Bigamist is jailed

A bigamist who was married to two Norfolk women at the same time has been sentenced to four months in jail after four years on the run.

Michael Whatmough, a father-of-seven who at one time worked at the Norfolk Bowls Club in Unthank Road, Norwich, with third wife Carolyn, was caught by officers at Heathrow Airport as he returned from a holiday in Hong Kong with his latest fianc�e.

He had fled home in Swansea but following his detention was brought back before town magistrates. They heard he completed just four hours of a 180-hour community order he was given in 2005 - after it was revealed he had married Carolyn while still married to second wife Melanie.

He was remanded in custody and on Monday appeared at Swansea Crown Court after pleading guilty to breaching his community punishment order.

Judge Peter Heywood sentenced him to four months behind bars, with the 53 days he spent on remand counting against the total.

Whatmough's double life came to light when his third wife, Carolyn, filed for divorce. The couple met when she responded to his advert in the lonely hearts section of a Suffolk newspaper.

The couple married and settled down in Norwich, where they became live-in employees at the Norfolk Bowls Club.

But he later left her, and while she was trying to track him down to serve divorce papers she found the address of a woman called Melanie.

The two women talked, and it emerged that the former Army chef was still married to Melanie when he married Carolyn.

Melanie, a dinner lady at West Flegg Middle School, Martham, was married to him for 14 years. She married him in Boughton, near King's Lynn, and the couple had four children together. Whatmough had three children with his first wife.