LONDON (AP):
SOME PEOPLE bring flowers, others bring balloons. When Melvyn Reed's three wives showed up to visit him at the hospital, they brought an unexpected end to his years as a double bigamist.
British police confirmed Thursday that after Melvyn Reed woke from his triple bypass heart operation earlier this year, his complicated marital affairs took a turn for the worse. All three of his spouses had turned up at the same time, despite his efforts to stagger their visits.
Media reports say that, upon realising that something was amiss, the wives held a meeting in the parking lot, and learned they were all married to the same man.
The 59-year-old company director from Kettering in central England turned himself in on May 12, telling police he was married to three women at the same time, and confessing to bigamy, an illegal offence in Britain, London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Reed had turned himself in and confessed to police in Wimbledon, south London, in the presence of his lawyer.
He pleaded guilty July 19 to two charges of bigamy at the Wimbledon Magistrate's Court, and was given a four-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay £70 ($8,000) in costs, police said.
It wasn't immediately possible to reach Reed or his three wives. Reed's lawyer, Laurence Grant, also could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Metropolitan Police said Reed married his first wife, Jean Grafton, in 1966, then left her without divorcing her. He went on to marry Denise Harrington in 1998, then married Lyndsey Hutchinson in 2003.
British media have widely reported that Reed recently moved back in with his first wife, Grafton. They say she is the mother of his three grown children.
The Metropolitan Police said Harrington and Hutchinson had sought advice on getting their marriages annulled. But media reports say lawyers have advised the women that their marriages were never valid.
