Virginia Beach man faces felony charge in bigamy case - The Virginian-Pilot
VIRGINIA BEACH
On a muggy day last summer, Isaac Chanco Custalow Jr. and his fiancee stopped by the Circuit Court clerk's office, presented their IDs and handed over $30 in cash. They received a marriage license and tied the knot the next day, according to police and court records.
A few weeks later, Custalow's bride received a call from police in Chesterfield County: Her July 1 marriage to Custalow was invalid because he was still married to another woman, said Macie Pridgen, a spokeswoman for the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.
The bride told Virginia Beach police, who arrested Custalow, 41, on July 26 on a felony charge of bigamy.
The accusation is rare in Hampton Roads. Police this year have arrested only one other person on an accusation of bigamy, said Officer Jimmy Barnes, a Beach police spokesman. There were no such arrests in 2010, he said.
Hampton Roads courts concluded no bigamy cases in 2010 and two in 2009, according to a Virginian-Pilot analysis of Supreme Court data. The data exclude juvenile and domestic relations district court cases and those filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court after July 1, 2009.
State law defines bigamy as entering into a marriage while still married to another person. It's a Class 4 felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
But absent a significant criminal record, it's more common for a convicted bigamist to serve little or no jail time, Pridgen said. The cases are filed in the domestic-relations courts but tried in the circuit courts, she said.
In one of the 2009 cases, a Norfolk man pleaded guilty and a judge suspended all of a six-month jail sentence, according to the Supreme Court data.
But in more serious cases, more jail time is likely. In 2006, a man who'd appeared on the "Dr. Phil" TV show received a year in jail after he pleaded guilty in Chesapeake to marrying his sixth wife without divorcing his fifth. The judge suspended an additional four years.
Prosecutors in Virginia Beach see a variety of motives for the few bigamy cases they handle, including lust, laziness and the cost of procuring a divorce, Pridgen said. Some defendants also say their religion condones having multiple spouses, but prosecutors couldn't recall any cases like that in the past decade, she said.
In Custalow's case, prosecutors are investigating the possibility that he was married to four women at once after the relationships "fizzled out," Pridgen said. One of the women has died, she said.
The Virginia Beach charge addresses only one extra marriage.
In a court-file questionnaire for bail determination, a magistrate wrote that Custalow thought his divorce had been finalized. Custalow lives in the Richmond area and manages a sporting goods store, according to the questionnaire.
Custalow's criminal record includes a 2008 fraud conviction in North Carolina, according to the state's Department of Correction website.
Custalow's attorney did not return two phone calls requesting comment.
Last week, the Virginia Beach jail transferred Custalow to Henrico County, where he is awaiting trial on separate charges from Chesterfield County and has been released on bond, according to a released-inmate report from Virginia Beach, the Henrico County Sheriff's Office and the Chesterfield County Circuit Court clerk. The Chesterfield clerk said she could not say over the phone what charges he faces.
Custalow is scheduled to appear in Virginia Beach Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court on Dec. 6.
There's no state or national system for checking whether people have existing marriages when they apply for marriage licenses, said Tina Sinnen, Virginia Beach Circuit Court's clerk. But the applicants have to swear an oath that their marriage will be legal.
The Virginia Beach court issued nearly 4,000 marriage licenses last year.
"It's hard to believe people still do that, but it's still around," Sinnen said of bigamy. "It's tough to love somebody and think you know them and then find out you don't."
Kathy Adams, (757) 222-5155, kathy.adams@pilotonline.com
30 Sep, 2011--
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