so a large number of UK Muslims frown upon the practice. 

3) The illegally married men, also known as bigamists:

• These can have a number of reasons for committing the crime. They may be in a country where divorce is illegal or very difficult, or they may just walk out on a marriage and not bother with the formality of a divorce before 'marrying' again. Or they can be conmen who 'marry' in order to gain the trust of a partner in order to defraud them of their savings. One such conman, who represents the breed is American IT worker William Allen Jordan.

He has led a double life, during which he had three “wives” and had 13 children with six different women.In order to carry out the scams he largely used the ruse of pretending to be a CIA agent in order to defraud women looking for love (a susceptible group as the love scams on the internet have frequently shown). 

 

One of his victims, Mary Turner Thomson had met Jordan on-line in 2000 and married him and had two children by him. Six years into the 'marriage' she found out that he was also married to another British woman (both illegally) ... he had claimed that the other Mrs Jordan was actually just pretending as she was also a CIA agent undercover but the other woman had rung Mary Thomson and they uncovered the lies. However Mr Jordan had also taken £200,000 from her savings.  

 

He was arrested and charged in 2006, and Jordan pleaded guilty to bigamy, obtaining funds by deception, failing to register as a sex offender and possession of a stun gun. He served just two and a half years in prison in Britain despite ruining two women's lives, and was then deported to his home in New Jersey.   

 

In 2013, back in the USA he was still carrying out the same scam but using aliases such as Liam Allen, and his victim was Mischele Lewis, who he told her that she had to have security clearance because of his job and would have to pay for this (if she loved him). Despite her doubts, she went on to transfer $1,300 (£1,100) during the “security clearance process” to various “British men” she had spoken to on the phone. She later believed that these were all Jordan impersonating the various callers. But 'in love' she fell pregnant to Jordan, however one day he left his wallet unattended and curious (those doubts had never quite left her), and she opened it. 

 

She googled his real name and found the truth .... she had been conned. Challenged, he admitted the 'truth' (he could hardly do anything else .... he said he was 'changed' but Ms Lewis had an abortion and he was arrested by police in a New Jersey car park in 2014 ... charged with sexual assault, theft by deception, and impersonating law enforcement he was jailed for three years ....

 

He's now free, whereabouts unknown and probably doing the same all over again. Somehow the punishments don't seem to fit the crimes .... he's left a string of debts and children across two continents and is free to just carry on doing it over and over again.