Castlebar man jailed for bigamy in Canada after 19 marriages
Notorious Castlebar native and serial bigamist Oliver Killeen (pictured) has been convicted in Toronto, Canada of bigamy after getting married at least 19 times.
In 2004 he served 18 months for bigamy in London. Most of Killeen’s marriages took place in England in the 1980s and 90s, though he was based in Waterford for a while too.
However in Toronto this week 75-year-old Killeen pleaded guilty to one count of bigamy after admitting he married Barbara Daniels in 1978 whilst still wedded to another woman.
He’s now facing a 90-day spell in prison, which he will serve at weekends only, according to Torstar News.
He once boasted to a Star reporter that he had married 19 women, all but two without bothering to obtain a divorce. “When you’re as good as me, they can’t (keep away),” he said in 2006, standing in a dingy basement apartment doorway in a pair of plaid pajamas. “They say they’re hypnotized. And that is true.”
“I regret the mess I find myself in,” he told Ontario Court Justice John Moore before he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
Ms Daniels married him in 1978 and remembers the next seven years as ‘hell’.
Killeen was verbally abusive and constantly writing bad cheques, she says. Between 1971 and 1977, Killeen amassed 54 false pretense convictions, the court heard Thursday.
But when she finally left him in 1985, she was shocked to discover she could not file for divorce. Killeen was still married to Agnes Cloney since 1974.
“Women are commodities to him,” she says.
Killeen returned to Ireland and in the 1990s established a reputation as a celebrity psychologist, with his own TV programme, a syndicated column, and three radio shows before being found out whilst giving ‘expert’ evidence in court.Testifying as an expert witness in a 2001 trial, a solicitor questioned his non-existent credentials. He was unmasked as a fraud and fled to London, where in 2004 he served 18 months for bigamy.
The Canadian prosecutor said Killeen’s age, his guilty plea and fact he is working were mitigating factors to be considered in sentencing.