Richard Leon Barton Jr. Arrested: Man Charged With Polygamy After 'Defriending' First Wife On Facebook

aolnews.com:

Perhaps Facebook needs a relationship status that reads: "Married, but still looking."

Police in Grand Rapids, Mich., say they were able to bust a man on polygamy charges after his first wife noticed he had "defriended" her on Facebook and posted photos of his second marriage.

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Comments

[RedRat]

06:07 PM on 03/27/2011

I never can understand polygamy. I think it was George Bernard Shaw that said about wives: "One may not be enough, but two is far, far too many".

[drubert]

12:14 PM on 03/25/2011

That's one way to divorce your wife.

[CMB1969]

09:47 AM on 03/24/2011

Uh why is a run-of-the-mill bigamy case listed in the 'Religion' section? My guess is sloppy editing--someone saw the word "polygamy" and immediately assumed it dealt with a fundamentalist mormon sect.
For the record "polygamy" and "bigamy" are different acts. Polygamy refers to plural marriages in which all parties are aware of the arrangement and have consented--the legality in those cases is a matter of reasonable debate (yes, I do know that many of the sects that practice it have abuses that need to be addressed...). Bigamy refers to plural marriages where at least one (and usually more than one) party is unaware of the situation--that is, first and foremost, an act of fraud, with the moral aspects of the offense being secondary.

[Checquoline]

09:52 AM on 03/24/2011

Thank you. I wondered the same thing myself. Who got paid big bucks to NOT know the difference between polygamy and bigamy?

[fem56]

11:16 PM on 03/26/2011

I was just going to mention that this should be under the divorce section. If I was this woman I would be terribly embarrassed to admit I ever married this guy.

[Gennaphyr]

01:21 AM on 03/24/2011

file this one under who cares

[Gudrun]

07:20 PM on 03/23/2011

Oh boy, he sounds like a real catch, huh?

[Max Shaw]

05:46 PM on 03/23/2011

Apparently he doesnt know that defriending someone and blocking someone are two different things.

[kareemachan]

04:18 PM on 03/23/2011

I wish these people would get a clue about the pervasiveness of modern technology.

Of course, if they did, we wouldn't hear so many interesting things from conservative politicians. ;-)

[LMPE]

03:48 PM on 03/23/2011

Sounds like the sort of thing that Rudy Giuliani would do.

[Ds2vet]

03:19 PM on 03/23/2011

Meanwhile theres awarcriminalandtorturer running the streets freely in texas.

[PUFFINS]

03:05 PM on 03/23/2011

who needs television? just read huffingtonpost headlines for comedy..bahahahahahaha. "defriended wife on facebook" wtf?!

[Holly Smoke]

02:36 PM on 03/23/2011

We are going to have Facebook wedding and devoice very soon. Internet conjugation may take a little while to be satisfying, huh?

[alpina]

02:29 PM on 03/23/2011

You mean polygamy is still illegal in some places? I thought they just gave you a TV show or a run for the Presidency if you were a fan of the ol traditional marriage is between a husband and a wife, and a wife, and a wife and a wife.

[blukazoo]

02:21 PM on 03/23/2011

It's a good thing marriage is being protected by DOMA...

[Andythelawyer]

02:21 PM on 03/23/2011

It''s probably bigamy, not polygamy if the first wife doesn't know about the others.

[1Woman4Obama]

02:01 PM on 03/23/2011

This is a ridiculous story -- who cares? He was effectively divorced from his first wife (who it is unclear that he spent any time with as they met on the internet, she lived in a different state and he was in prison) -- fill out the paperwork and move on. Why are we wasting money on this?