MUKILTEO — This month marks the couple’s first wedding anniversary, except police say there are problems: The groom already was married, and the bride is accused of raping a male patient at an adult family home where the man’s wife of more than four decades had lived.
Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives are investigating the first case of bigamy in the county in years, officials said.
They suspect, a Mukilteo man, 69, claimed to be a widower when he married a much younger woman, according to court records.
Instead, the man’s wife — now 70 — lives in a adult-care home suffering from advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, detective Chris Leyda wrote in a search warrant affidavit filed Tuesday in Everett District Court.
The man’s sister-in-law told Leyda that while her sister was in a Marysville nursing home, the man met an aide whom he married in September 2008, court records show.
The woman police believe the man illegally married, Dominique Traspe Uy, 44, is charged with raping a man who was a patient at the adult care home. The patient who accused Uy suffers from Huntington’s disease, a neurological disorder, and told investigators Uy forced herself on him. She denied the allegations. Uy was jailed last week for missing a court date and since has posted bond for release.
Police first met the man in June 2008 when they were investigating the alleged sexual assault involving Uy. The man told detectives he didn’t believe Uy raped anyone and he was planning on making her his bride.
“He also told me that his previous wife had passed away,” Leyda wrote.
The man marked “widowed” when his applied for a marriage license, records show.
In July, the man called detectives and said Uy, by then his bride, was the victim of a sexual assault and shouldn’t be investigated as a perpetrator.
A month later, in August, detective Leyda was contacted by the man’s sister-in-law who was concerned the man is a bigamist and was stealing from his legal wife. The sister-in-law wrote that the man’s wife is alive, that he was taking her Social Security payments and failing to pay for her care, the search warrant said.
Four years ago, the man’s wife lost her ability to care for herself, the sister-in-law said. She wasn’t able to recognize family or friends. The Alzheimer patient was placed in an adult home in Marysville, which later closed, and she was moved to a home in Everett.
The man was a bus driver and retired from the U.S. Coast Guard, the sister-in-law told detectives. She said that since the onset of his wife’s illness, the man has struggled with drug and alcohol problems, according to the search warrant.
The sister-in-law also told investigators that the man in April won $10,000 from the Washington State Lottery, records show.
Detectives in late August found the man’s wife living at an Everett adult care home the search warrant said. The woman’s nurse told detectives the husband had visited many times and referred to the woman as “my wife,” the search warrant said. He last visited on Aug. 24.
Officials with the adult home confirmed the husband owes more than $2,000 for his wife’s care.
The case remains under investigation and the man has not been arrested, sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said.
Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437, jholtz@heraldnet.com.
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